My week in Martial Arts: October 31st to November 4th

I find my line of work in programming very physically undemanding job. I hardly need to stand up or walk around. My job usually requires me to be in front of a PC around 85-90% of the time. Having said that people with jobs where they require sitting in front of a PC all day should feel they want to do some form of physical after work, in my case it’s the Martial Arts.

In fact I know people who throw themselves into Martial Arts when they feel down about something. A friend of mine, Ken Pudsey was talking at length to me on MSN about setting up a class where people can come and train and trade ideas. As he is going through difficult times I was not sure if he was speaking about this idea in the heat of the moment or was deadly serious. However I take his word for it as he had a lot of cool ideas and I hope to talk to him again about it.

Monday we did a class at Karl’s, it was great as it was my brother’s first class in a while. We did stand up wrestling clinch work which required us to wrap our hands round each other’s neck while jostling for position. It’s hard to explain in words and best show illustrated and I shall show an example in a future blog. It was exhausting work as we were swapping different partners. Monday was also the debut of my wrestling shoes (pictured above).

Tuesday I went to Capoeira as mentioned in my Tuesday update. It was a very another high intensity lesson. One of the guys though accidentally sprained his wrist as he landed awkwardly while executing a cartwheel during the game (Capoeria Freestyle sparring). I am lucky not to get an injury from Capoeira yet, fingers crossed. Later I gave the guy a lift into town. We talked about the class, I said that the freestyle game at the end was the best thing about Capoeira, but referring to his wrist he told me in his broken English as he was from Spain “Maybe a little too free you know” However that didn’t deter him as he told me he was still enthusiastic about coming back next week.

Wednesday, it was back at Karl’s. Karl was actually away this week so this guy called Tom was taking the lessons. We did the follow up class to Monday’s class. I noticed that the class apart from my brother were all veterans. I recognised a lot of them through a tournament I was watched at a big Martial Arts expo called SENI earlier this year. So it was an honour to partner up with these great guys.

The big surprise however was the presence of Greg Hall. He is also a Martial Arts Instructor and has trained under Steve Powell. A couple of years back he hosted a seminar with Larry Hartsell, one of Bruce Lee’s students that my brother along with two friends and I attended.

Greg is very humble guy and always has time to talk to my brother and me. It was an honour to partner up with him, as we had to stand up grapple each other but lead with our heads, as we jostled for position, I was thinking how many people has he knocked out with his head (as he worked the doors of several clubs in Manchester as a doorman/bouncer). He later told us Steve Powell was ill at the moment, so my brother and I wish Steve Powell a speedy recovery and to get well soon.


Thursday had a rest. Friday was Eskrima day, we did some Kung Fu warm ups at the beginning of the class. One was the “DA Sam Sing” it consists of smashing our forearms into our partner’s forearms three consecutive times each repeatedly. This was to condition the forearms. We didn’t do Kung Fu warm ups for the sake of it, Simon has been practicing Chu Gar Kung Fu for many years in Manchester and conditioning of the forearms in Eskrima makes a lot of sense.

We did some conditioning work through out and I brought the big pad we use and Steve Powell’s. We also did stick disarms and knife disarms. In sparring I was able to use some grappling I learned at Karl’s (when we stick spar it sometimes breaks down into grappling). It was good to use methods I picked up in another class to compliment this class. Overall it was an excellent varied lesson.

Well another proactive week and a welcome return for my brother Lun who managed to do three lessons.




Thanks for reading
Kit