2026 - Happy New Year

Well 2026 has got off to a great start so far. The classes have been full, especially the kids classes with 11 students now! I’m hoping to see it grow over 2026 and my goal is 20 students by the end of the year. It has been great to have such good energy in the class with so many kids. We can play a lot of the games I have ready that are a lot more fun with the more students. I’ve started making new handouts for the parents so they can better understand how we grade the students and hopefully clearly explain the Badge Challenge and the Belt Tag system. From my experience as a parent, we are more likely to support the club and our kids if we can understand what they are achieving in class. It also means they are better prepared to appreciate the work their kids are putting in and allows us to better quantify the value of the work the kids put in to get these rewards.

This year we are working towards getting the Adults ukemi better, I really need people to train with me if I have any hope of getting my Yudan in the next year or two. I took a bit of a hit to the confidence on my trip to the UK as I had Narita sensei helping me out, but I felt like I was letting him down constantly. He was correcting me for many of the things I correct my students for. I will take it as a learning experience and use the lessons he has taught me over the next year to try my best to move forward.

We will have to exams this year and also a trip to Tokyo to meet the other students from Nottingham and I have also booked in an online class already for March. 2026 is gearing up to be a busy year already.

We unfortunately missed the seminar with Mori sensei before I went to the UK, so one of my goals is to organise a trip to Sapporo to meet him again, we will probably have to wait until the snow dies down a bit though.