2025-07-25

At the HDKI Summer Camp in Rancho Bernardo, CA.

This weekend I traveled to San Diego to train with some friends at the HDKI Summer Camp in Rancho Bernardo, CA (near San Diego). It was a real treat, with instruction from Senseis Steve Ubl, Scott Langley, and JD Swanson. It’s hard to take notes during training, but my recollection goes something like this:

In his two sessions (Friday evening and Saturday morning), Sensei Scott Langley taught different methods of power generation by driving and/or rotating the hips in different ways, as well as solo and partner drills for practicing them.

Sensei JD Swanson (Sunday morning) taught a particular kata-esque sequence of techniques that goes through almost all of the “basic” kihon techniques. Then we worked on optimizing execution of that sequence by focusing on how each technique primes the body for the next (and how that can be applied to any pair of techniques). Finally we worked on some applications with partner drills.

Sensei Steve Ubl (Saturday and Sunday afternoon) led us through Tekki Shodan and Gankaku, explaining both evolution and applications. We also worked on a lot of kihon, including working through most of the basic kihon in fudo-dachi.