My week in Martial Arts: June 19th till June 23rd

“Well you know I do it while I can still do it” Lun told Rick Lawrie referring to Martial Arts in a conversation after a great session at Steve Powell’s JKD Class on Wednesday, Rick replied: “I’ll do it forever”.

Mid way through my class on Wednesday at Steve Powell’s which was my 3rd lesson of the week I asked myself the question “Why am I doing all this training?” I was asking myself this question because it gone past 9 at the gym, I was covered in sweat and out of breath, in addition I had already a big session at Karl Tanswell’s Straight Blast gym. I will answer this at the end of this post…..

Monday my brother and I went to the gym first. We planned to go to Karls and Steve’s that day. But as I was curling on a bicep machine at the gym it jammed in mid curl so my bicep ached pretty badly. We drove to Karl’s but I was still clutching my bicep ouch! Lun asked “Can you go?”as we were getting the stuff out of our parked cars. I remember the word of Tito Ortiz telling an injured fighter to “Live to fight another day always”on the previous nights “The Ultimate Fighter” I then thought about he injured fighters injuries and then my bicep strain…then I thought about some words from a football manager who told his injured players “It’s only a bit of pain,play through it” So I did, we did a load of stand up striking techniques and a cool take down. It was a super sweaty crazy workout. Although my arm ached a bit at the end so we did pass on Steve Powell’s.

Wednesday we stuck to our original plan for Monday and went to Karls and Steve’s. As mentioned it was two great work outs. At Karl’s we did some boxing and take downs from the clinch. It was awesome and very tiring. We then went over to Steve Powells. We did some great padwork stuff with sidekicks,back kicks,round house kicks and then we finished with some some hubud drills. It was a great lessons and I was knocked backwards by my brother’s side and back kicks several times!

Friday we went to Warriors Eskrima class. This time Lun had a class while I taught. I had a good session with William,teaching him basic strikes and disarms. I also did some amarra and we then did some heaven six which is a double stick drill. He picks up things very fast and already has an extensive Martial Arts resume. Teaching is fun when someone you teach picks it up really quickly. I feel a great Martial Art teacher not only teaches the art but also inspires and motivates. I am nowhere near that level but I aspire to be a coach that can teach and be aware of the student’s strengths and weaknesses and motivate them. I am lucky to have been taught by these type of instructors. Speaking of which, Simon was teaching the rest of the class that also consisted of Paul, Mike and Ray.

Yes I have a picture of a Barbary Macaque monkey on my blog…why? Well I could go on and link animals with Martial Arts and discuss primal instincts and so on. The truth is my girlfriend Elaine and I went to Monkey Forest in Trentham and we had a great time. I also thought it would be a great picture.
What I liked about Monkey Forest was that they didn’t cage them and it was a 60 acre forrest. I may have to rename this blog Martial Arts/UK Tourism journal, but I’ll say this again there are lots of great places to go in the UK.

As for the question of “why I am doing all this training”, it’s because I enjoy it. Martial Arts are enjoyed in many ways by different people. I would say I have quite a varied enjoyment to it, as to say I do not enjoy just one aspect. I can talk about the positive physical,mental and spiritual aspects of training as well but I guess I would have to write a new blog for that and like Rick said…
“I’ll do it forever, me”.

Again Enjoy the pics (not many this time) and thanks for reading.
Kit

My week in Martial Arts: June 12th till June 16th

Hi All

This week I have been mostly affected by Hay Fever. So I didn’t get to as many lessons as I did the week before.


Had a nice weekend as I travelled down south to meet with Elaine. We went to the city of Bath which was a great place. We walked around Pulteney Bridge
. It’s very nice at night time and is one of Bath’s best known constructions. Yes I have deviated from the world of Martial Arts again, but reminding people that there are lots of cool things to see in the UK.

