Change of venue from November 16th 2010

From November 16th 2010 all Tuesday and Thursday training sessions will change location to the Fenners Gallery, Kelsey Kerridge.

Those who train on Sundays will be familiar with the Fenners Gallery as the winter-time and “bad weather” venue for Sunday training. For those not familiar with the Fenners Gallery, it can be found on the floor above the reception area.

The Fenners Gallery is considerably larger and better ventilated than the two rooms we presently use, and is equipped with full-length mirrors along one wall, which are useful for solo technique training.

CARISMA at The Martial Arts Show 2010 – video

CARISMA was invited to take part in two demonstrations of Kickboxing and Multicombat at the The Martial Arts Show that was held at the NEC in Birmingham on 22 and 23 May 2010.

TMAS, one of the most important exhibitions of martial arts in Europe, was a great celebration of all martial arts with many workshops, demonstration, competitions and exhibition stands. CARISMA had the opportunity to run two demonstrations at TMAS so a group of members was selected to prepare and perform the short demonstrations that could synthesize the whole essence of our training in just a few minutes and a handful of combinations.

Please have a look at the video:

A big thank you to Georgios Evengelinos, Aaron Lewis, Philip Richardson and Marcia Spoelder for their time and effort to help with the success of these demonstrations. A video of the event is being edited and it will be available soon.

Former instructor of CARISMA win her first full contact fight

Rebecca Strange, former member and instructor at CARISMA moved to Italy in 2007 after spending five years training and teaching with the club.

Rebecca, 32, managed to continue her training after moving to Milan and kept progressing in her skills until she was recently offered to fight in her first full bout that we won last Saturday 4 June.

Given her high standard of proficiency she was allowed to keep her original grade of 1st Kyu gained from CARISMA in 2006 and she also was offered to grade for her 1st Dan black belt that she completed over the same week end.

Rebecca was very happy for the results and she commented “I am obviously really pleased to have won my first fight here in Milan, particularly since my opponent put up a great fight. The black belt the following day was really the icing on the cake and something I have been looking forward to for a long time. However, the EU championships will be the really big test and I certainly have a lot of training to do before then!”.

Massimo Gaetani, Head Coach and founder of CARISMA added “I am very proud the complete recognition that one of our martial artist managed to receive in a different school and country: Rebecca was a promising student with lots of determination and natural talent when I first saw her in 2002 and I am delighted of her great achievements”.   Rebecca added “although I have been focussing my training more on the full-contact style recently, Massimo Gaetani and Chris Home from CARISMA take a very large part of the credit for having got me this far. No other club I’ve trained at seems to concentrate so much on the essential technical kicking skills.”

The whole of the CARISMA club will be happy to celebrate Rebecca’s achievement the very next time she’ll be visiting Cambridge that we hope will be soon.

CARISMA at The Martial Arts Show 2010

CARISMA was invited to take part in two demonstrations of Kickboxing and Multicombat at the The Martial Arts Show that was held at the NEC in Birmingham on 22 and 23 May 2010.

TMAS, one of the most important exhibitions of martial arts in Europe, was a great celebration of all martial arts with many workshops, demonstration, competitions and exhibition stands.  CARISMA had the opportunity to run two demonstrations at TMAS so a group of members was selected to prepare and perform a short demonstration that could synthesize the whole essence of our training in just a few minutes and a handful of combinations.

Massimo Gaetani, president and Head Coach of CARISMA (in the this picture, on the left, with Kwoklyn Wan the organiser of TMAS) commented the event: “we are very pleased to have the privilege of being among the clubs running demonstration at TMAS and thanks to our joint effort we delivered a good show”

A big thank you to Georgios Evengelinos, Aaron Lewis, Marcia Spoelder for their time and effort to help with the success of these demonstrations.  A video of the event is being edited and it will be available soon.

New committee members

The EGM held last night saw the election of three new members of the committee.  Attending the EGM were: Laura V., Heley M., Mark N., James B., James W., Li Z., Andrea C., Georgios E., Robin T., Phil R., Rosie S. and Massimo.

The three new members of the committee are:

  • Heley M.
  • Laura V.
  • Andrea C.