Final reminder: AGM this Sunday 11 April 4 pm

Just to remind everyone that if you haven’t paid your membership and insurance fees this calendar year, then you will need to to so before Saturday in order to be considered a financial members of the Club. This is to give Grant sufficient time to pull together a complete list of all members for the AGM on Sunday.

If you are not a financial member, or someone in the first four weeks of coming to classes, you cannot train with the Club. This is to protect everyone with the relevant insurances, and to support the range of services that allow us to put on training sessions.

All financial members are very welcome to join in with the Zoom-ed AGM, ans you can follow the link to the AGM meeting details here. You will be able to access the various annual reports a they get uploaded over the next few days, and get the log-in details for the Zoom meeting.

If you are having difficulties accessing this link, please send an e-mail to enquiries@bbrd.org.au

Training over the next two weeks

I hope that everyone has managed to take some pause over the Easter weekend and feel recharged and refreshed (though possibly carb/chocolate overloaded). Queensland has certainly kept with its tradition of a wet long weekend, which has certainly been welcome for the garden.

Unfortunately, as previously noted, we will not be able to use the CBRC for the next two weeks as the University has commandeered the space for graduation ceremonies. This will mean that we will be training in slightly different ways, including rebooting some of our Zoom sessions for conditioning training, back yard/park sessions for Iaido and Kendo suburi, and, thanks to Jon H.’s generosity, some limited Jujutsu training in his garage.

We will be using our regular communication channels to let you know the when/where of training. Specifically with Jujutsu though, you will have to book in for the session given the limited space at Jon’s, and it will be first come first served. If you book in and are a no-show, or come late, you will not be allowed to book in for any other sessions for the remainder of the fortnight.

Hope to see all of you at some stage over the next two weeks!

Quick blog: Sprint to the finish

Morning everyone! A very quick Budo Blog/Bulletin post for this morning as I head into my last week of clinical placement.

We still have to receive final confirmation from the CBRC regarding the availability of alternative training spaces while the centre is being used for USQ graduation ceremonies over the two week mid semester break starting straight after Easter.

At worst, this will me a hiatus from training with some informal sessions. However I am still hopeful we might be able to offer some classes through this time. I will try and get the message out to everyone in the next few days.

Barring that, it would be safe to assume that this week will be the last sessions for a fortnight. And yes I will be there Saturday afternoon for our regular training.

Beyond that, all current active members should have received an e-mail from Brady regarding the AGM. It would be great to see everyone over the camera on Sunday 11th April.

Finally, we have received another update regarding where in the world is Carmen Santiago (our order of new mats shipping in from Belgium). Fortunately, they were well past the Suez canal when it was blocked. However due to delays at all shipping ports, they were redirected from Singapore to Yantian before coming into Melbourne. So currently it is expected that the estimated time of departure from Yantian will be 28/03, and estimated to arrive in Melbourne on 12/04. From that point they need o be unloaded and rail freight to Toowoomba. With luck, by ANZAC day we might see our new mats!

Have a great week everyone, and I’ll look forward to seeing you Saturday

AGM Date

Just a quick note that the date for the Club AGM will be Sunday 11 April at 4 pm Toowoomba time.

In the next day or two you ought get an e-mail directly to yourself reminding you of how and where to pay your annual dues, and any other matters relevant to the upcoming Club year.

If you do not get a reminder, can you please e-mail secretary@bbrd.org.au just to ensure that we have your correct e-mail details on file.

Taking competition to the next step: Strength and conditoning

It is a relief to have a rostered day off from my clinical placement today after a very full weekend completing the face to face classroom component of a Level 1 Strength and Conditioning Coaching course. The course was run through The Fit Lab Toowoomba by Steve Nance who was, amongst his long and highly successful career in the field, the strength and conditioning coach for Wane Bennett’s Broncos Rugby League team through the 1990s, and prepared the Wallabies for their successful 1999 World Cup challenge.

While the course was biased towards preparing team sport athletes, there were many highly relevant and useful take homes for how I would like to better prepare our Club members for their own performance goals, whether it be specifically for competition or more general performance in their chosen disciplines. In particular, what was brought home was the importance of general and endurance conditioning to improve performance in activities that do not involve a great deal of running.

I already have a couple of members lined up to work with for the practicum/project component to finalise this qualification. However, once qualified and registered I would be very happy to work in with other members to develop specific year-long programs. Those training with me in regular classes might also notice some subtle changes to the regular flow of classes too.

Lets see what we can achieve after Easter!

Many thanks for help at the Club Expo this week!

Just a quick post to thank everyone who helped out on Wednesday to promote the Club and its activities, whether staffing the booth (Tracy, Kateena, Sean, Jon), helping to set up and smooze the crowd (Grant), or bring paper at a critically needed time (Joe)!

We had some good interest on the day and have already had some new folk turn up to the dojo in the latter half of last week, so all around a great success. Well done!

Training arrangements for March

I am just pulling together the last bits and pieces I will need for my first of five weeks away on clinical placement. It is both a familiar routine and one that is a little jarring after having had the past three months enjoying the rhythm of being home. In particular, I will have to see what I can do to continue my gym training and shoulder rehab while I am away.

As I have already said, I will be in the dojo every Saturday running classes, and Zooming into the week night classes as my own commitments allow. I am also going to try and get some of my own budo training in while down in Brisbane.

As a courtesy, I would ask that you please contact Brady, Sean and Tracy as the discipline coordinators prior to each session to let them know if you are coming (or not as the case may be). This is so they and I can put together an appropriate lesson plan for the session, and provide you with the appropriate support to get the best out of your training. You can either direct message them, or sent a message through a discipline-specific Messenger chat group. If you are on Messenger but not in the relevant group, please let us know so that you can be added.

I would urge you to continue making as many week night sessions as you can. They form an important consolidation of what we cover in the Saturday sessions, and they are especially important for those of you looking to grade in the next few months. Additionally, we have had a number of new folk start with us over the past few weeks, and it would be great to have all of the longer standing members come in to provide them with support over the next few weeks too.

As always, I hope that you all achieve the best out of the balance between work, study and training, and I will look forward to seeing you in the dojo soon!

Clinical countdown: last week of “normal”(ish)

With the start of teaching at USQ for the year this week and the start of my next 5-week block of clinical placement starting next Monday (1 March), the Club will having a few changes to our regular schedule till after Easter.

First, Go will be on hiatus till I get back ( I can’t be there this Thursday either) unless there is someone wanting to grab the boards off me and keep the sessions running. Likewise, we have had a bit of interest in Kyudo, Jodo and Arnis in the last few weeks, and we will look to run some introductory sessions once I’m back in town. Second, from next week I will be shifting to a virtual presence during the week to provide support where needed to the BBRD Jujutsu, Iaido and Kendo classes. I will, of course, be physically in the dojo on a Saturday afternoons.

I’d like to thank in advance all of the senior students and discipline coordinators for again taking up the slack while I’m away, and we will do some lesson planning to make sure that everyone is on track for events later this year.

I will hope to see as many of you as possible this week coming, and look forward to seeing your progress throughout the year!