I would like to thank personally the nearly 30 people that took part to the celebration of the 11th anniversary of CARISMA on Sat 12 June.

Starting at 3PM the party went on till late evening with a few guests that resisted all the way to the early Sunday morning

Here is a short clip with some of the relevant moments for the event:

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We would like to invite every member of CARISMA and partners or one friend of choice to share with us the 11th anniversary of the club that will be celebrated on 12 June 2010 at the registered address of the club.

There will be a small charge of £10 (£5 for non drinkers: these figures are for active members, guests will be subject to £5 extra to the above figures) to partially cover the cost of food and drinks that will be fully provided.

Please register your interest in participating by speaking to us during the lesson or by commenting to this post.

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As Town vs Gown was a success and we always go for dinner after grading, please join us for this double celebration.  We’ll meet at Teri Aki, The Quay, Cambridge at 8:00pm on Sunday 28 Feb.

Please r.s.v.p. a.s.a.p. clicking this link (you must be a member of our Facebook Group, so good chance to join if you are not yet ) as we need to book to avoid disappointments!

P.S. We are likely to go out for drinks in a pub nearby afterward so, even if the event is planned to finish at 10 please leave your options open for the rest of the night.

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With apologies from our video production company we can finally proudly announce the official video of the Summer Camp 2009 and, in this weather, remember the great time we had last summer in both terms of training and fun.  Looking forward to Summer Camp 2010!

Here is the video:

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Once more this year is coming to its end.  2009 was a year of celebrations (10 year anniversary), victories and achievements for the club and its members.

As we like to party as much as training once more it was time for celebrations. With 20 people around the table mixing novices with senior ranks and instructors,  food and great company it was surely an event not to missed and we are sorry for those of you that did.  Here are some pictures of the event:

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For those who have been hiding in a cave, it may come as a surprise that not only is the next grading on Sunday, December 6th, but it is to be followed by the time-honoured tradition of the Carisma Xmas Dinner.

This year’s dinner will take place at the Tang Chinese Buffet Restaurant and Bar, on Napier Street. Places are available now, for the princely sum of £14.95 (drinks are charged separately on the day). We’ll be taking names & collecting cash before each training session.

This is a once-a-year opportunity to change the colour of your belt twice in one day – once in recognition of the effort and commitment you have put into training with Carisma, and once in recognition of the vibrantly coloured food you have spilled down yourself.

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Considering the great success of the latest beginners course we are going for a drink on Thurs 12 Nov at 8:30, after training.  We hope to be welcoming the beginners well as having the usual chat among regular members.

We are meeting at The Snug on East road (ex Vine): please come along and let us know if you are joining us.
Street View Here: google’s picture is out of date and still shows “The Vine”

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Copyright 2009 Linda Silvestri

Get a bunch of great people, passionate about martial arts, put them in a pleasant location of the Hungarian country side and get them to train martial arts for 13 hours over a period of 5 days (some of them 19 hours in 7 days), in temperatures ranging between 25 and 32 degrees Celsius. Blend in some great activities like see sighting, thermal SPA, wine tasting and eating most meals in a good restaurant and, no doubt, you get a successful Summer Camp.

Main purposes for the Summer Camp, now at its fifth edition, is having a great holiday in an unusual location and at the same time enjoy an important amount of highly focussed training hours. This allows all participants to learn new things, practice and correct mistakes about their own techniques and have great fun in the process. All sessions were outdoors, on grass, in the shade offered by some nice trees.

Day 1 – Friday – Cambridge to Csokonyavisonta (via Budapest)

Copyright 2009 Massimo Gaetani

While 7 people flew in from Luton one was on a train from Cambridge across Europe and another one by train from Munich.  They all met at Budapest airport, rented a total of three cars and drove to Csokonyavisonta, arriving at about 6 P.M.

Soon after their arrival all participants were allocated to their accommodations: within half an hour the first session started, at 6:30PM. Given the short time before closure of the only decent restaurant in the village we decided to train just for an hour practising a few Wing Chun drills.  I run the overall lesson, technically helped by Andrea that is an expert of Wing Chun.

Dinner at the local Korona Etterem (restaurant) and an early sleep was due: just a few welcoming drinks at the house and meeting arranged for the following day at 9AM, ready to start.

