My week in Martial Arts: Sept 26th to Sept 30th

Hi All

The tapping of 20 to 30 keyboards on my office floor, the human silence that further amplifies the sound of tapping and the clock telling you there are ten minutes left till work is over on a Monday morning.

Will there be another problem ten minutes before end of work like as they have been so many times before? Fortunately no, Monday went without a hitch. So after work I was off to the gym.

I did a lot of cardio and conditioning in the gym and felt much better afterwards. Although training was good last week I was having lethargic and tired days in between training due to lack of sleep. However starting the week off with some gym work and sleeping at reasonable times made my week less lethargic and more alert.


Tuesday we were back in Capoeria ,yes! It was my first in about three weeks and was great fun. Our Capoeira class recently moved from a local community centre to the University of Salford and therefore we actually train as the same place as I do Eskrima. What I love about Capoeria is that the instructor Danny Henry encourages you to practice moves that you have never done or appear difficult.

For example I wasn’t a big fan of handstands but with Danny’s help I can now do them.Handstands are great to strengthen the back, arms and shoulders. Danny also taught as a few other techniques and then we played the game,the non contact sparring we do at the end. I always try to incorporate what I have learned in the lesson in the game.

Wednesday I went to Karl Tanwell’s straight blast gym and it was another great training session. Unfortunately Lun was in London, so I did not have a partner. In the past I used to be apprehensive about training without my brother. This is because I know 100% I can trust my brother as a training partner and its fun training with him. However over the years I learned to be more reciprocal which means if I am more relaxed about training and train/spar with someone the way I would like to then nine times out of ten your new partner will return the same mentality. This is not to say they have the train the way I have to train but more to do with the safety aspects and to ensure we are not kicking the crap out of each other and forgetting all about technique.

My training partner was this new guy called Charlie, he was a good partner very relaxed and controlled in his punching. However he was a big guy and when it came to takedowns he was quite hard to take down but I eventually took him down. I really enjoyed the session and there was a good atmosphere in the place. Karl likes to concentrate on form and what is refreshing is that the class I took which was called Stand Up Fighting 101, had several people from the more advanced classes there mixing it with the newer guys. I felt really good after that lesson; sometimes lessons do that to me. I felt more energetic and alert after the lesson. The feeling is as if its kick starting your whole body and mind.



Having rested on Thursday, I went to Eskrima on Friday. This lesson was not a heavy sparring session like the previous weeks, but rather technique based. As our instructor Simon is heavily into conditioning we did several conditioning exercises at the beginning of the lesson.

The lesson was a break down of techniques involving stick and some knife work. As I mentioned before Simon is a relatively new instructor compared to the ones I trained with but his lessons are becoming more and more fun and varied. Also Lun was back for this lesson.

I hope one day I can write about all four lessons in a week. This week wasn’t bad though as it has been a very energetic few days.


So that ends another week, I posted photos from my latest Eskrima lesson and photos of an Danny Henry my Capoeria instructor and myself(in black) practicing capoeira with Danny Henry.

An article will follow shortly!

Thanks For reading!
Kit!

P.S My Eskrima instructor and Eskrima friends and I have set up a Martial Arts forum...please visit
http://www.flowdrills.com/forum/