Astrid Geneblaza (34) is the instructor, or sensei, for the group she established a year and a-half ago.
She has been training in the discipline for 20 years and, last month, successfully completed her grading for san dan - third degree black belt.
The grading took place in Wellington at Queen's Birthday weekend and was at such a high level a Kyokushin branch chief came from Japan to assess the 10 candidates.
Geneblaza began her training in Wanaka, before developing her abilities further in Dunedin, Christchurch and Auckland.
She then moved to Tokyo and trained for about six years, at one stage alongside the woman world champion of the time.
She has competed in various regional kumite (freestyle sparring or fighting) tournaments throughout New Zealand and won the nationals two years running in the mid-1990s. She has performed well at the Australian nationals, earning second and first placings in 1997 and 1998.
Geneblaza represented New Zealand several times in Japan and New York, before retiring from competition five years ago because it became ‘‘too hard on the body''.
To compete at an international level in Kyokushin Karate, a person would need to devote all their time to the sport, Geneblaza said.
‘‘Six or seven years ago, you could get by doing it as a hobby or sport . . . now you have to dedicate your life to it.''
Each grading involved a huge amount of training. Her last progression up through the grades was seven years ago and she expected it would take another five to 10 years of hard work to go up another level.
‘‘It's all about refining techniques and [giving] more instruction as well.''
It took six months to get her fitness up to cope with the intense grading, which had lasted two and a-half hours and included 30 one-minute rounds of fighting.
Geneblaza is surrounded by a karate-mad family, including her mother, also a black belt in Kyokushin, her sister, who has trained in it, her husband, who is halfway to his black belt, and a niece and two daughters who are already dabbling in karate despite being under five.
Self defence was the primary reason Geneblaza began karate.
‘‘Then I got in to kumite, then it came full circle and I got in to instruction and back to the basics and how it [the discipline] started and the philosophies behind it.''
These days, after years of competing, training, instructing and progressing through the grades, she considered her sport ‘‘just addictive''.
The Bannockburn Kyokushin Karate group has only 10 members but Geneblaza said what they lacked in numbers, they made up for in enthusiasm. They train once a week at the Bannockburn town hall and Geneblaza runs classes for children at Cromwell Primary School.
‘‘The more people I can train with, the better. I want to carry on and share the knowledge.''
