CENTRAL REGION COURSE WITH SENSEI LAUTIER

Saturday 3rd December 2011

Hertfordshire Sports Village was the venue for the Central Region Course whose guest Instructor was Sensei Lautier 7th DAN Chief Instructor JKA France. He will be joining Sensei Ohta in Loughborough tomorrow for the course and DAN Grading but we, the Central Region, are lucky enough to be able to train with him beforehand. A later start than normal as Sensei was flying into Gatwick in the morning, so a 3pm start was on the cards.

Sensei started with basic change of direction in front stance keeping the emphasis on maintaining the same head height during the turn and not bobbing up and down. Then we moved on to a combination of the change of direction with appropriate blocking techniques against four attackers, progressing onwards to counter attacks after each one. For the lower Kyu grades this took some doing but they were comforted by the fact that Sensei would be just as happy if they performed just two of the five blocks rather than copy others to try and do all of them. Once we had all mastered the sequence, Sensei Lautier then changed the techniques to make it more interesting for the higher grades adding in some kicking techniques too but he also changed the sequence and I'm not sure whether that was intentional or not. Caught most of us out!

The course finished off with the karateka being split into Colour belts and Black/Brown belts. Sensei Lautier took the senior grades whilst I took the colour belts. Sensei Lautier took the Black and Brown belts in the second session and concentrated on performing Bassai Dai - BACKWARDS! As there was only one purple belt and one Green belt, it was decided in the 20 mins or so I had, I would introduce the students to Heian Yondan and was totally surprised by the amount of effort all the students put into learning and trying to understand the kata. All students practised Heian Shodan normally and also mirror image. The Black and Brown belts also attempted the kata backwards.

The course was of great benefit for the students who attended. Sensei Lautier left us with three key points to pay attention to when performing our techniques;

1. Maintain the same head height when stepping
2. Correct use of hips to produce power
3. Synchronising the foot and hand after kicking and then punching

I am sure that I say on behalf of JKAE that it would be a pleasure to see Sensei Lautier teaching at our courses on a future occasion.

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