Like all summer camps with shihan Yui the training sessions were very demanding, leaving all of us with the inevitable muscle sores. The morning training was focused on force, stamina and fighting. The afternoon training was focused on kihon, kata and bunkai. The high temperatures (sometimes even 40 degrees Celsius) also added to the difficulty of the training, making us sweat even when merely standing.

The last day of the training camp was reserved for the belt exam. By far the most awaited part of the exam was the kumite part, the most characteristic for kyokushin. The fights were extremely tough and towards the end all athletes were exhausted. Our dojo had five people taking the exam, all of which managed to successfully meet all the requirements. Congratulations to all of them, especially to our new shodan Marius Mîndruțău who has thus made his first step towards mastering karate.

The list of athletes who passed their belt exam from C.S. Kyospirit Cluj Napoca:

• 10 KYU: Andrei Cătinean, Ionuț Mesaroș and Radu Tămaș
• 9 KYU: Dana Ciobotariu
• 1 DAN: Marius Mîndruțău

Pictures from the training camp are available in the multimedia section, but also on the Federation’s site.

The Romanian National Team came home with excellent results: 6 medals (one gold and five bronze), three other placements in top 8 at kumite and three placements in top 8 at kata.

C.S. Kyospirit Cluj-Napoca was represented by:  Mihai Cîmpian in the junior competition, Marius Mîndruțău in the senior competition and international referee sempai Vlad Pop.

In the junior competition Mihai Cîmpian made his European Championship debut against a strong Lithuanian opponent. In the first round Mihai put up a really good fight managing to put his adversary in difficulty. In the second round, due to Mihai’s lack of experience in a competition of this level, the scales clearly tipped in favor of the Lithuanian and Mihai lost at decision time.

Also at his first participation in a European Championship with weight categories Marius Mîndruțău was very close to stepping on the podium. He was stopped in the quarter finals by the current word champion Valeri Dimitrov(Bulgaria) – the fighter with the most standing titles in the world today . It is well worth mentioning that Marius won the match in the second round of fights with a superb head ippon, against a Greek opponent.

The first participation of our karate club at a European Championship had a positive outcome. We hope many others of our fighters will follow in the footsteps of Mihai and Marius, with equal or better results.

Pictures from this competition are available in the multimedia section.

The training sessions were specific to the kyokushin competition. All fighters proved they are in great shape and the national team coach, sensei Harris Wallmen, declared he is satisfied with everyone’s progress so far.

A few pictures from this centralised training can be found in the multimedia section.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-K7xCy-FqM

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www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlxhizmTumo

This year’s competition was a highly disputed one, with almost 200 participants. It was the first time that the Romanian Kyokushin Federation held a national championship in Deva. The competition’s organization was top notch and the crowd was rather numerous and enthusiastic.

In the female Kata competition ,A category ,sisters Paula and Anda Pop placed 3^rd and 5^th respectively. In the B category Fabiola Pop took 6^th place. In the male Kata B category Bogdan Țițiu closely missed first place wining the silver medal. Mihai Evoiu managed to secure a surprising 3^rd place considering kata is not one of his favorites. In the same category Alexandru Ciobică ranked 8^th.

The kumite competition (B category) also brought very good results:

Mihai Cîmpian, member of the junior national team, fought one age category up in the senior -90kg category and won 2^ndplace. With this result Mihai proved once again that he has a strong fighting spirit, but the real challenge comes in June at the Junior European Championship in Spain. In the same -90kg category Mihai Evoiu had to bow before the winner of the competition and finally came in 5^th.

Bogdan Deteșan managed to win the -60kg competition, most of his encounters being won with waza-ari or ippon. A valuable result for Bogdan who, being only 18 years old, competed one age category up.

In the -70kg category Dorin Rus won second place after a very clean overall performance, with many fights ended by him before the round’s time limit. In the same category Adrian Pop -only 17 years old- had an exceptional fight, losing only due to his lack of experience after 3 grueling rounds with several occasions where he was very close to defeating his opponent. The same lack of experience marked Alexandru Ciobîă’s performance: after managing to score a nice head waza-ari at the beginning of the fight he lost focus and was surprised twice with the same technique towards the end of the round, thus losing the confrontation. We must mention that the -70kg category was the most disputed category in the competition with 18 fighters lining up for its start. Both Adi and Alex placed in the top 10 fighters.

In the -80kg category Bogdan Țițiu ranked 5^th and Dan Mariș ranked 9^th. Both fighters were at their first national competition and performed well, gaining important experience for future competitions.

The girls also made themselves noticed:

In the +65 B category Fabiola Pop had an excellent performance with difficult fights. Fabiola won silver when losing the final after 2 tied rounds due to the weight difference between her and her opponent.

In the -55kg and -65kg categories Ruxandra Nechifor and Dana Ciobotariu both came in 3^rd, each being at their first competition.

