Up and Coming
05/Feb/09
We have several exciting events coming up in the next few months. The next knife class for instructors is February 14th (I don’t know why I scheduled something on my anniversary but I’ll be sure to take my wife out on Friday or Sunday—29 years by the way). I’ll be in Indianapolis on the weekend of February 21st teaching seminars and holding “leadership” classes for the instructors of the Gospel Martial Arts Union. By the way, this is a great organization for Christians in the arts. I recommend that interested persons go to www.gmau.org to check out what they have to offer. Membership is free.
Rounding out February, the two YMCA classes will hold a joint brown belt exam on the 28th at Richardson. March, of course, is our annual AKaTo seminars and banquet weekend. This year we will again hold advanced black belt demonstrations and promotions after the morning seminars. Instructors will be coming in from California, Arizona, Tennessee and Colorado, so this is your chance to meet and train with quality martial artists from around the country. Download a registration form on the home page if you haven’t done so already.
The exam for first degree black belt will be on April 4th. We have six students testing from four different schools. The Okinawan weapons (Kobudo) classes start up again also in April, on the 11th. You must be at least a brown belt in empty-hand and no younger than twelve to sign up. Our curriculum will take you through five weapons and you’ll test for green belt, brown belt and finally, a black belt in Kobudo after approximately two and a half years. This is, I think, our seventh session so we have been teaching weapons to AKaTo instructors for over sixteen years now.
I hope you are proud to be a part of such a great organization that can offer you so many opportunities to learn and grow. We aren’t the biggest martial arts association around but we have intentionally kept membership fairly small so we can assure you of highly skilled teachers and quality individuals.