Karate develops excellent reflexes, strength, flexibility, agility and self-defence skills. Besides that it has a profound effect on the mental qualities: it improves concentration, cultivates alertness and calm self-control in tense situations and gives you skills to avoid them, increases speed of thinking and acting under pressure and decreases fear of physical encounters.
Training consists of practicing basic techniques (stances, movements, punches, blocks and kicks) and their sequences; pair exercises with pre-defined patterns; kata (choreographed patterns for practicing alone); and free sparring. Besides that we practice techniques of self-defence, defence from knife and sword, fighting from the sitting position and grappling.
There are many karate styles, for example Shotokan, Kyokushin, Goju Ryu etc. We practice the karate style called Wado Ryu that was founded by Hironori Otsuka in 1939. We don’t use conditioning of any body parts (like hitting hard surfaces with the fists) and observe controlled contact: from air gap punches for children to skin touch for novices, and finally to mutually agreed harder punches and kicks for more advanced practitioners. We don’t believe that pain is good for sport and the amount of injuries is very low.
Our instructor Luan Krasniqi is extremely skilled, very pedagogical and fun to train with. He has a grade of 7th Dan and is one of the three people with this highest grade in Sweden. The levels of the practitioners range from 2nd Dan (Dmitri Kulginov and Niclas Wyholt) and 1st Dan (Lisa Wanhov) all the way to Red belt for those who started recently. We maintain a healthy attitude of respect and etiquette in the dojo and have no requirements on the initial fitness, skill levels or age, everyone is welcome!
We train every Tuesday in the training hall at Ericsson between 5.30 and 7 p.m. (the fee for half a year is 1600 SEK; bronze level membership is required). Besides that we have an oppportunity to train without extra fee between 6 and 7 p.m. on Mondays and Thursdays at Bjurslättsskolan. For questions and enrollment, please contact Dmitri Kulginov, 070-987 5181, dmitri.kulginov@ericsson.com