Tuesday, June 27, 2006

you don't have these for adults, by any chance?

Last Thursday was Andrew's last day of school. Done is third grade, my oh my does he grow up fast...

With me and my wife both working, and no vacation in sight for at least four more weeks, we had to find a place to "station" Andrew but that was all planned out ahead of time. For the third Summer in the last four years, he will be going to a karate day camp organized by our karate school. They do two hours of karate everyday, split in two sessions. The first hour is traditional class in which they work on their traditional forms, self-defense techniques, kenpo combinations and such and the second hour is always dedicated to some less traditional stuff, things they don't usually work on in their classes. We're talking about open forms and kicks, weapons (he's tried nunchucks, bo, and kamas in the past) or even a full hour of sparring in gears and all.

The afternoon is dedicated to the cool outside the class stuff, where they have all great activities like swimming, rollerblading, movie going when it's raining, all kinds of cool things that kids like.

The first year he went there, he was barely 6 and while he said enjoyed the camp, we figured it was more for the afternoon stuff that the morning stuff. At the time, he was only brushing the surface of what he could do in martial arts but then as the years went by, we came to hear him talk a bit more about the karate part of the day until yesterday where he told me about learning to make a butterfly kick followed by a combination of strikes typical of an open type form. Was way cool to hear him talk about it like that. I asked him if he'd like to do an open form in competition one day and his answer, while not a resolute "heck yeah" was not an absolute no either, a bit similar to what he answered me whe I first talked to him about competing with his bo. Now look at him, he's done 4 bo competitions and he wants more... :)

Hearing him talking about his day, and me knowing about the cool stuff they do is what makes me want to ask them: "you don't have these camps for adults, by any chance?"

FM

8 comments:

Mathieu said...

Can I go if they have some?

:)

Mat

FrogMan said...

hehe, somehow, I knew you'd want to go ;)

We also were a couple of adult students who wanted to ask them if they had some sort of "sport-work" program based on their "sport-school" (sport-étude) program in which kids have a special school schedule that allows them to do 2 hours of karate per day, four days a week. The kids that are part of that program become simply amazing karate athletes as well as great practictioners, it simply makes me want to have a tailored work schedule that would allow me to do two hours of karate per day too :)

Take care,
Steve.

Mathieu said...

Ha, who wouldn't want one. Maybe, I'd have to make my boss love karate, then we could do karate-breaks. That would be so cool.

Maybe there's a way to incorporate 2 hours of karate per day into a schedule. I simply don't know how yet.

Ah, life. wonderful thing. There's always a way to improve a situation, isn't there?

Anyways, let me know if that kind of thing exists :)

cheers!

Mathieu

Dr. Augustus Dayafter said...

I want to go too! Heck, I'd drive all the way to Canada for that...

Mir said...

I think that they DO have week long Karate camps somewhere in the States.. but you actually stay there for the whole week.

I know of a Mixed Martial Arts camp that is happening in Florida this summer.

I know that there is the Shotokan Master's camp in Philidelphia that happens in June.

There is a Kyokushin week long karate camp happening in August in British Columbia, Canada.

And there is a Shotokan camp that happens in July? in Denver, Colorado.

There MUST be tons of Adult karate camps out there.

I would suggest doing some googling to find out if there are any Martial arts camps happening in your area (in your system) You never know what pearl you might dig up.

Anonymous said...

Seriously, sign me up too!

Actually, there is karate camp in my neck of the woods. Kids and adults are welcome to come.

Mathieu said...

I didn't find one yet. Not that I'm not looking. :)

Sensei agreed to some summer class. That's as close as I'm gonna get this summer.

Whew.. It's so damn hot in these parts.

How's that summer going?

FrogMan said...

it's very hot around here too Mat, we're nto far from one another :)

See my latest post to hear something new :)

Take care, Steve