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