My week in Martial Arts: April 17th till April 21st

Friday 21st April: Lun and I are waiting patiently in the refreshments room of the Salford university gym along with our senior instructor Simon and fellow instructor Paul (pictured in a goofy action pose further down this post) and regular Ray. We had to wait there as the squash court we booked for our regular slot was double booked. Today was a different Warriors Eskrima lesson as my brother and I were going to teach the beginners. Only one problem no beginners seem to be coming through that door! We were all veterans!

As we were almost giving up hope a beginner called Gaz walks through the door! Whoohoo let the first Lok brother’s lesson begin…………..

But before I get to that I like to say what a great week I had on my return to Martial Arts.
Monday:
It was bank holiday here in the UK…so I didn’t do any training, but I watched some Krishna Godhania DVD’s for reference in regards to teaching on Friday,

Tuesday:
Capoeira. What can I say? Awesome! 8 people in the class and always growing. It marked the return of Ken Pudsey who is a capoeira veteran. It was awesome as we did some cartwheel kicking combos and several other kicking sequences. Everyone did really well which shows how well Danny Henry can teach.

Wednesday:
Straight Blast Gym and Steve Powell’s JKD Class
Lun and I went to the Stand Up fighting class. It was a brilliant workout. Karl Tanswell explained the aliveness training that we were doing as there were a lot of new beginners. My good friend Andy Timmins was there too.
Later on that night….

“There are a lot of beginners tonight so keeping it a bit basic tonight…” Steve explained to Lun and I. Yes it was packed over 20 people there, but it was still a great work out and it’s great to do focus mitt drills we haven't done in a while. Simon and Paul from Eskrima were there, as was Chris and LGM. Some the focus mitt drills are derived or based on panuntukan (Filipino boxing) drills. A great lesson and workout! Had some great talks with Chris over the MSN Messenger as well this week.


Thursday
I went to the gym, did some weights and ran on the treadmill. The run is looming now and I need to practice.


Friday
Lun did the warm up’s in the beginning. Simon than asked me to teach Gaz while the others went to drill over advanced stuff. So begins a new journey for me. The way I always wanted to teach beginners is instantly concentrate on the footwork and posture. Without a strong base or foundation a building will fall.

So I trained Gaz to have a good front stance position first and asked him to throw a jab and a cross. I talked to him about the mechanics of the jab and cross and the importance of retracting your hands back to a guard position protecting your face straight after the punch. Again we did this on the focus mitts, I asked him to find his form by doing 5 slow ones and then 10 power ones. After that we practiced the push forward and push backward steps, and incorporated boxing drills into this footwork. I then practiced focus y dagger drills with him this involved him punching the focus mitt and retracting back to guard before I can catch him with my training knife. After that I taught him the hook after the jab and cross. So we covered his basic punching quite extensively.

We then switched to sticks and I taught him the heaven six drill. Basically the heaven six is a series of double stick strikes performed six times (but there are six variants). Gaz picked it up very quickly. In fact his enthusiasm was great and helped ease my nerves of first time teaching. We then did stick disarms and then Lun went through some more pad work with Gaz. Lun’s drills were quite innovative.

I did a stick spar with Simon. The sparring was good as we did it slowly and crashing in when there was an opening. Afterwards I gave Gaz a list of things we covered in class, so he could take it home and practice. If we get 5-6 people with the same approach mindset like Gaz has, then it would be much easier and enjoyable to teach. When everyone was gone Lun went through the advanced stuff with me.

A great week!
Anyway thanks for reading and enjoy the pics.

Kit