I had the opportunity of taking part to a seminar and training with Bill “Superfoot” Wallace earlier today: a truly amazing experience. Please read the blog post in my Martial What? blog if you want to know more, just clink on the picture.
Last year’s Xmas Dinner seems like yesterday: it may come as a surprise that not only is the next grading on Sunday, December 5th, 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 CB2 Bistro, on 1 Norfolk Street. We have reserved a private room just for us.
Places are available now, for the princely sum of £18.95 (drinks are charged separately on the day). We’ll be taking names & collecting a non refundable deposit at all training sessions until Thursday 3 December.
To use a sentence used last year by Wez: 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.
Bill “superfoot” Wallace retired in the early eighties as undefeated world champion in the middle weight of full contact kickboxing: his combat strategy was always based on fantastic kicking techniques that often caught by surprise his opponents and knock them out. Wallace was not just good and superfast in kicking but he could shoot double of triple kicks with a single leg, using these techniques in the same way most boxers faint punching techniques.
Apart from his obviously amazing experience as a martial artist Wallace has a master in Sport Science that further qualifies him to advise people about stretching for flexibility. He was a true precursor of innovative stretching excercises and applications like the one decribed in the video below.
It shows here how to improve flexibility for side kicks (and it equally applies to round and hook ones): good news is that we at CARISMA regularly do a very similar (simplified) version during our classes, so it’s good to learn the extra movements we can add.
(l-r) font row: the winning team Chris Kelly, Chris Webb, Frank Gorringe and Alex Howard; back row: Sam Goldschneider (vice president), Heley Matthews (captain), Veronika Kantorivich (social organiser), Heidi Holmes (president) and Massimo Gaetani (coach)
Cambridge University Kickboxing Society won yesterday the 4th Kickboxing Varsity match vs. Oxford University Kickboxing Club for a final result of 3-1!
This was a much suffered event: until Thurs it was unsure whether we would have had an event at all and where. When OUKC nearly gave up we managed to put together a last minute venue, get the referee to leave his family at a holiday location to come and ref the fights and even invited about 30 spectators…but it was all worth the effort.
When in 2007 the CUKBS committee at that time asked me to become their coach they put it in simple terms: “we want to win Varsity”; it was hard work, lots of sweat, it wasn’t just about teaching techniques (that’s easy) it was matter of changing completely the way they practice. After an encouraging 4-5 loss last year I can now finally say: “mission accomplished :-)”
More details, videos and so on will follow in the next few days.
The first CARISMA Town vs. Gown that took place yesterday at the Manor Community College in Cambridge was a great success. It surely exceeded my own expectations as well as the ones of all people that took part to it, among fighters, organisers or spectators.
It all started from a simple idea about offering the possibility for beginners and first timers to experience fighting in the ring while in a friendly environment. I truly feel it could have not gone much better as we had:
I did a lot of thinking during the last couple of days, between the amazing rush to get everything done on time and last night when I was as tired as if I took part in every single bout and yet I could not sleep because of the adrenaline released… Here are a few random considerations about the whole event:
I would like to thank, personally and on behalf of a very successful Town vs. Gown 2010, in random order:
Results, pictures and videos of the show will be available as the various people involved will be in the position to supply them: just keep following the TG2010 tag on this blog for any further development.
If you were there I would like to know your impressions: please leave a comment to this post.