Nukina Sensei

Carl here;


Photo taken from the blog of Arakawa Sensei

Last Wednesday (3rd December) we had a special guest at Shiramizu, Nukina Sensei who is the Chief Instructor for the Romanian Wadokai. He’s been visiting Japan since the WKF world championships last month and he came to Shiramizu for a night of European style kumite training.

I had an English class during his first session, but I did catch some of the unusual training drills he was teaching the kids. Like continuous mawashigeri’s (round house kick) all the way up the dojo and back again, without putting the foot down.

My English class finished in time for me to train in the second session. After the bow, Nukina Sensei put us through a thorough warm up and gave a talk about the importance of dropping the weight when punching and keeping grounded during kicking. It’s very difficult to explain techniques or drills without an enormous amount of photos so I’m not even going to try.


Photo taken from the blog of Arakawa Sensei

A lot of the things he taught were similar to what we do in England, but for the Shiramizu students it was completely new. Some of the drills were pretty intense but I was pleased to see all of the instructors, including Arakawa sensei sweating alongside the students throughout the whole session.

The session was only 90 minutes long being a normal training night, but it was very good and really well attended. I think everyone who trained learned something new to put into their fighting.


Photo taken from the blog of Arakawa Sensei

After training I had a good chat with Nukina Sensei in English, I explained that I’d trained with him previously in England where he taught at the master’s seminar which was part of the FEW European Championships program in 2006. He was very modest saying that he only led the warm up session. Which is entirely true, I still remember it because he had our body’s stretching and moving in ways that would make a yoga master proud. The main course back then was taken by the legend that is Toru Arakawa Sensei (no relation to Takamasa Arakawa Sensei of Shiramizu).

Needless to say that I’m looking forward to meeting Nukina Sensei again in Europe sometime.