In the last blog, I introduced Yumi Uesugi and her responses to some of the questions regarding her Kata. My questions were more geared towards individual performance and practice. However, I did also ask about the team Kata at the 2014 World Gichin Cup, as I found the team very interesting. I think, not only was their Kata one of the best performances among historical Japanese female team Kata, but it was interesting in a sense that the members were all university students. Sure - Japanese university students are known to be at the top in terms of their performance, backed by their youth and long training times; however, what was interesting to me was the fact that the members were from different universities. Yumi was from the Waseda Unviersity, and the other members were from the Komazawa University.
There are two things that were interesting about it:
- Waseda and Komazawa University Karate clubs, in a good sense, have a rivalry. Obviously it’s because they chose the best Kata performers, but it’s still interesting. (I wished that I followed more major sports that I can come up with some baseball-related examples or something)
- Komazawa Unviersity has a reputation of having a large group of very good club members. They could have chosen someone else from the Komazawa University club member, which would have increased the training time (virtually every day)
And again, despite what seem to be challenges, the performance was top-notch. So I asked her the following.
Q1: How did you feel about the team in general?
Yumi: I was slightly concerned about the team before we started training because Waseda and Komazawa are the schools with rivalry and competing against each other at tournaments. However, the teammates were very extremely nice. We were able to openly communicate our ideas and thoughts with each other, which ended up creating a great atmosphere among ourselves going into the championship.
Q2: How long and often did you train together?
Yumi: We started training together around April (makes it about 6 months of training total). The team got together 2 - 4 times per month and had a mini-camp. We spent out 2 hours within each mini-camp. I felt that we weren’t able to spend a lot of time together due to our school-related activities such as representing our school at tournaments, but I also felt that we had a very deeply focused training when we were together.
Q3: What did you pay most attention to in your team Kata training?
Yumi: Based on my experience from forming team Kata with different people, I feel that we get nervous and go off-timing by trying hard to be in-synch. So instead of being our training goal to be in-synch, we tried to synch our feeling so that we can perform the best Kata that we all can. We tried hard to share and synchronize our feeling and thoughts. Also, this was the first and the last time that this member would form a team, so we agreed from the beginning that we should enjoy the tournament as much as possible.
Q4: Could you please elaborate what you mean by “We tried hard to share and synchronize our feeling and thoughts?”
Yumi: That’s hard to describe…but instead of each of us thinking differently on various subjects, we openly communicated what was in our mind, and we also listened to what each other had to say. By doing so, we tried to build a good spirit through training towards the tournament. For example, each of us have the parts of Kata that we really like to show our appeal, and we all talked about them so that we are all in sync about them. This goes the same for our attitude towards to the tournament. By these exercises, we focused and shared our “mental vector” towards the tournament. Sorry, maybe I’m not doing a good job describing.
Q5: Finally, how did this team come about? It’s quite interesting to me to see 1 Waseda and 2 Komazawa University member team Kata.
Yumi: I actually don’t know at all how it came about. Coaches decided on it and told us that we’re forming a team.
(I guess that would give me a reason to go after their National Team Coach - Ogura Sensei, Naka Sensei, Taniyama Sensei, Kobayashi Sensei)
In the last blog, I introduced Yumi Uesugi and her responses to some of the questions regarding her Kata. My questions were more geared towards individual performance and practice. However, I did also ask about the team Kata at the 2014 World Gichin Cup, as I found the team very interesting. I think, not only was their Kata one of the best performances among historical Japanese female team Kata, but it was interesting in a sense that the members were all university students. Sure - Japanese university students are known to be at the top in terms of their performance, backed by their youth and long training times; however, what was interesting to me was the fact that the members were from different universities. Yumi was from the Waseda Unviersity, and the other members were from the Komazawa University.
There are two things that were interesting about it:
- Waseda and Komazawa University Karate clubs, in a good sense, have a rivalry. Obviously it’s because they chose the best Kata performers, but it’s still interesting. (I wished that I followed more major sports that I can come up with some baseball-related examples or something)
- Komazawa Unviersity has a reputation of having a large group of very good club members. They could have chosen someone else from the Komazawa University club member, which would have increased the training time (virtually every day)
And again, despite what seem to be challenges, the performance was top-notch. So I asked her the following.
Q1: How did you feel about the team in general?
Yumi: I was slightly concerned about the team before we started training because Waseda and Komazawa are the schools with rivalry and competing against each other at tournaments. However, the teammates were very extremely nice. We were able to openly communicate our ideas and thoughts with each other, which ended up creating a great atmosphere among ourselves going into the championship.
Q2: How long and often did you train together?
Yumi: We started training together around April (makes it about 6 months of training total). The team got together 2 - 4 times per month and had a mini-camp. We spent out 2 hours within each mini-camp. I felt that we weren’t able to spend a lot of time together due to our school-related activities such as representing our school at tournaments, but I also felt that we had a very deeply focused training when we were together.
Q3: What did you pay most attention to in your team Kata training?
Yumi: Based on my experience from forming team Kata with different people, I feel that we get nervous and go off-timing by trying hard to be in-synch. So instead of being our training goal to be in-synch, we tried to synch our feeling so that we can perform the best Kata that we all can. We tried hard to share and synchronize our feeling and thoughts. Also, this was the first and the last time that this member would form a team, so we agreed from the beginning that we should enjoy the tournament as much as possible.
Q4: Could you please elaborate what you mean by “We tried hard to share and synchronize our feeling and thoughts?”
Yumi: That’s hard to describe…but instead of each of us thinking differently on various subjects, we openly communicated what was in our mind, and we also listened to what each other had to say. By doing so, we tried to build a good spirit through training towards the tournament. For example, each of us have the parts of Kata that we really like to show our appeal, and we all talked about them so that we are all in sync about them. This goes the same for our attitude towards to the tournament. By these exercises, we focused and shared our “mental vector” towards the tournament. Sorry, maybe I’m not doing a good job describing.
Q5: Finally, how did this team come about? It’s quite interesting to me to see 1 Waseda and 2 Komazawa University member team Kata.
Yumi: I actually don’t know at all how it came about. Coaches decided on it and told us that we’re forming a team.
(I guess that would give me a reason to go after their National Team Coach - Ogura Sensei, Naka Sensei, Taniyama Sensei, Kobayashi Sensei)
ONE CLICK ON BELOW IMAGE HELPS!!:
