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Club constitution
Club Overview
| Description | Management | Purposes of the club | Style | Open Mind |
| Open Doors | Discipline and Form | Fair Practice | Self-defence | History |
During our classes we are always trying to encourage students be aware
about their posture, stance and distribution of weight as an active
part of the training. Simple rules to bear in mind when considering a
technique or a position are the following:
From time to time we organise self-defence seminars open to CARISMA's students and
to the general public. These seminars aim to increase students' awareness instead
of giving silly illusions like: "defend yourself against anybody in three
lessons".
CARISMA, the Cambridge Riverside Martial Arts club, was started by
Massimo Gaetani in early 1997 as an informal group of friends,
meeting on a regular basis and training in a Cambridge (UK) park.
Once reached a critical mass of a core group of very keen people, in
May 1999 it became a martial arts club and has been active in that capacity since then.
Description
CARISMA is a club of individuals that enjoy training and practicing
martial arts in a relaxed and disciplined environment. We like to point out
that our status of being a club involves an implicit joining and we like
to know that our members have the feeling of belonging to the club. People
looking for a random class to join when they dont have anything better to
do for that evening, will immediately realise that CARISMA is not the
right place for that.
Being a non-profit making organization we are not as concerned about money
as commercially oriented clubs might be; one of our aims is to keep and develop a
controlled number of members that share our point of view about martial arts.
Management
The club is managed by two groups of people:
Please refer to our contact details page for more information.
Purposes of the club
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Style
We teach and practice Kickboxing and Multicombat: the former includes a
broad range of techniques using punches similar to Boxing, sweeping techniques
and kicks taken from traditional martial arts like Tae Kwon Do or Karate.
The latter style adds to the above techniques Thai Boxing strikes (low kicks, elbow
and knee techniques) and blocks, some Judo and Ju-Jitsu blocks and throws,
choking techniques and others.
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Open Mind
Although our classes revolve around a syllabus and specific training routines we often
remind to ourselves the differences between what applies and works in a sport bout,
compared to what would be necessary in a street confrontation.
Sport has a set of very restrictive rules that somehow limit the free
expression of martial arts: for this reason we run from time
to time classes where we apply Thai Boxing techniques, or Tae Kwon Do
kicks or Ju Jitsu joint locks. This is our way to avoid being
too specialized in a style and totally unaware of the remaining ones.
Open Doors
Our club has always been open and welcoming toward anybody who is interested in
watching and/or joining our classes, wherever we train. This obviously imply that the
spectators must respectful toward us and our training.
We also encourage other clubs to contact us for joint training session and seminars.
We are interested in trying out any martial and any style as long as it is
considered a sharing of information between willing martial artists, in a
friendly, non competitive way.
Discipline & Form
Compared to some traditional martial art club, CARISMA might seem pretty relaxed.
For example we don't bow at each other like most Japanese and Korean martial arts clubs do.
At the same time if compared to many Kickboxing club we look much
more formal. From our point of view discipline is essential to guarantee a
smooth and enjoyable lesson, free from disturbance and interruptions.
The lesson is always run by an instructor
or by the master and everybody follows the lesson according to the his/her
instructions. If you are already a member please pay attention to
the following simple rules:
The above rules, apart from being part of good manners
and common sense, have a strong importance from a safety point of view and
should be strictly observed.
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Fair Practice
We firmly discourage our members from being too aggressive or unfair against
their training partners. People looking for trouble either within or outside the
club are not welcome among us. A martial artist is a modest person:
he/she doesn't show off his/her skills in order to threaten people around
him/herself. He/she is self conscious of his/her superiority and
he/she is always trying to avoid troubles instead of creating some him/herself.
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Self-defence
From our point of view self-defense comes as result and consequence
of training and it is not the first goal of the martial art.
During classes we occasionally practice and learn specific
self-defense techniques, applied to real life situations.
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History
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Monday 04/08/2008