Advanced JKA kata going up on JKA Premium member area

Looking for step by step instruction on the Japan Karate Association’s 15 core kata? Or the 11 further advanced kata which make up the JKA Shotokan karate syllabus of 25, excluding Kihon kata? The JKA Premium Karate supporter area on Sensei Bert’s JKA East Lothian website now contains detailed notes and video on our JKA Karate kata.

It’s now looking increasingly likely that with the proper precautions, we’ll be able to get back into the Dalgety Bay dojo within about six weeks or so, judging by what the Scottish Government is saying. Six weeks is not long and will soon pass – so training at home is a great way to ease yourself back in and dust off the rust before we can all get back to training together in groups.

Here’s some detail on what you can find in our JKA Karate Premium Supporters Area.

We’ve already given you videos on kata – videos are great, but sometimes it’s hard to see the exact details of moves or transitions between moves when they’re being performed by JKA masters/ competition specialists. The instructional features on the JKA Karate Premium Supporters Area break the moves down in separate images/ pictures, with Sensei Bert’s text commentary explaining what the key points are of each move in the kata sequence.

Why is the virtual dojo not on the dalgetybay url?

We’re hosting the premium area on JKA Karate East Lothian because we’ve had to invest in expensive software to protect your data, so we had to choose one of our urls as we couldn’t afford two.

We upgraded behind the scenes on JKA Karate East Lothian in 2019 and when lockdown happened, we had to move quickly, and it made sense to build the new features – the virtual dojo, the new webshop – on JKA Karate East Lothian rather than here. We are all part of the same association, and Sensei Bert Stewart has three dojos – Dalgety Bay, Musselburgh and North Berwick. If you have any questions about the digital protections in place, please use our contact form and Sensei Stephen Fraser will come back to you. You may also have some professional knowledge/ advice on e-commerce and web security, we’d be delighted to hear from you and collaborate on making our virtual dojo as good as possible.

You should be assured that Sensei Stewart and Sensei Fraser are working together to give you the best virtual dojo experience during lockdown and beyond.

We know that this is a scary time, and for every member who is desperate to get back and train face to face, there will be another who is scared of the general situation and is making their own decision to remain isolated for as long as possible. Some of us have underlying health conditions, others live with people who are more vulnerable. That’s why we’ll be continuing with Zoom classes and improving the virtual dojo experience for you for the forseeable future – we’re not going to switch anything off as soon as we re-open the dojos, for instance! We are planning and preparing for a blend on teaching styles to be provided from now for at least the next year.