Norton Dojo Blog

Norton Dojo Grading 16-Sep-2010

2010-09-17T12:57:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to the grading candidates, each of whom were successful.

Trudy progresses to 9th Kyu, Alex to 8th Kyu, Ben to 4th Kyu and Dave gets his Brown belt with 3rd Kyu.

Many thanks to Sensei Chris for officiating, and to Glenn, Ian and Kris for their assistance during the grading and afterwards with the well received drinks in the pub!

A very well done to you all.

Okinawa History Day at the Showroom Cinema

2009-03-03T07:11:00.000-08:00

Hi all. a quick note to say that the showroom cinema is having a history of Okinawa day, the details are here: http://www.showroom.org.uk/cinema/documents/Okinawaflyer6March2009_FNL.pdf starts at 12:25 on Friday 6th March 2009. May well be going along if anyone fancies a group outing.

Sempai Glenn

2008-12-08T10:29:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to Glenn on progressing to the rank of Shodan.
It was a tough grading. Under the watchful eyes of Sensei George and Sensei Linda, Glenn displayed an extraordinary level of physical and mental toughness and showed us the technical standard required to progress to this next level.

Congratulations Glenn. And thank you for allowing us to be part of your accomplishment.

Arigato gozai amashita

Grading - Tuesday 14th October 2008

2008-10-16T02:10:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to all the "Testees" from the grading on Tuesday.

John, Lee, Ian, Dave and Richard were all successful and progress to the next level. John and Lee both achieved the rank of 3rd Kyu, Ian & Dave move on to 6th Kyu and Richard has progressed to 7th Kyu.

Thank you to Sensei Terry Noble for presiding over a grading interspersed with surprises and to Sensei Chris Robins for guiding us toward our goals within Goju Ryu.

Congratulations and Thanks to all.

Track Dave as he navigates the cruel seas!

2008-05-20T03:16:00.001-07:00

All.. sorry I didn't get around to this before, you can track Daves progress as he navigates from Bermuda to the Azores here: http://perrysmaison.blogspot.com/

Good Luck Fella!

Provisional Date for Norton Dojo Night Out

2008-04-12T06:42:00.000-07:00

Because it's too long to wait in-between Christmas parties, The Norton Dojo Summer night our provisional date : Sat June 7th. Let Ian know if you can/can't make it and we'll juggle as needed.

Upcoming Training with Sensei George - 19th & 20th April

2008-04-12T06:38:00.000-07:00

Sensei George is coming to town (You know if it were closer to christmas I think we could make that work as a song, anyway).

Saturday 19th April 2008 at the English Institute of Sport 11am - 2pm
And Sunday 12th at Hallam Dojo.

Training - Friday 11th Apr '08

2008-04-12T06:21:00.000-07:00

Loads of fun, warmed up doing some light San Dan Gi then spent a good hour practicing Renzoku Bunkai (Which I badly needed) and finished up with a half hour of self-defense / wristy-twisty wor focusing on bunkai for one, two and double handed grabs. Never ceases to amaze me just how much of a good exercise San Dan Gi is! Ooh and sensei grabbed a couple of new clips for the next vid.

On a related note, found this blog: http://karatelog.blogspot.com/2005/06/egka-summer-gradings-2005-write-up.html which might be worth the odd read.

Punch series by George Andrews

2008-04-12T06:13:00.001-07:00

Ooh a vid of sensei George :)

Self defence and Goju-Ryu Karate training - Vid 4

2008-04-12T06:12:00.001-07:00

Latest from Director Sensei Chris :)

Goju-Ryu Karate

2007-11-14T03:24:00.001-08:00

Short club vid made by Sensei Chris

Cannabis Commercial

2007-11-06T06:59:00.001-08:00

hehehe ah not seen this for years, always makes me laugh tho. Just trying out uploading vids and linking them to web pages for sensei.

Sensei Bakkies 27th Oct 07

2007-10-30T16:47:00.001-07:00

Sensei Bakkies 27th Oct 07, originally uploaded by ianmibbo.

or "The importance of being there".

