Day 7 and 8‏

Chesht (or something like that!) - means "Hi"

Yesterday's training wasn't as tough as I'd expected but still... when you have old school NZ 50 cent coin size blisters on the balls of your feet? Well, even walking down to the dojang can take longer than usual.
As I've mentioned before though, the way they warmup here you don't really think "Oh, I have to warmup, I don't really wanna go through all this again... My feet..." etc because you are so preoccupied with the games that suddenly you feel like "Oh. Ok this isn't so bad".

Yesterday's training involved more free-sparring drill situations and one of Master Loboda's "inventive" classes that was full of funny self-defense tricks and full of his slapstick style humour.
Master Loboda has a very distinctive voice and uses his tone well to encourage and maintain rhythm during exercises when the energy chips are down.

This morning's class on the other hand was taken by Master Jedut and involved plenty of leg-control at the beginning and end of class, plyometric exercises jumping over one another and then free sparring drills with the primary aim of learning to effectively manuipulate distance and timing during sparring. Or as Master Jedut would say "Controlling the rhythmic of the fight" :D
We got to our scheduled class finish time and it was almost as if everyone let out a mutualistic sigh of relief. And then we carried on for another 20 mins of jumping push-ups, 100 turning each leg, 50 side each leg, 15 downward each leg without putting the leg down. By this stage I think we were all thinking the same thing with every new kick "This will be the last one.... Come on. No big deal. We are almost done..... Ok, THIS one will have to be the last one....."

All in all though we are in fine shape. A little sore here and there but generally ok.
Mark seems to have damaged his shin a little. DJ has torn off a nice chunk of skin off the bottom of his foot... I think we are all enjoying the blisters and generally feeling like our gluts are going into rebellion against the rest of our body: "Look, you obviously don't know what you are doing so, I'll take over from here..."

One more training to go this arvo.
The final step will be a colourbelt grading this evening. Lots of kids and adults practicing syllabus material between classes, naps and meals here. I think we are in agreement that it will be interesting to see how much emphasis is given to different areas within gradings compared with home.

Until my final camp update take care everyone and hope you are enjoying that cold weather back home :P

CVR

This link just gives you an idea of where we are.
The same gym, location etc. We are not in the photos because this page only contains shots from previous, smaller camps.
Hopefully they will post some from this camp soon!

http://www.itfeurope.org/NL2008-02-17.html