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