Monday, my brother Lun and I went to the gym. We did a good set of weights and practiced some stick work. Lun took some pictures of me while I was practicing a few double stick drills. Capturing the action with a standard digital camera doesn’t quite work as well as the digital camcorder as some of the photos ended up pretty hilarious. The one serious one was a posed one of me shown above doing a roof block (which I still thought was funny).
I will put my goofy pictures on a Christmas special of something in the future.

Tuesday had the hay fever so couldn’t make Capoeira.

Wednesday we were going to go to both Steve Powell’s JKD Class and Karl Tanswell’s Straight Blast gym. But we only managed to go to Karl’s because our Dad's phone wasn’t working so we couldn’t stay out too late. We did a load of stand up boxing drills in Karl’s emphasising on footwork. Zoning off against each other(for example moving to the left or right but keeping the boxing stance). My brother’s elbow was hurting him however but he carried on to the end. It was a great lesson and very energetic.


Thursday again went home due to hay fever.

Friday went to Warriors Eskrima class. My brother and I will now alternate weeks for teaching. This will allow us to train in our regular sessions. I found it a good work out and interesting session. We did some live knife vs empty hand sparring. The object of this was to control the knife hand and use the knife against the opponent.

It was a great drill but my only gripe is would I get in trouble if I used the knife against the attacker. The return/counter attacks are designed to kill or maim. In a real situation I would run away if someone tried to attack me with a knife. But sometimes you may not have a choice to run as I can tell you from personal experience (which I will go into detail in a future post).
In my opinion my main objective was to grab the knife hand and for the most part I did. However I will take it more seriously next time as my brother reminded me of the personal experience and that will make me drill knives with a completely different mindset. We also initally drilled knife attacks with the attackers with helmets on so full contact counters could be applied.
The helmet didn't last long however as the visor cracked.(Well what would you think twill happen in a stick class. We also did other drills such as one which involved smacking a stick against focus mitts. Lun was teaching William the amarra and other level 1 drills. It’s cool that William has been consistent.

Hopefully the rest of the beginners class will come down next week providing there is no World cup football on TV. To
Chris and LGM. hope to see you guys at Steve’s next week. As always thanks for reading and enjoy the pictures.

Keep training
Kit!

My week in Martial Arts: June 5th till June 9th

Hi All

Monday Lun and I went to Karl Tanswell’s Straight Blast gym and Steve Powell’s JKD Class..what a way to kick off the week...yes that is my sweaty Minnesota Vikings t-shirt after Karl's session.

We did a load of boxing techniques and a stand up submission hold it was a very good work out as you can tell from the t-shirt. Why would someone from Manchester UK have a Minnesota Vikings t-shirt? Because i got it in Minnesota while attending the Rick Faye summer camp almost 4 years ago with Lun and therefore it has some Martial Art significance....

After a quick call to Elaine to tell her I will be late, we walked over to Steve's. It was great a whole load of focus mitt drills and some versions of Wing Chun, Silat and Filipino entry’s off punches and then we did some Silat take downs as we are learning a part of skill set, Steve Powell will tell you what works and what doesn't. When you think about it why we should practice something that wouldn't really work? Well that’s how we know it wouldn't work because we can sample it for ourselves. Again it’s also about finding your own way, a particular technique might work better for an individual. At the end of the take downs Steve would then say right practice any of the moves...so obviously we functionalise the ones that do work for ourselves that I guess is one of main components of JKD. Great to see Chris and LGM there. It was a great lesson as it was very varied.

Lately I read about the aliveness drills and live drills and in all the arts we do we practice live stuff. For example the sparring and hitting moving targets on focus pads. I think it’s important to drill stuff but also just as important to put the drill into a live practice. Matt Thornton calls it dead patterns when we repeat the same thing over and over again. You can read more about Matt Thornton here. Its funny as part of aliveness vs. dead patterns was a concept was introduced to me by none other than my own Dad.

