By Charlotte Aagaard, Member until 2015

I was going to Jujutsu 2 course with my boy Marcus on September 12, 2009. We started early in the morning and arrived a little early and stood outside and talked to the others who had come. It's always so nice to talk to the others, and it always puts me in a good mood.

There were many participants, both children and adults.

It was Kimu Sensei who was to lead us through this course.

We started with theory, which I feared would be a bit boring. But it was actually incredibly educational and interesting.

Kimu Sensei went through a lot of different topics and they were all topics that made you reflect on how you look at karate and other things in life. From the difference between whether it is the weapon or the man behind it that kills someone to whether martial arts is technical skill or raw violence.

He explained to us the differences between our Karate form and that of other clubs and other forms of combat sports. How long it took others to achieve black belt compared to our club. It took a lot longer for us to get to the black belt, then you could sit and be a little proud of your belt. It did not surprise me, however, as I have been down to have a trial lesson in another karate club. There I experienced that they had a much tougher physical training compared to us, but I thought we were much better at karate itself.

Kimu Sensei also made a point of explaining that it was not competitions that proved whether one was good at one's martial arts. That you don't need to be able to knock anything over with your hands. He explained it in many ways. Then our children (perhaps also adults:o)) who need to gain a little confidence that we are super talented even if we don't compete. I thought it was really good, I also heard from Marcus afterwards that it had had an effect.

We were shown different films showing different matches, the first one showed how to win a match with technical skills, (impressive) the next ones were, a match that was controlled so that there was a referee who stopped it when there was someone who had achieved points, a rehearsed fight where attacker and opponent worked together as a team, (I was not impressed), it ended but a very violent fight where there was a referee whose only job was to make sure that both participants survived (Raw violence I thought , very unpleasant to watch)

It contained much more and was really good and all in all it made one think.

We then had to go in and move around a bit.

We started with warm-up and forward/backward dips, side dips. Then Kimu Sensei showed us different ways to get an opponent to the floor easily and elegantly. It went beyond Jens Kyoshi, who had to go to the floor several times, it's a bit funny for me to see Jens Kyoshi as the "little one", since for me, Jens Kyoshi is always the best and my hero.

We were divided into weight classes and within the weight classes we were divided in order of size. We learned 3 different exercises and had to do them in fast Tai Chi style. It was really good because then you could teach them quietly. It might not have started quite as easily and elegantly as Kimu Sensei showed, but it actually seemed that my partner and I were very close at the end. Thought they were really good exercises and got the feeling that you could "lay the opponent down" without using any effort.

Thank you for an educational and good course.