In the +65kg A category Paula Pop ranked 2^nd. The final ended prematurely due to Paula’s knee injury.

At the end of the competition C.S. Kyospirit Cluj Napoca placed 2^nd in the overall ranking, with 9 medals won.

Pictures and videos from the competition are available here.

During the four days of training we repeated all the katas, beginning with the basic ones and finishing with the advanced katas, emphesizing the katas needed for the European Championship. Even though the weather was not great in the first two days of training(rain, wind and low temperatures) all participants trained with a smile on their face, happy to be able to train out in the nature with all our friends along.

We worked in two groups: the low belts group was lead by sensei Anca Wallmen and the high belts and also the national team competitors were lead by sensei Grigore Petruț. While the low belts had the chance to learn new katas the advanced group was focused on details: proper breathing, deeper understanding of the execise and the importance of timing in kata.

There was also a referee course and several aspects of judging a kata were discused by the referees present at the camp.

Also, the national kumite team was present at the camp, but they trained separately, in between the kata sessions.de kata.

You can find pictures from this camp in the multimedia section.

Our group, formed of 11 people, trained friday at the L.P.S. C.S.S. Baia Mare gym where we repeated the base katas and in the second part of the training did some sparring with our colleagues.

Saturday we went to the Izvoare mountain resort situated at about 20km from Baia Mare. Our training session was focused mainly on long runs on the resort’s touristic routes, a very good way to oxigenate your body.

As usual, pictures from this trip can be found in the multimedia section.

C.S. Kyospirit Cluj-Napoca participated with five competitors and two referees, obtaining very good results in both kata and kumite competitions. Overall, our club came back with seven medals(2 gold, 3 silver and two bronze) and also a classification in the first five competitors.

Another positive thing was the evolution of Mihai Cîmpian who earned his right to train with the national team for the European Championships which will take place in June.

Here are the full results:

• Mihai Cîmpian: 2nd place Juniors cat.A +75kg
• Bogdan Deteșan: 1st place -60kg Juniors cat.B și locul 2 Kata Juniors cat.B
• Adrian Pop: 1st place -65kg Juniors cat.B și locul 3 Kata Juniors cat.B
• Florin Petre: 2nd place  -60kg Juniors cat.B și locul 5 Kata Juniors cat.B
• Robert Sallai: 3rd place Kumite Children

Robert Sallai Kata:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAujmaonm-0

Florin Petre -60kg:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiLyge1O6xc

Bogdan Deteșan -60kg:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=_G32Q9XdcfE

Florin Petre vs Bogdan Deteșan final -60kg:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7VZekxB8DI

Adrian Pop -65kg:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6GRK0sTgiE

Mihai Cîmpian +75kg:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPxA00AmhHA

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3azOMUDBNng

www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DhPyKKC3TQ

You can view the pictures from this event here.

At each session the athletes were separated in three distinct groups, according to their grade or experience. A lot of time was spent training with striking pads and studying different approaches of a fight: the japanese style(slower, but more powerfull and more energy efficient) and the european style(faster, more focused on the technique). Each coordinator explained their personal views on how to train so that everyone could choose what suites them most.

One of the training sessions was held outdoors. After a breief warm-up running session we climbed more times the Ciuperca hill everytime doing a different thing(normal running, climbing with a partner in the back, uphill sprints etc.). At each descending of the hill everyone picked up the garbage left by other bypassers, leaving behind a “happier” hill. It was a very interesting(and also hard) training.

At the last training session each participant had the chance to fight with other colleagues from different clubs, no matter the grade or age.

The Camp ended with the traditional group pictures which you can view in the multimedia gallery.

After the examination was over the following athletes have passed the test:

10 KYU

• ROBERT SALLAY
• CRISTIAN CORBU
• BOGDAN DETEȘAN
• DAN MARIȘ
• ADRIAN POP
• DANA CIOBOTARU
• KATY SOLLYOM

9 KYU

• ALEXANDRU CIOBÎCĂ
• MIHAI CÎMPEAN

8 KYU

• FABIOLA POP
• BARBU TRESTIAN

7 KYU

• SABIN SANISLAV
• VLAD GORGAN
• BOGDAN ȚIȚIU

Congratulations to everyone for the great effort! Pictures from this event can be found here.

The tournament was a good way to see the progress made since last october at  the Seniors National Championships. Anda took an honorable 3′rd place in the +65kg category. Her fights were very tough and “physical”. During the fight with a Croatian fighter Anda injured her left arm and in the last match she displayed a true kyokushin spirit by fighting with a broken hand. The diagnostic was confirmed by the doctors and Anda will have to undergo surgery.

Overall our main success was the self-confidence and obvious performance gain. During her fights Anda showed good stamina by managing to keep up with heavier fighters than her.

At this edition Romania won the most medals(9) in a competition with eight participant countries.

The pictures from Croatia are here.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-XcVB6TY6M

www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRBxr4siKYs