Today's Gasshuku Classes:

8am - Closed Session for Rokudan (6th degree black belt) and above with Higaonna Sensei.

9am - All grades training

Junbi Undo (Warm Up Exercises) - Instructed by Sensei Roy Flatt (IOGKF 7th Dan, England)

10am - Group Training

Sandan training with Sensei Ernie Molyneux (England) - sparring practice wiht partners, combination work for both attacks & blocks.

Brown Belt training with Sensei Henrik Larsen (Denmark) - Gekisai bunkai (kata applications) and variations.

11:30am - Everyone training with instruction from Higaonna Shihan Sensei. This was the final class of the Gasshuku and is infamous for being a very tough session with everybody performing 1000s of strikes to Shihan Sensei count. I have been looking forward to this class all week, not because I wanted the Gasshuku to be over though! The final session is renowned for being very hard training with lots of basics and stancework.

I heard somebody referring to the last class of a Gasshuku as "Spirit training". When you want to give up because you are exhausted but you must keep telling yourself "This is what you've come here for! To train hard with Higaonna Sensei! This is great stuff, don't give up yet!".

More photos online soon.