By Mike Cords, Member until 2015

It started with a long lecture which I think was very good because they started by refreshing kotachi course 1 which I couldn't remember very well as it had been a very long time since I had it. We also sat in some groups, where we had to talk together a few times about some questions that they had written on the board. It was a different and good way of doing it that we had to sit in groups, as most people got to say something, including myself.

So after the lecture we had to go down and train kotachi for 3 hours, where we went through 9 steps and 9 techniques, which Kimu Sensei with Jens Kyoshi as partner stood and showed. We then went through step 1 and all 9 techniques, which was a kotachi distance, where you started by measuring distance, so that one's kotachi just touched each other's kisaki and you also went 2 steps back. Then it had to fit that after you had done one of the 9 techniques, and taken a step forward, so that the kisakis were like when you started. Step 2 and step 3 were almost the same in all 9 techniques, as step 1, because in step 2 you had to measure the distance to Kisaki on the kotachi and take 1 step back, and in step 3 you had to measure the distance to kote and take a step back.

It was quite a bit weaker when you reached steps 4 and 5, which were with unsoku move, and where in step 4 you had to measure the distance to kisaki, and in step 5 measure the distance to kote. In steps 6 to 7, you put the first 3 steps and the other 2 steps together, by doing step and step in both 2, and the difference was that in step 6 you had the distance to kisaki, and in step 7 you had the distance to house

It was a little different in steps 8 to 9, as it was kumite, but with the same moves as in steps 6 to 7. The difference was in step 8 that it was kumite with a fixed distance and that you had a and b version. In the a version, the attacker had to take a move and a step, while the defender had to take a step and a move.

In the b version it was just the reverse of the a version, and in step 9 it was a free kumite with an a and b version, but now you had to decide the distance yourself. It was very important to keep the distance and go for the center, otherwise the comfort zone will be changed THANKS MY CT, and I learned a lot from that in this course because of all the steps and techniques. It is also important that you drive at a correct pace, because if you just drive really fast at the start, you can't keep up when it really goes fast, as it did at the end of training, for example. It's because you drive too fast at the start, when you should drive slowly, because you haven't practiced your THANKS MY CT as well as if you started slowly. I also learned that it was very difficult to keep the pace they said, as you could quickly find yourself driving too fast if your opponent picked up the pace.