Sensei Bjørn Willumsen (3rd dan) was the main instructor at the Finnish Kyokushin Union Wintercamp. This is his report.

The trip went well, Mika met me at the airport of Åbo as planned to pick me up. After a short stop in Mika’s home we went to the dojo where the camp should take place. The first students were already there. We were a little bit early because we had to talk to a journalist from the local newspaper.

At 1800 sharp the training started, I could feel at special tension in the Dojo, for many of the students it was their first Kyokushinkai camp. About 20 students attended first training, most of them lowgrades. The youngest was 5 years old.

Plan for the first class was kihon idogeiko and little physicals at the end. The finnish kyokushin students had good spirit and worked hard during the whole training.

During the camp we had eight classes of 90 minutes. We did kata, stamina, kihon/idogeiko and fight training plus there was grading with technical test Saturday afternoon. After my opinion the technical level of the students were good.

Last thing unday afternoon was grading kumite-test. The students had many fights during the 60 minutes long test. The students showed good fighting spirit and fighting skills. I was very happy with the test result, impressing after so many classes in short time. Among the students there was a young woman, she was very strong and gave the boys a hard time, very impressing.

I will say in the end that the camp was well organized and planned. There were no problems as far as I could see. It was 30 students at most in one class and that is very good.

Finnish hospitality is good; I had good time with Mika and his family. Good food and sauna every evening after last class.

Sempai Kai and his instructors do a tremendous job in Finland; I hope they also will do that in the future. I want to thank him very much because he let me be main instructor at the first Finnish Kyokushin Union wintercamp. Hope it will be many camps in the future.

Sensei Bjørn Willumsen

OSU!