Coming off the back of the enforced break from training and my own recreational holidays this week, I wanted to prompt everyone to think about their training goals for this year. This might be improving your consistency of training, working towards a grading, or targeting a competition.

Entries close Wednesday this week for the Queensland Kendo Championship to be held in Brisbane this Saturday. While I appreciate that the unfortunate lack of training that has been available due to the changes forced through by the University, I would still encourage people to either throw your hat in the ring or go down and watch. For UniSQ students, it might be the motivation needed to have a crack at Uni Games in September!

Throwing my own intention out there, I will be heading to Sydney at Easter to attend the AKC seminar and have another attempt at yondan, and would encourage all yudansha to seriously consider joining me.

And in September the Iaido nationals will be held in Melbourne in September, which again is an excellent preparation for upcoming DAN examinations (and again I will be working towards a yondan challenge in that too.

Between now and then it is going to take some consistent effort and external input, with trips to train with Brisbane Kendo Club, training a inter-Club kendo events, and once Johnson sensei gets back from the UK, trips to train at Kohokai Matsuyama dojo.

We all need each other’s support and encouragement to please, do what up can to support both yours and other’s training.