On Sunday 20th April I took part in the Kumite Seminar at Sandy Dojo, Sandy Upper School, with nine times World Champion, Wayne Otto OBE.

The things we did were to do with sparring. We watched him demonstrate the techniques and when he was doing this it made it very clear why he was World Champion. When he was demonstrating he had a lot of power in his techniques, lots of spirit, very quick at the techniques and gave a lot of advice.

When we were sparring we all had to wear mitts, which was the first time I had ever worn them, and we got to fight other people with the techniques we were taught.

When he demonstrated, he would pick on random people to demonstrate with him, and he said to me "come up here" and asked me my name, and I replied "Max". I felt very nervous when he said this as I didn't know what he was going to do or if I was going to get hit.

When I got up to demonstrate he said "I'm going to hit you Max", and then I started to get butterflies in my stomach. Then he started to explain the danger circle, when we were standing 2 metres apart we felt relaxed and as we got closer we would get tense, and this is what happened. When we were just outside the danger circle he pretended to try to hit me and I flinched, which was slightly unexpected because we were not in our danger cicrles. Then when we did get into each others danger circles he let me punch him, which I did with a reverse punch.

Then we demonstrated the block and counter technique, and that was the end of the demonstration. I felt very proud and very special to have demonstrated with the nine times World Champion, Wayne Otto OBE.

Max Hurst, 3rd Kyu