Seniors training

I came along to the senior's training again today to watch and photograph them in action. Mr Banicevich was leading the training again and put the team through a long and intensive sparring program.

Meanwhile Luke worked on power which was simply awesome to watch.

Towards the end of the session focus changed to womans team patterns, Luke and Mark practiced male team patterns while Mr Banicevich coached Jeremy on his pattern technique details with assistance from Mr Breen. Once finished with Jeremy they moved on to working with Carolina on her patterns.

More photos...

Lets do 48 patterns as a warm up!

Mr Pellow's Junior Team training today was well attended with all the Aucklanders; Cullum, Johs and Sam from Kerikeri; Michael from Gisborne; Shane & Ross from Tauranga and Matt from Rotorua all making the treck to training. DJ and Estee joined in from the seniors team and Chris Broughton came along again also.

"Let's start with some patterns for a warm up" was the call from Mr Pellow. There were one or two drink breaks but they didn't stop until they'd completed 4 sets totalling 48 patterns!

There was a lot of sweating and energy consumed then they went on to sparring for the rest of the afternoon.

I took a few photos of the patterns work.

Photoshop 101

Had some time to spare today so I spent it working on this now heavily "photoshopped" image of Mark and Luke facing off in the final for individual patterns at the mini-tournament during the last Taupo camp. They ended up in the finals against each other twice! Knocking the background back to black and white makes quite a difference from the original image. There won't be time for this sort of "playing" with images at the world champs.

View Mark and Luke competing in the finals...

Senior's training at Impact

After berating myself for the lack of coverage and images of the senior team in training I went along to Impact this afternoon with Jeremy. There weren't a lot of team members there but I had a lot of fun trying to capture some useful images in the harsh low autumn light that was streaming in the windows.

Mr Banicevich was taking the training and we watched him warming them up, running through some patterns then working with Luke and Mark on their pre-arranged sparring routine.

Meanwhile Lizzie worked on patterns and Carl focused on special technique.

There were a few other Impact club members working on their own and more were flowing in the door when we left at about 5.

More photos...

End of an intensive week for the northern juniors

On Friay night Mr Trotter's Impact club put on a combined northern seniors and juniors training session with guest instructor Mr Mark Banicevich.

Mr Banicevich put them through an intensive fitness workout. When I turned up towards the end they were talking and demonstrating kicks and punches that were sure to win points versus technique which was hard to score or unlikely to be scored. Mr Trotter and Mr van Roon asked many questions and everyone present learned something. Mr Trotter wasn't impressed with some of his "cheeky" moves being picked apart from an "is that legal" point of view. He'd rather no one knew about them - too late now!

Unfortunately I didn't take my camera along but I took a handful of photos of the boys and girls team pattern demonstrations on Thursday and Saturday.

On Saturday morning the northern juniors met at McDonalds Papakura at 8am (yawn) for breakfast then headed down to PaulM for the final group training session of the week. The team were fairly worn out after Friday night's workout with Mr Banicevich - if he didn't already he now has a reputation for a mean fitness workout.

Training included group patterns, team patterns, some power, and individual sparring.

At 12pm it was time for everyone from out-of-town to go home... Michael to Gisborne; Shane, Ross, Matt and Jason back to Tauranga and Rotorua plus Johs, Callum and Sam back to Kerikeri.

Next week it's back to school :-( and regular training :-)

Big training week for northern juniors

After the Taupo camp the northern juniors (from Rotorua to Kaio) are staying in Auckland and training together each day under Mr Steve Pellow. It's been quite impressive seeing so many training together and we've even had a few joining in from the senior team.

The Auckland juniors normal training week consists of:

Monday night 6.30-8.30pm - training at Dragon's Spirit, Papatoetoe

Tuesday night 6.30-8.30pm - training at Paul M, Papakura

Wednesday night - normal club training for those that have it

Thursday night 6.30-8.30pm - training at Dragon's Spirit, Papatoetoe

Friday night - off

Saturday afternoon 1.00-4.00pm - training at Paul M, Papakura

Sunday afternoon - off

Mr Pellow is always happy for other black belts to join the squad for their training sessions. It adds variety, feedback for the team and we enjoy having visitors so please come along if you can.

Tonight the team went through most of their patterns together before breaking up to work on male team patterns, female team patterns, individual sparring and individual power.

Photos of tonight's training

Introduction to the Senior Team

This Taupo camp was a chance for the juniors and hanger's on like me to get to know the senior team members a lot more.

Meet the seniors...

Taupo Camp - Sunday 15 April

Today was a bit more of a relaxed start with the team heading to the gym after cleaning up the camp at about 9am. On the agenda is training on specialty, power and team patterns with those not involved in these events doing sparring exercises.

Mark Trotter took the warm up... he's a slave driver with some of the techniques challenging the team.

Today saw juniors and seniors joining together in training exercises with 4 coaches on hand to help both juniors and seniors combined.

The mood was pretty up-beat and it was a good feeling with the whole team being together for the first time since prior to trials.

It was also a good chance to swap advice with different people to take advantage of the experience of other members.

By 12pm it was time to pack up and head home. We reconvene for the last camp prior to the worlds in a month's time.

Taupo Combined Camp - Saturday 14 April

This is the first camp for juniors and seniors combined since prior to the junior trials last year. Everyone arrived on Friday night with the Kerikeri lot arriving at about midnight after their 7 hour drive. They were pretty quiet arriving because I didn't even wake or hear them and they were sleeping around my spot in the morning.

The camp was pretty packed with I guess 40 competitors, 7 coaches and management plus parents and supporters. It had a good feel about it and everyone got on really well. It really feels like a New Zealand team now.

When we arrived on Friday night it was only 8 degrees and had been raining on the way to Taupo but it's not so cold on Saturday morning.

It was an early start for the seniors with a compulsory run at 6.30am. Juniors were invited to come along if they wished to but I didn't see any leap out of bed to join in the run. A few thought about it but hadn't brought running gear (yeah... whatever)! I must admit I didn't consider joining in for more than 5 seconds either.

Today has been a mini-tournament of individual patterns, team patterns then individual sparring, specialty, team specialty with power and team power later in the day.

Mr Pellow was keen to see his juniors take it to the seniors in the sparring. Good results went both ways with everyone getting something out of the competition. It was a good measuring point which revealed previously unknown weaknesses.

We're being pretty careful what images and comments we put up on the web... we know other competing countries are watching and we don't want to give anything away. So only limited photos of such things as team patterns and pre-arranged sparring so that we don't give any of our secrets away :-)

The morning's photos

The afternoon's photos

The last activity in the gym was the first Haka practice led by Mark Trotter and Luke Thompson. It was pretty impressive by the end of the session even though some had never done it before. Sorry - no photos of this until we do the real thing in Quebec!

Tonight we stole a TV from the girls room and everyone huddled together and watched Borat and Benchwarmers DVDs. Benchwarmers hadn't been returned from the previous camp to the video shop so was about a month overdue! Oops.

I snuck off to a motel as Jan and Patrick (my wife and 3rd son) and cousin Jimmy came down to check out what all the fuss of the Taupo camps were about. It was luxury compared with sleeping on the camp floor. However, I slept like a log at camp on Friday night and had a useless night's sleep in a flash bed in a new motel tonight. Sheesh!

More build-up coverage...

Doug Hanna's build up coverage...