My week in Martial Arts: January 8th 06 to January 13th 06

Hi All! this is a long blog as it has been a very Martial Art themed week….Today I am knackered.

“Err the gym closes at 3.30pm” I told my brother on Sunday in the foyer of the Salford University Tom Husband leisure centre. It wasn’t the start to the week we wanted. I did get a good work out though; Lun thought it was too short. We did however more than make up for it after the week was done. Later my brother found pictures from our old ChoShin Kai karate days, when I say old I mean 1984-85 when I was about 8 or 9 years old. I can’t tell what belt (because the picture is in black and white) I was, I think I was orange belt then, but that class was upstairs in a pub. The picture is of me sparring against my mate Barkery who I believe is working in the radio industry. If you come across this blog Barks give us a shout.

Monday morning 50 Hindu Squats, I still need to add my routine in the morning, however so far it’s going well. Monday evening we went to Karl Tanswell’s straight blast gym. Karl was easing us into the New Year by asking us to take it easy at it was our first time back since last month, but we still went through a lot of techniques mainly jabbing and crossing and still a cool work out. We also learnt a cool defensive technique. It was also the debut of our new boxing gloves and my mouth guard in sparring!

Tuesday I had a rest well I did my Hindu squats and watched Tom Young Goong the latest film from Tony Jaa. The stunts and fights are awesome and very well done. Bizarrely it didn’t make me want to train more as I train anyway and I saw it as a great piece of entertainment but I think it will inspire people to take up Martial Arts.

Wednesday end of work, a colleague mentioned he was going to do Tae Kwon Do that night. One of the managers at my workplace Alan Mather runs a TKD school in which he was going to. I told him I also use to go; (as I did a few lessons when I first joined my company) the guy asked me “Why’d I stop?” I simply replied “Oh I do other things now”.

Later that night, I went to Karl Tanswell’s Straight Blast Gym class Lun had to spend time with his wife Sue that night.
It was a great lesson we expanded on jabbing and crossing techniques ,did a boxing blast which is throwing jabs and crosses while moving with the foot work and did some take downs. As always a great workout. Karl mentioned my fitness level was up,that was great compliment but I know I still got a long way to go.

“Have you guys ever been to an ATG seminar” I asked the brothers Carl and Chris who trains regularly at Karl Tanswell’s Straight Blast Gym “Yeah it’s really good! Really knackering but really good” Basically ATG is open to members of the Straight Blast Gym and a 4 hour training session held every month. I am considering going but I still have not started any Jiu Jitsu training as of yet.

Thursday at work, I spot a Book of Five Rings on another colleague’s desk. The colleague is called Wellington Tsang, it turns out that he does Akido and was trading books with Alan Mather. We talk at length, its interesting to talk to someone who does a different art.


A seminar my brother and I will be attending for sure is Rick Young’s seminar at Steve Powell’s JKD class We went to a seminar of his last year and it was great. The JKD class itself was on Thursday and it was awesome!!! We carried on with some stop hit kick techniques and did some awesome focus mitt work. The holder (of the mitts) would throw some punches and at you and then the other person would use various destruction techniques to take out the punching arm or catch or block the punch. The holder will then throw a kick and the opposing person would block and then do a what’s called a four count, the holder would hold the mitts for one round house to one side then jab ,cross or hook combo’s and then another round house kick to the other side. That was just one combo of several we did that night.

One great thing about Steve's class is that he can always make my brother and I laugh. Steve knows some words and phrases in Cantonese, some are quite funny phrases. He told us a funny story about him ordering in Cantonese at a restaurant in Chinatown but the waiter didn’t understand him because he only spoke Mandarin! Well that works against us as well because my brother and I only know Cantonese (not a lot but enough to order at a restaurant!) It was a great workout; however I still need to brush up on my body mechanics.

Friday-you know what? I am beginning to think I should have wrote a daily blog for this week!- “Have you sparred with Wellington yet?”Alan Mather jokes as he catches me on the stairs at work. He then tells me that The Book of Five Rings he traded with Wellington was the same book but by different translators and the literal translation was different. That’s really interesting as it makes me wonder how many books have been translated this way.

Warriors Eskrima was a great lesson we worked on our cardio. Part of this was pad work as shown in the pictures above. We did a lot of conditioning and in between our conditioning exercises we had to run around the squash court in between exercises. We then did several sparring techniques, including empty hand sparring, kicking and grapping and also did some stick sparring techniques. Tonight, it was only my brother and I, but instructor Simon Campion made us work hard. We have to get better at our conditioning to enable us to get ready for our grading which is soon, tonight was a great step in the right direction.



To top it all off the Samuel Kwok/Calson Gracie Double Impact Seminar DVD arrived, the significance of this?My brother and I attended the seminar along with our friend Andy Timmins way back in February 2004..We feature in it doing some BJJ(looking clueless because we never did any BJJ prior to that day!) Anyway you can check out the DVD here It was a great seminar one half Wing Chun, the other half BJJ.

A very eventful week in the World of Martial Arts for me! Thanks for reading, I am going to try and manage my blog better next week!

Kit!