2021 KORA Research Group Review

2021 Started with the group in lockdown in the UK, with several training trips to Amsterdam and Spain cancelled in early January. The only saving grace is some regular zoom classes with our teacher covering aspects of the Sera curriculum. Slowly as the year progressed, we restarted training on a one-to-one basis and then finally as a small group with carefully managed numbers for safety.

I personally managed to log all my solo and group training this year from June to December, 8,750 minutes of training for that period, which my converter tells me is about 146 hours. That’s considerably less than I had hoped for, but logging training time again proved really helpful for me to keep track of my training progress. I also took notes from each class and teaching session on zoom. This is something positive which I intend to continue and can recommend to any student.

The group class training was broadly divided into Sera curriculum training and then my KORA curriculum of stand up, clinch and ground with some weapons such as knife and impact weapons on the return to total activity. We modified this to one hour of Sera training on Saturday, which followed the Sera zoom class instruction on Tuesday during the latter part of the year. Then one hour of my KORA curriculum. Feedback from students and training partners was excellent on this format, with smaller one-hour lessons working really well.

In addition, I restarted my sword training, trying to break forty years of stick training habits, which has proved to be challenging but rewarding. Going forward, I would teach a new long weapons student essential sword work first and then follow up with stick work. The direct opposite of how I learned. Following a period of enforced isolation in August, I managed to finally start to get the basics of sword right and relax a little more.

I also started ground grappling again, working on my catch/BJJ hybrid for MMA.

Positive outcomes for the year are that we managed to get some group training time together, and we all progressed in each discipline. I can now cross-reference my Sword work with my Sera, Savate module, stand-up boxing, and shoot boxing training really efficiently as a coach.