“Zooming” into the future with SKIF KG TT

How we unlocked the potential for future improvement in spite of the covid-19 setback

In the early days of karate training, the old of saying of “you can’t learn karate from a book” was true for decades.

Then for about the last 20 years or so, that saying turned into something more like: “online karate classes were infeasible”. Well, the jury is still out on whether one could become a karate master while reading the Intensive Course, but the online bit is now catching on thanks to the innovations of our instructors during the quarantine.

Before the quarantine, online classes were still pretty much an urban myth for traditional karate schools, especially in T&T, but with the recent successes of our club implementing a training programme while we had to stay indoors, it may become a regular part of the overall schedule in the future for Shotokan Karate-do International Federation Kanazawa Group Trinidad and Tobago (SKIF KG TT).

The past three months have been difficult for all sporting bodies in T&T, and it’s been no different for SKIF KG TT, as the club had to innovate to weather the initial storm of the covid-19 pandemic.

Distance learning via online classes has been the flavour of choice for primary to tertiary institutions during the national Covid-induced lockdown, and it’s an approach that we adapted to keep classes flowing.

Online correspondence started as early as April, when the Barataria branch of the school started using the online software Zoom, to allow their students to train in a setting similar to an online seminar.

The La Joya branch, which is the designated headquarters of the club, soon began filming instructional videos which were shared via Whatsapp to students who were keen to continue their training.

Then on May 3, the SKIF World Headquarters in Japan hosted an hour-long training session live on YouTube, featuring Nobuaki Kanazawa and Manabu Murakami, president and chief instructor of SKIF respectively, in order to commemorate the birthday of club founder Hirokazu Kanazawa, who passed away on December 8, 2019.

Since then, the online sessions, which also picked up momentum with the La Joya instructors via the Zoom conference software, has helped the club not only reinforce basic karate skills for the students, but also allowed SKIF KG-TT the opportunity to strengthen ties with the Latin American region.

Seminars which were organised by Alejandro Castro, head instructor of SKIF Venezuela, were hosted by Carlos Pazos Riera, head instructor from Uruguay, as well as Hiroshi Ishikawa, a Japanese head instructor based in Mexico, and the head of the Pan American region, also helped black belts and other interested students, to polish their techniques, and for the club to prepare for next year’s SKIF Pan American Karate Championship, which will be hosted in Cancun, Mexico, after it was postponed this year.

Now that the public was opened up gradually since the start of June, and children were once again given the green light to be able to participate in socially-distanced karate classes, things are slowly returning to some normalcy. The lessons learnt during the online sessions however aren’t lost.

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The theme of the Latin American arm of SKIF was Unidos en la Distancia as they promoted and hosted their online seminars catered for the Pan Am region. SKIF KG TT will continue to be united in the distance as well, and with the new possibilities to spread the art of karate-do through online resources as well, we can move forward toward a hopeful future in spite of the ongoing uncertainty around the world.

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