My week in Martial Arts: March 19th to March 24th 06

Hi All! Welcome to post number 50!

First of all congratulations to Chris for his sponsored 108 Sun Salutations and thanks for his and for LGM's comments on my previous post.

I also like to thank my family, my brother Lun for taking the time out to hang out with me this week and my parents who always support everything that I do and I love them dearly for their support.

On to what happened this week….

Finish Him!” shouted an idiot in the crowd watching the World Cage Fighting Championship event that I attended on Saturday 18th March. Yes along with my good friend Andy Timmins who trains at Karl Tanswell’s Straight Blast Gym and Pern from Warriors Eskrima we attended the first ever cage fighting event at the Manchester Evening Arena. Mike Tyson was to be special referee for one match, pride fighter Alistair Oveereem was fighting, Bas Rutten was the MC and from the boxing world Amir Khan and Joe Egan were among several other boxers sat in the crowd.

The action itself was good (not great but good). But as good as the in cage fighting was it was marred I thought by some of the thugs in the audience. I would say 40% of the audience understood what was going on (we were watching a sport that involved athletes and a certain degree of skill) and 60% were just blood thirsty thugs looking for death and gore (they were watching what some newspapers has portrayed it as and probably what they perceived it as after a few beers). One guy was hilariously booing everything that moved (the fighters, ring girls, announcers, probably even himself), Timmins believed that the only word in his vocabulary was “Booooo” and hence him “Booing” everything.

Moving on to Sunday, Lun and I went to a Sunday sparring session for Warriors Eskrima. It was a good session; we did a lot of drills and sparring of course. It’s good to get as many sessions as possible in before the grading although Lun and I know we have to do more.

As I was off work for a week, I was helping out my parents with a few things and tried to relax. Lun had some days off Wednesday and Thursday so that was cool. I hope I can plan my holidays better in the future, hopefully in the summer I will take my parents somewhere for a good sight seeing walk as they don't get out as much as they use to.

So the days I was training this week were Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. We couldn’t make it to Karl Tanswell’s Straight Blast Gym or Steve Powell’s JKD class this week as there were things to sort out at home. Hopefully we will be back for some good sessions next week, as I really enjoyed them both classes in the previous week.

Saying that it wasn’t a bad week in Martial Arts, Tuesday I went for a run for about 2 miles. I then went to Capoeira and we had several newcomers. I was used as demo-boy but I was also supervising some of the new people so that was cool.
“There is an Eskrima class here on Friday you know” I told one of the newcomers Steve, who told me he did a load of other Martial Arts. He told me he knew as he worked/studied in the same building as Simon Campion which was quite a cool coincidence.

Thursday another run this time I targeted to get to a certain distance. The goal is to increase the mileage to .5 or 1 every time I set out. I ran for 3.4 Miles and therefore overshot the goal but was really happy I did it because then I can hopefully progress faster. In fact it got to a point that now I enjoy running. Later that day my brother and I went to the gym and had a quick work out working back, shoulders and arms and some stick sparring.

Friday was an interesting day. We went to Warriors Eskrima it was a good lesson. We had two newcomers one of which was Steve who was at Capoeira. We did some Palakaw (free style stick sparring), stick disarms and locks and then Simon said to me “Do you intend to teach after you graded?”
I said “Sure” So I taught the two new guys 5 of our basic strikes from the Numerada.
Basically I got them to imagine there was person in front of them and use the strike as if they were striking them well I stood in front of them so their strikes don’t go all over the place. I then taught them to disarm and Simon asked to make sure they incorporate some strikes after disarming. I also showed them to keep a guard at all times as well. It was cool to teach and it was a good experience.

Towards the end of the lesson we did some full contact sparring. It was cool as each person sparred with each other for a minute. Before one sparring session Paul advised me to “Just throw in the caveman shots like me”. A caveman shot is basically a big clubbing strike to the head. After seeing him carry on striking at Lun after the minute was up (which to be fair he probably couldn’t hear the minute was up..maybe) on the last sparring session. I kind of thought: “I’ll give you more than a caveman shot!" Of course I snapped on Paul but in a good way as I threw in a lot of strikes and took him down. It’s what Simon wanted to see anyway a bit more aggression. Yup it was all positive that I can spar that way but I need to refine the skills and control it more. At the end of the day no one wants to hurt anyone but for the next 2 weeks I need to have more of an aggressive streak in sparring. I am looking forward to training next week and attending the Cho Sin Kai lessons next Saturday.

Thanks for reading and enjoy the pics!
Kit.