Dentokan - Karate - 16/4/10 Northampton High School For Girls

So, Event 3 of 21 was a Karate lesson with the Dentokan Karate and Self Defence Class.

As a prelude to this event, Kis had already promised to kick my backside so I was feeling pretty nervous as we arrived. My nerves weren't helped much after a short introduction to the trainers - Eddie and Jo, who then kindly allowed me to step forward in front of 50 odd people to deliver a short (unprepared) speech explaining why we were attending and what we hoped to get out of the event!

Soon, after a quick warm up, we were straight into the action. We watched as Eddie and Jo gave a full bloodied demonstration of each technique, and we were all asked to pair up and copy it.

Me and Kis worked together so we only had ourselves to blame for black-eyes and bloody noses, and we got to it.

We were lucky enough to received the expert tuition of Jo, who really helped explain things and Kismet seemed to grasp things rather better than me! 

After the first 4/5 techniques, we thought we were doing rather well......then they stepped it up a gear. The next 3/4 techniques became really clever and (to us) complicated, in the end we had to call in the help of another couple who have obviously been attendding for some time. They helped explain some of the theory behind the moves and made them seem a lot less compliacted.

In the end, I just resorted to what I knew best...... :)

Donations:

The kind people that attended the class generously donated £20 towards our £1000 target, which we are most grateful for and that takes our total upto nearly £200 so far! Fantastic!

In conclusion:

Both me and Kis were amazed by just how much we learned in just one lesson, and how enjoyable it actually was! It's a fantastic sport which quite evidently has many many followers around the world and now we know why. Grabbing, throwing and getting to grips with each technique was a lot more fun than both Kis or I thought it would be and again, we would definately recommend this for as many people as possible. I believe it costs just £5 per person per lesson, or there's a membership you can buy (speak to Eddie for more details on that).