Day 2 – Saturday

Copyright 2009 James Weatherall

While warming up I checked with the various participants what topic they were mostly interested in covering during the next 4 session, lasting 3 hours each. Here is the list of topics to focus on:

• Boxing (2)
• Close range fighting
• Hook punches (2)
• Hook kicks
• Sparring in a competitive way, e.g. mini tounament (4)
• Foot work (2)
• Body movement, weight shifting and balance
• Training in pairs with unexpected attacks
• Axe kicks
• Combinations with several changes of guard
• Basics (2)
• Special combinations

Having a total of four instructors, with 2 black, 1 brown and 1 blue belt, in a group of ten people surely added great value to the whole camp and people with lower rank truly appreciated the level of attention they received throughout the whole Summer Camp.

The Saturday session covered the following topics, more or less in this order:

Boxing: close range jab-cross vs. hook-hook; passive defence vs. attack; we then added kicks, one person attacking with kicks and punches and the other just punching.  This was forcing the person using reduced set of techniques to force himself/herself to work hard on guard, footwork, evasive moves and so on.

We then did some sparring alternating half and full speed, light contact both hands only and complete kickboxing.

Copyright 2009 Georgios Evangelinos

For the afternoon we agreed to visit Villany a famous wine district where we had some wine tasting and nibbles.  On the way back we had dinner in Pécs a nice city well known to everybody who has been to CARISMA summer camps.

Day 3 – Sunday

We started with combinations that require change of guard and stance several times: these are excellent and both improve guard and foot work.  This kind of training draws attention to the importance of finishing each technique in a way that allows the next one to start properly, optimizing the whole sequence and reducing extra foot work and time wasting.

Some of the combinations practiced were:

• Front kick f.l. followed by round kick r.l. and then round kick with the same leg (f.l.)
• Front kick f.l. followed by round kick r.l. and then side kick with the same leg (f.l.)
• Uppercut f.a. – Uppercut r.a. – Hook punch f.a.  followed by round kick f.l.
• Cross – Hook punch f.a. – spinning back side kick followed by jab-cross-hook

For the second part of the session we organised a small light contact competition where one pair of fighters at a time was competing with 1 central referee and 3 external judges.

We then had a few session of co-operative sparring where alternating each opponent had the opportunity of putting together a combination of 2 to 5-6 strikes.

We concluded this session with half an hour of Multicombat combinations in the midday sun: this was a nice gesture of mine to remind people to be on time for the following sessions   We finally cooled down.

Copyright 2009 James Weatherall

We spent the rest of the day chilling out (swimming, thermal baths, playing chess) in the same thermal SPA and pool resort where we were training.  Later that day we had a few hours walk (as we did not do enough sport that day) in a beautiful forest nearby and then dinner in a local restaurant.

Day 4 – Monday

After warming up good part of this session was taken up by power work: the importance of proper alignment of body and limbs in order to deliver maximum power at all times was emphasized several times during this exercise.  We worked primarily at techniques like:

• Jab
• Cross
• Round kick front and rear leg
• Front kick front and rear leg
• combinations of the above

We then experimented on a visualization technique: analysing in detail, while sitting and breathing slowly, a combination in order to rehearse in our mind and then practice it to test if the visualization helped the performance.

We spent the remaining half hour on technical issues involving axe kicks, the subtleties involved in their proper execution and how to optimise them and the we cooled down.

Copyright 2009 Linda Silvestri

Plan for the afternoon for a nice, traditional goulash that was prepared thanks to a perfectly co-ordinated team work.  While a few people started to prepare a cold lunch based on bread, cured meats, cheese and fresh vegetables the others started cutting and chopping the various ingredients: the actual cooking phase of the goulash, in a traditional cauldron over the open fire, started at around 3:30PM. The cooking time, in excess of 5 hours was to be spent relaxing, chatting having a drink and with Adam playing his guitar. The result managed to exceed expectations.

Day 5 – Tuesday

6 of the participants to the summer camp were living soon after this session that consisted of:

• Pushing around and basics of street fighting engagement.
• Combinations that involved sliding while performing double kicks with the same leg.  More emphasis on sliding and its implications.
• We then run a number of rounds of sparring.

