So, here we are, and here we go again.
GIC 2. Nine days of training, teaching, learning, fighting, bruising, stiff limbs, sore muscles, brain collapse and information overload. Good God how I’ve missed this!
Dima and I started our journey Friday morning at 8 am, driving from Karlstad to Gothenburg. After parking the car at a friends house, we took a bus, a tram and another bus to the airport. One short flight later we landed in Frankfurt. The train from Frankfurt to Mainz was supposed to take 20 minutes, but it turned out that german trains are not as punctual as one would’ve thought. It was late and had to stop for meeting trains and something else we couldn’t understand, but it made the other passengers sigh and roll their eyes. So we rolled into Mainz sixty-seven minutes post ETA.
And one quick, but rather long, bus ride later – we entered the doors at Günnewig Hotel!
First day
We are 13 people doing the GIC2 here in Mainz. 10 Germans, 1 Polish/English guy, and us. It looks like it’s gonna be a fun group. At least no one protested when I said I’ll be blogging so if anyone doesn’t want to appear in pictures they should let me know. ‘Til then, I’m snapping away!
And snap kicking away.
We’ve done regular kicks (snap kicks), stopp kicks, side kicks, back kicks, combinations of kicks and knife threat from the front + repetition of the teaching system. And that was just the morning.
But I’ve gotta tell you, my legs were a bit worn out from the start. Don’t know why, maybe because I haven’t used them for three weeks… (stupid, stupid, stupid) And the warm up Jan did with us (great warm up, I got a lot of new ideas) mainly focused on the legs, obviously, and I got shaky straight away and couldn’t really get any power into my kicks.
Jan is Jan Tevini, who’s leading the course, and man oh man, this is gonna be awesome! If you ever get the chance to train with this guy – do it. Skilled, packed with knowledge, good teacher, easy going and funny as hell.
Yes Jan, I know you might find this blog. No, I’m not sucking up. I’m telling it as it is.
Afternoon
After lunch we got on to the teaching.
One person started to teach the entire class (warm up + a specific technique), and after feedback and comments we broke into smaller groups and each taught one technique each, but for a shorter period of time (12 minutes each, compared to 35-40 minutes for the entire group teaching).
I got the regular kick and 12 minutes to teach it.
The easy techniques really are the most difficult do teach. Not that it was extremely hard, but I’ve never taught this one before, and you really need to think every step through carefully and not do anything halfhearted.
The last part of the day was spent hitting each other, more or less.
Less using focus mits. More using gloves.
On the road again!
Our training centre for the next nine days.
”I’m not flexible enough to do a side kick.”
”Can you stand like this?”
”Yeah..”
”Then you’re flexible enough.”
”Stealing” a photo opportunity
We had hamburgers delivered to the hotel after a brisk walk around the area, searching for food, with a more and more sulky Dima trailing along (apparently no restaurants are open on Saturday nights in Germany.. I know! what a strange country..), but we skipped the swimming this evening. Yes, the hotel has a pool. And a breakfast buffé. And the nicest staff I’ve yet to meet.
But it also has the strangest elevator.
When we arrived last night, the portier said it was not that far to the first floor, like four steps – but looking at our bags he added ”You can also use the elevator”. So we did. When we stepped out of the elevator, we noticed that it was in fact exactly four steps from the foyer to our floor. Not four parts of steps or however I pictured it, but just four, small steps. Feeling silly? No, not us. Never..
To improve my German, here comes the word/s of the day:
Fridays words: Große (big), klein (small).
Todays word: Knoblauch (garlic).
A demo of the elevator:
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