My week in Martial Arts: February 6th 06 to February 10th 06

Hi All

Another week of Martial Arts and another target to work to. The date April 9th, the grading; level 6 Warriors Eskrima which is equivalent to a black belt. Simon has now booked this with our head instructor Pangulong Guro Krishna Godhania If we pass this Lun, Mike and I can become apprentice instructors in this art. So if I pass this, does this mean the journey is over and I can go off and ride into the sunset? Nah, it begins then and to be honest I would like it to be endless.

“How’s your asthma, are going to Karl’s tonight?” I texted my brother on Monday afternoon. “Its not that good but we can do it” Lun wrote back. “Lets go gym instead” I suggested. As the Straight Blast Gym requires constant movement it wasn’t wise for my brother to go if his asthma wasn’t great. So we went to the gym instead and did some weights.

As the gym we use is within Salford University, the gym was packed with students. Unusually busy… probably because the winter exams are over, give it a few weeks and most of them will probably “too busy” to train. Being packed we had to make do with what was available to use, however we did practice our Eskrima which was cool. I also did some running to prepare for the great run

Speaking of my brother check out his blog. Lun wrote about when my parents owned a Chinese Chippy (which is to readers that are not from the UK is a Chinese take out that also sells Fish and Chips). We had our fair share of troublemakers there as our Chippy was in the middle of a bunch of pubs. There were occasions when they come out drunk cause trouble and we used to chuck them out (more so my Dad and brother!).

Tuesday I was the main demo guy for my Capoeira Instructor as we had two new beginners. We did an exercise where Danny and I had to kick at the students and they had to dodge or the term in Capoeira is to escape. The defence portion of Capoeira is a very integral part and it’s important for the new people to learn. The lesson was basic because of the new people but as always the game was intense.

Wednesday we went to the Karl Tanswell’s Straight Blast Gym. Karl wasn’t there today. A guy called Glynn (apologies if the name is spelt incorrectly) took the class. I have partnered up with Glynn on several occasions during training when Karl was there and he is a very good Martial Artist. The class was great as we did some boxing sparring and some stand up wrestling techniques.

Later Lun and I took the 5 minute or so walk down to Steve Powell’s JKD class. Before the lesson Lun asked Steve if it was alright to take some pictures, Chris kindly took one of Steve, Lun and I. Unfortunately the camera that my brother recently purchased had a bad habit of blurring a picture even though you know you took a perfectly fine one! Doh !better luck next time!

It was an awesome lesson; we did focus mitt work and hubud. You can literally spend hours on focus mitt drills as there are so many variations. It was great to see Chris , LGM (also called Chris) and Greg Hall. It was jammed packed and Steve Powell was again really funny. He is also very knowledgeable regarding the old school kung fu movies and its stars he mentioned Hwang Jan Lee (the bad guy from Jackie Chan’s Snake in the Eagle Shadow and Drunken Master). Lun asked when Greg’s next DVD was coming out as we thought the first one was cool. We spoke to Chris who is enjoying his freedom (from his job he quit) and LGM who along with Chris recommended me to watch Bill Hicks.

Thursday I had a rest.

Friday was Warriors Eskrima day. Simon purchased some cool fencing masks. The wire mesh of the mask was really hard and if you press down on the mesh it would probably cut you. We used them however for soft stick sparring. Before that though we did some hubud, palakaw and palakaw free style stick sparring and I had to teach a beginner the roof block drill.

The sparring was awesome as we had the added option of bashing each other over the head. As we used soft sticks the masks offered a lot of protection so we can go full force with the sticks. It also gave us a new dimension to our sparring. As Simon pointed out that they were some strikes that we wouldn’t have used if we didn’t have the masks on.






All in all another good week, the only thing I let myself down was the running in the mornings which I will do this coming week.
Enjoy the pictures and thanks for reading.
Kit!!!!!