We then spent the afternoon visiting Orfü a beautiful hill nearby Pécs full of natural ponds, big enough to have proper beaches and many people swimming around.

Day 6 – Wednesday

Being the last full day we decided to have an easy day (after training, the session was as hard as the others). Training was organized at the Barcs SPA complex, 15 Km from Csokonyavisonta with the intention to spend there a good part of the day.

The session involved: hook kick clinique.  Starting from the basics of the movement from lying position we evolved the training into standing while holding onto an object and then applying the technique to a target hitting from the front leg.

We then moved into hook punch clinique: after a short overview of the technique and its applications from both the front and rear arm we passed to applications that always use double hook punches with the front arm.

We then spent the remaining half hour of the session working on very basic concepts of knife defence and fighting.

The rest of the day was spent chilling out in the spa complex, swimming in the pools, and enjoying the sauna and the large Jacuzzi.

Day 7 – Thursday

Copyright 2009 Massimo Gaetani

This was the conclusive session of the camp for this year: we wrapped up some of the concepts explained in the previous sessions and then did more work on boxing in passive defence to develop easy approach to accept punching attacks and reduce the tension usually induced.

More work on hook kicks from rear leg, front leg and spinning back.

We finished with some basic moves of Wing Chun.

Conclusions

Once more this summer camp was a great success.  I list below the reasons that I see as the most relevant ones to consider participating to the next Summer Camp:

• all participants get to do lot of highly focussed training (this year 13 hours for who stayed 5 days and 19 hours for the others): they get to work of what they would like to improve and receive a great level of attention to help correcting mistakes and improving performance;
• for some people it’s noticeable the improvement of a particular technique that perhaps was never as good as it could get and it was corrected during the Summer Camp;
• it gives me the possibility of getting interesting feed back, from different people at different levels of their martial arts experience, about how to keep improving the way we run the club and our classes;
• it helps the various people at the Summer Camp to bond beyond the usual “hi-train-goodbye” pattern that some people follow and develop interesting personal and friendly relationships with some other members of the club;
• at its 5th edition the Summer Camp has now a tradition with a few people who were there most of the times, a few people that have been a 1-2 times and a few first timers: this offers continuity and diversity at the same time;

The first and second year’s Summer Camp were still to be considered one-off events; the Summer Camp is now a tradition to continue for the years to come.  I personally missed all people that have been at the Summer Camp before and could not make it this year but I would like to mention Duncan who could not be with us due to family issues: apart from his highly appreciated expertise as a martial artist and instructor we obviously missed the top quality of the pictures that he usually takes.  I’ll be working on the official video for the Summer Camp 2009 that will be released as soon as technically possible.

Apart from myself participants to the summer camp were: Adam, Andrea, Chris, Georgios, Heley, Linda, Mark, Ronnit and Wez.  I would like to thank them all for the great work and commitment in the training and fun activities that once more made me enjoy it so much and inspired me to organise the Summer Camp 2010.

I would appreciate comments to this post from people thatwere there and from those that missed it: thank you in advance.

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Copyright and courtesy of Duncan Grisby 2008

Toward the end of the first training session of the Summer Camp 2009 we started chatting during cooling down and we came out with this random list of good reasons to be here:

1. Fun
2. Training outside
3. More time for cosial interaction
4. Palinka
5. Know other members better
6. Training outside
7. Swimming
8. Better weather
9. Goulash
10. Training away from everyday’s distractions
11. Holiday with a bit of training
12. Kickboxing
13. Socializing
14. Lots of clever people to have interesting, sometimes geeky, conversations
15. Thermal SPA
16. Better bonding on a personal level with some members of the club
17. Alternative training sessions

Best wishes to those that are back in Cambridge from the Summer Camp 2009 group: Mark, Adam, Heley, Georgios, Linda, Ronnit, Wez, Chris W., Andrea and Massimo.

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Last week I turned 35 but I was too busy riding my bike in the French Alps, preparing for the Mega Avalanche.

I would like to invite everyone to join me for belated Birthday drinks at the Snug (ex-Vine) on East Road after training on Thursday night (16th July).

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