My Trip To Poland
Think of Poland and you probably imagine a cold, grey country, all shipyards and striking dockworkers. Karate wouldn't be the first thing to spring to mind, but in fact there is a thriving Polish karate scene, with Shotokan and Kyokushin being equally popular. I recently spent some time in Poland, and taught a session of traditional Japanese karate to a huge Funakoshi Shotokan Karate Association club in Rumia, a small town forty minute's drive from Gdansk.
Karateka travel from all over northern Poland to attend this club - the day I taught there, there were around forty students. After taking the class back to basics with traditional karate I switched from instructor to student and joined in a session of FSKA. The real difference between the sports and traditional styles is seen in the kumite. In traditional kumite if you make a mistake you don't get a second chance - one ipon or two wazari`s and it's all over. In FSKA the opponents fight one three-minute round. A fighter needs to score three ipons or six wazari`s to win the round. These rounds make the kumite more free flowing, and the fighters tend to take more chances. Because traditional kumite is 'sudden death', we tend to wait, not wanting to risk letting our opponent score an ipon. To me, traditional karate feels more closely linked to the Samurai tradition, when one wrong move really could be fatal.
The Polish people were amazingly friendly, not least my host Robert Bisewski, who recently gained his 3rd Dan under Sensei Kawasoe in Edinburgh. Poland itself was not what I thought it would be. I certainly hadn't expected to find myself walking along a white sand beach in blazing sunshine, and paddling in the Baltic Sea at the end of September!
John Richardson
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| JOHN`S TRIP TO POLAND |
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