By Jan Lau Vendelbo, Member until 2014

The joy was great when, as one of the 18 selected Shindenkaners, I received an invitation to the black belt leadership development seminar convention. The seminar spanned two days from Friday at 16 to Saturday at 18 only interrupted by night sleep and various drinking breaks.

There were thus butterflies in my stomach and an elevated heart rate to measure when I headed towards Måløv hall on Friday afternoon. This slightly tense state was a combination of the anticipation of the seminar, being with skilled Shindenkaners from 2nd kyu up to 6th Dan black belts and of course being taught by Kimu Sensei for the first time. The elevated heart rate surprised me a little, because I was clear about the upcoming classes, since we had received a program for the seminar, but it was probably in the back of my mind that the program can always be deviated from and spiced up with other new things - and I wanted to be ready for this?

However, we got off to a good start. The tone was relaxed and the atmosphere good and we started training. And when I write in progress, it was in progress right from the start of correct movement on a walking basis. Interesting exercise that actually breaks you down a bit. There is nothing easy and simple in what we go and train on a daily basis. We thus spent hours in slow motion movement with walking zenkutsu dachi. It was difficult and I now have to work afterwards on converting the sub-elements in the weight distribution and the movement (backward shift over kokutzu) so that position changes can be carried out quickly in the forward direction. This requires some study (and guidance at the local dojo).

Subsequently, initial training for Koryo Naihanchi started. It wasn't easy either. Body tension, displacement of upper body to the side without simultaneous leg and hip movement. The coolest thing was Kimu Sensei's demonstration of generating energy from one shoulder blade, through the back and out the other shoulder blade into the arm. We practiced this with the tongue straight in the mouth and in slow motion (in order to initially find (invent) the muscles to be activated for the process), but none of us could do it explosively as demonstrated by Kimu Sensei.

Later in the evening it was time for a bite to eat, after which Kimu Sensei left the rest of the evening's social Ryugi training primarily to Jens Hanshi-dai and Søren Renshi. We were now divided into groups and given a set of tasks which were to be discussed in our groups and presented the next morning. Our group consisted of Margit, Carsten, Anders and myself and we had a good discussion about the topics. Since Carsten had a great desire to present our tasks, he was unanimously chosen for the task.

The last task was more of an entertaining nature as we had to rehearse a show for presentation the next day during the X-mas camp. Here our theme was weapon development and we chose a somewhat humorous angle, as there would be many JokoKidz and new members who had to be entertained for the first time. Our small group had great pleasure and amusement with our rehearsal and training of our show and the subsequent performance the following day was also received positively by the audience.

The next morning, our tasks were to be presented by Carsten, who had spent a few morning hours for the final polishing (while the rest of us in the group could sleep an extra hour). We were therefore caught with our pants down when Kimu Sensei proclaimed that Carsten (or other spokespersons) should not present the assignment, but someone else in the group instead. This based on the motto that we were, after all, a team around the task. We newcomers who had to present were thus thrown straight into our presentation - and this provides excellent material with body language and presentation technique to work with. This is where the leadership development part really came in and Kimu Sensei came up with a lot of good bullet points for how a good presentation should be presented. This both for the group's participants who sat passively and for the person who presented the task. I myself benefited from some good advice for better body language and technique, but for me as a presenter, preparation about a text or topic is really a must. Without knowing the content well, a presentation will be bad.

The morning continued with more walking basics and reaction exercises with a partner. Here tsuki had to be performed against the chest and the opponent had to parry to the best of his ability. For me, a really challenging exercise where speed and reading of the opponent (and oneself) were put to the test.

Our leadership development meeting came to an end towards noon and we were able to witness the last part of the graduation process for the four brown belts who were up for graduation. Here, a few of us from the leadership development team had the opportunity to test the four brown belts in freestyle. The four brown belts were already at that point "well tender" after a good two hours of intense graduation and we now had to test them further and against the limit of what they could handle. Kimu Sensei had instructed us to perform to the maximum and when I think that we only had one match and one opponent, it was really a performance the 4 brown belts performed as they now experienced 7-9 different opponents taking turns to fight against.

All in all, I found our course exciting and rewarding and was therefore happy to participate. The basic training that we went through was more difficult than that and I would like a follow-up so that we can translate this into the future training. Thanks to Kimu Sensei, and my training colleagues and group for a really good experience and over the two days.