Whenever my Dad would see a martial art demonstration on TV where one person would be demonstrating his moves on a stationary opponent, he would say the following words in Cantonese "Ker doh bei lei dah la?" before dismissing it and that simply translates to "(He is just) Standing there just to get hit,eh?" As I was young when I first heard it, I thought my Dad was just saying that to annoy me but when I look back and think about it what he said was totally true. No one will stand there in real life to let u do 20 or so intricate moves. However we do need to practice on an opponent to get the form right first but in reality it won't work like that so I guess it could break down as a stationary drill first to understand it and then into a live one.

Wednesday went to Karl Tanswell’s Straight Blast gym. We did some defence against takedowns and he showed us how to get out of a bear hug like manoeuvre. Another great sweaty workout!

Friday my brother and I taught the beginners in the Warriors Eskrima class. Simon was there helping us out while he taught Paul and Ray. The two beginners William and Lisa were there and we taught them individually again but we will have to devise a plan where all the beginners can train together.

Last week Lisa told me that she had done a variant of Thai Boxing for three years. She also told me that a lot of the girls she trains with at her gym are a lot shorter than she is so she doesn’t use that much footwork where she spars. I believe getting us much information from a student who has done Martial Arts before is important as you can train them different techniques that are foreign to them. So I worked on stick sparring techniques with her. First I taught some basic blocks, strikes and then some counters. We then worked on the sparring and I told her to use more footwork so that the stick could not strike her leg. However being a Thai boxer she usually blocks leg attacks with her shins but in this case it was a stick coming at her so she had to block with the stick or get out of the way to counter strike.

Lun and I also went through some basic warriors techniques with them.

Well that’s it for today, sorry for the lack of pictures but as always thanks for reading!

Keep training
Kit

My week in Martial Arts: May 29th till June 2nd

Hi All!

I trained only once this week as my girlfriend Elaine came up to visit over the weekend…however that didn’t really stop training completely as she showed some interest in learning some stuff!

I taught some basic jab, cross and hook punching drills. She was quite good at it; I am not saying that because she is my girlfriend, I thought she picked it up quite well. I told her to do some shadow boxing so she could practice at home.

We went to the Lake District in Cumbria (pictured) and Manchester’s Lyme Park and therefore had had some great walks. I think I said this in one of my previous posts but England really does have some beautiful places. It was great going to those places with Elaine.

Wednesday Lunand I went to Karl Tanswell’s Straight Blast gym. Great work out did some stand up wrestling into a take down. It was interesting stuff and a great workout. I will hopefully get back to Steve Powell’s JKD Class soon as well. We were planning on Wednesday after Karl’s but ultimately went home. Is this a lull in training?

No I want to continue consistently in everything as does my brother because he showed an interest in doing the great Manchester run next year. Therefore we both need to prepare for that one. I have raised over £328 for Marie Curie Cancer Care. I would like to once again thank everyone who donated.

Friday was Warriors Eskrima day!
William (who has his own webpage in Spanish), Paul B and Gaz all attended! Lun and Simon were mainly teaching them as Paul Hinds brought along a female work colleague called Lisa who I mainly trained as I taught her some basic weapon movements from scratch. As Paul Hinds trained with Ray, I taught Lisa some basic strikes and disarms.

She is the first girl to join our class; it was interesting as I learnt today that the way women train is different to how men train. This is because mainly that their body type being different so they may have to adjust when doing certain moves. She picked up some moves quite quickly however and she is also doing a kick boxing/Thai Boxing hybrid whose instructor was taught by Master Sken.

I think however Lun and I may have to design a special intro class for all first timers. This will cover a lot of basics so they can be able to join the rest of the beginners the following week if they choose to come back.

Anyway it was great to see Gaz, Paul B and William return, I hope they all get to do their respective gradings. Along with Lisa that was four beginners tonight. They all seemed to train hard tonight and all showed great interest.

Congratulations to Chris for a successful demo of his class. LGM assisted him in the demo which I heard attracted a lot of interest.

Anyway enjoy the pictures (mainly of the beginners in Warriors Eskrima!) and thanks for reading!
Kit