ARE WE THERE YET?
Have you ever found yourself watching higher grades (especially black belts) and thinking how am I ever going to be that good? Do I have what it takes to get through all those years of training to get to that level? These thought processes can be quite challenging and if not dealt with in a positive fashion can start to de-motivate rather than inspire. After all, the skill of perseverance is one of the core values of GKR but like any skill it is not automatic and needs practice. Let’s apply some ideas to our karate training. Winter is now upon us and on those cold, dark rainy nights we can be faced with a tough decision. Do we get changed into our Gi, throw a drink into our bag and set off to the dojo where our smiling Sensei awaits or is it just too cold to go out and too warm and toasty to leave home? After all Mum did say that if you are cold you will get a cold, right????? The person who achieves their goals will think about how good they will feel after training or perhaps be excited by the fact they may learn a new technique or put the polish on an old one rather than think about how good it feels to keep those slippers on and crank up the cappuccino machine. By controlling how you allow your brain to imagine you can be motivated to choose to do what is in the short term “not liked” but in the long term good for us. After all you can’t get much more long term than the lifelong journey that is GKR. The other thing that achievers do is that they realise that a long term goal such as “the next belt” is made up of any number of smaller, shorter term goals. “The one thing to remember about all goals, no matter how large, is that they only require small actions in any give moment. Books are written one word at a time.” And belts are achieved one training session at a time. Each one where we put in 100% is getting us one step closer to our goal whether that is competing in a tournament, being able to stand in sumo stance for 1 minute or a different coloured belt So take time to reflect on your journey so far and see how far you have come, rather than focusing on how far you have to go. Congratulate yourself every time you train and realise that you are moving one step closer. The cappuccino machine will still be there when you get home!

Sensei Vicki

PUSHING THROUGH
There are days when the last thing I want to do after a bad day at work and fighting the traffic to get home is get changed and go to karate training, I just sit down in your favorite chair and relax but while I’m relaxing I feel guilty and start to think maybe I should go I could learn something new or maybe I could help somebody else learn and I do need help with a section of that new kata we did and I hope we do more combinations this week. Before I realise I’m looking forward to going and I’m in my car and going to karate training and as soon as I walk into the dojo, its like catching up with friends and you all train hard, sweat, learn, laugh and soon I have forgotten about the bad day I had. Every lesson is important and the class I miss I can never get back. Its easy not to go to training but that is giving up on myself, my class mates and instructor who always
makes an effort.

GKR MAGAZINE
REMINDER to ask your Sensei for the New GKR mag is out and it looks FANTASTIC.
It is the 25th Anniversary edition. We only have
limited copies and most have been sold already. So be quick to order one off your sensei. It has some really great articles in there. This is like our training manual. Articles like - how to improve your core strength, how to relax while training, self defence applications Kancho and Shihan interviews and also articles from our top karate ka. You really don’t want to miss out on this collectors item.