In the car on the way back from sensei bakkies seminar last saturday evening sensei chris made it known that he wanted articles for the club website and maybe even a blog entry covering saturdays seminar. I must admit I was a bit stumped for what to write at first. My initial gut reaction is, cool, I managed to learn and some continuous bunkai that I had always thought very cool, but that betrays the depth of the experience. In order of declining time, I've practised hapkido, taekwondo, gojuryu, aikido, aiado, taijutsu and a smattering of other arts and in that time I've been very lucky to meet some exceptional teachers. That said... I've seldom seen anything in a seminar that I've not seen at some point written down in a book somewhere, on a dvd or video, on the internet or via some other medium.

What does that mean? I have a friend who works in e-learning who recently blogged (sadly now missing) about the "Importance of being there". Her other half is a lecturer in philosophy, and the general thrust of the argument was "So what if people record the lectures and give it to people who weren't there", they are giving up something by not being present, the detailed content is not always the most important thing.

Sensei bakkies said, and I quote (but without the accent or rugby world cup jokes), "I'm a very lazy person, if there were any short cuts in karate, I would have taken them by now". I wonder if these two messages don't point to the same fundamental idea: you aren't going to be told any mystical truths by turning up to meet someone claiming more experience than you, *But* what you are going to be, if you're really lucky, is inspired to keep looking for your own answers, to keep sweating (There was a lot of that) and keep trying with real heart, not just go through the motions, because at the end of the day, you have seen that there is some pay-off for all the hard work, that although there are no short cuts, over time the process does effect a change, and that although it's difficult to see the inch-pebbles in day to day life, they do add up to milestones eventually

I thoroughly enjoyed my exhausting day in london with sensei bakkies, and afterwards I enjoyed the two bottles of beer and pizza all the more for knowing how hard the day was. Yeap, I learned some technical details I wasn't very good at or diddn't know before, but above all else I was inspired to try harder every time. All told, what would I have done with my saturday otherwise? No comparison!

Incidentally, I'm inspired every time I go training, but thats another story </grovel> ;)

George Dillman on National Geographics

2007-09-27T08:07:00.001-07:00

Dillman on national geographic

Anyone for books?

2007-09-20T04:46:00.000-07:00

Hey all :) I've just ordered a copy of The Bubishi (and some other book amazon recommended) and it made me think about the mass of training books I have.. so here's a link to my library thing catalog training tag, I'll add all my training related books. If anyone wants to borrow anything, just shout up!

Cheers,
e.

Cute youtube vid

2007-09-17T05:07:00.001-07:00

Neato vid pointed out by Glenn, Ah you have to feel for the guy when sensei nails him with that punch :)

Grading - Sept 4th 07 - Everyone

2007-09-14T10:39:00.001-07:00

Grading - Sept 4th 07 - Everyone, originally uploaded by ianmibbo.

Heres a link to the actual photo until I can figure out how to make the flickr slideshow work on the right hand bar. I'm such a n00b.

Grading Photos

2007-09-14T10:17:00.001-07:00

Yay: Photos of a very tired, but happy looking bunch

We knew them back when.....

2007-08-31T21:33:00.000-07:00

Finally a link to the <-Picture This-> page! Tracks sound great, Go for it fellas! And make sure the next gig isn't on a training night!

Norton Dojo Blog

2007-08-22T03:05:00.000-07:00

Last night Sensei suggested I look up the Iain Abernethy web site, as it's pretty good and well aligned with the Norton-Dojo ethos (For want of a better word). I duly did as instructed ;) but then got to thinking that there should be an easier way to share this kind of info. I know Sensei likes to keep the club website up to date, but it tends to have well thought out, well reasoned and written articles. Lets face it, not attributes commonly associated with the internet ;). So, I figured I'd do a couple of things just to make it easier to share less, um, structured content :)

First off, I've created a global del.icio.us (The social bookmarking site) tag called norton-dojo. If you're a delicious user, anything you tag as "norton-dojo" will appear on this page. The last five items tagged will also appear on the left hand side of this blog window (It's not quite real time, but links should appear after a day at the most).

Secondly, there's this blog. If you have a blogger.com account, shout me and I'll add you as someone able to post here. Alternatively, it's possible to email blog entries just using a standard mail client, so again, shout up and I'll add your email address to the list of addresses allowed to submit posts.