A very unusual sleepover…
is a school of the martial art aikido for adults, youth and children.
Considering the amount of our classes, number of students and high level of organized seminars we belong among the most active European aikido clubs.
For the fourth time, we organized a large international seminar for children and young people in Prague: Aiki4Kids 2024.
Once again we have prepared two dates of suburban aikido camps for children aged 6 to 12 years old for the beginning of summer. Both runs were successful and the kids and teachers had a lot of fun.
This year we managed the Sport for Two festival perfectly, even though there were about a thousand children in the Vinohrady Sokol Hall and it was really hot. We did four mini-training sessions in three hours and we must have had 100–200 kids crossing the tatami, a mix from six to thirteen years old. Isn’t that possible? For Martin and Tachan, it’s no problem..
Sleepovers in the dojo are one of the favourite events for children – this time we combined groups of children 8–10 years and 10–13 years. And according to the kids, it turned out to be one of the best sleepovers they can remember.
It seems that we are starting a new tradition – this was our second sleepover in the dojo and it was a great success again!
An article about our suburban camps, summer schools and camps appeared in the magazine Archa, published by the Czech Council for Children and Youth. You can read it in full here.
“Bang on you” – this was probably the most frequent phrase of our aikido weekend together. Traditionally, in early May, we went together with the aikido kids to the Svobodný statek na soutoku. The theme of the camp was the question, “What good is aikido to us in life?”
On Saturday morning in Prague, around 100 children started their first training on the big tatami… and it was a line from one side of the hall to the other. Check out the photos! And we weren’t all there yet, because the bus with the Ukrainian kids got delayed at the border and arrived a bit late. After a warm-up together, we divided into age categories – small kids, bigger kids and teenagers – and started real training sessions full of varied movement, games and most importantly aikido.
We sat on the mats after practice, resigned expressions on our faces. I think Honza broke the silence: ‘When is the next training? And where?”
On that Thursday in November, the first snow fell in Stockholm. The beginning of winter. We slept on the tatami at the Iyasaka Aikidoklubb (there’s an insanely noisy air-conditioning system running at night) and got up at six in the morning. An hour practice, a quick change of clothes and a subway ride to Vanadis, where there was another morning practice at another club. Then we had breakfast at the cafe where Astrid Lingren used to go (Pipi Longstockking was written in the tenement across the park) and the lunchtime training was starting, which of course we also attended. Three workouts in half a day wouldn’t have been too much, but we kept up the pace of 3–5 hours of exercise on our sixth day in Stockholm… and we still had three more intense days to go.
Our suburban camps are full of exercises, games and Japanese culture. Children first learn to be strong fighters, and then aikidists – people who help others and protect life. This year we again held two dates and had a great time with the kids.
One Saturday in the middle of winter, a warm dojo and two groups of our smallest aikidists on the tatami. And so we enjoyed practicing aikido, foam sword fencing, lots of games, sushi making and also cleaning up together.
More than 20 aikido teachers from all over the Czech Republic participated in the training of teachers of the Czech Aikido Federation, which we hosted in February in Prague’s Vinohrady. The training was conducted by Martin Švihla from our club and René Novotný from Třebíč.
In this camp, children first become strong and courageous warriors and then they learn to be aikidists – people who help others and protect lives. This year we experienced 5 days full of training, games and Japanese culture inside in the gym and outside in nature.
After lockdowns, as soon as it was possible, we started to practice outside. Running, climbing, monkey tracks, wrestling, fencing… there was so much movement that we didn’t even miss the tatami.
