The annual seminar
練習会Renshukai
What it is
One weekend,
once a year.
練習会 — renshūkai, a gathering to practise. It is the one weekend in the year when this dojo stops being a small club in Herefordshire and becomes part of something visibly larger.
Every year, Dai Shihan Juan Manuel Gutiérrez travels from Buenos Aires to teach it. He holds 15th dan, the most senior grade in the Bujinkan, and he has been Shihan Serra Delmar's teacher since 2003. Renshukai is the weekend the line comes to you rather than the other way round.
Training runs across the weekend, open to Bujinkan practitioners of every grade. Beginners are not spectators here — the material is taught so that a first-year student and a fifth dan take something different from the same drill, which is how it has always worked.
The record
Every edition since 2015.
Four years in Catalonia, then continuing in Herefordshire after the dojo moved to England.
- 2015Garrotxa, Spain
- 2016Garrotxa, Spain
- 2017Garrotxa, Spain
- 2018Garrotxa, Spain
- 2019Paused
- 2020Paused
- 2021Paused
- 2022Hereford, UK
- 2023Hereford, UK
- 2024Hereford, UK
- 2025Hereford, UK
- 2026Hereford, UK
- 2027Dates to be confirmed
Renshukai paused for three years — a year of parental leave, then the pandemic. It resumed in Herefordshire in 2022 and has run every year since.
Renshukai 2027 — dates to be confirmed. Stay tuned.
Dates, cost and venue are announced in the first quarter of the year. Register your interest below and you will hear before it goes public.
From the mat
A look at Renshukai.
Renshukai 2025, taught by Dai Shihan Juan Manuel Gutiérrez — Hereford, 5–7 September 2025. Filmed indoors and in woodland.
The teacher
Dai Shihan
Juan Manuel
Gutiérrez
Dai Shihan Gutiérrez holds 15th dan — the highest grade awarded in the Bujinkan — and heads Asahi Ryu Dojo in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
He has taught Shihan Lisandro Serra Delmar since 2003, graded him to 10th dan in 2022, and has travelled to teach Renshukai every year the seminar has run, first in Catalonia and now in Herefordshire.
Attending
What to
expect.
Who can come
Renshukai is open to all Bujinkan practitioners, of any grade and from any dojo. There is no minimum grade and no invitation required.
If you have not trained with us before, please get in touch before you come. It is not a formality — it lets us know to expect you, tells you what the venue needs on the day, and means you arrive knowing someone.
What to bring
Keikogi, indoor training footwear or bare feet, and your usual training weapons if you have them. Wooden and blunted practice weapons only; no live blades.
How it runs
Sessions across the weekend, with breaks. The material changes every year and is not announced in advance — you come to train with the teacher, not to a syllabus. Bring something to take notes in; most people wish they had.
If you have never been to a seminar
Come anyway. A seminar is not an exam and nobody is watching you. You will train with people you have never met, which is the entire point, and by the second session that stops being uncomfortable.
Renshukai 2027
Register your interest.
Dates and booking are announced to the mailing list first. Tell us you want to come and we will let you know before it goes public.
Email to register interest