The last couple of weeks in the Martial Arts from the 25th September to October 6th

Hey All

Sorry another late post! Well last week I only went to the gym and a session of Warriors Eskrima. This week I went to gym Karl Tanswell’s Straight Blast Gym and Warriors Eskrima. The reason for the late post is because I been busy at work (not that I write this post at work) but by the time I got home I couldn’t really face the PC when I got back from work…but I have something worthwhile to write about and as this is one of my hobbies I do need to keep it consistent.

A transition has occurred at work as I have change departments. Although I enjoyed talking to the colleagues of my old department it was time to move on (as I asked to be moved a while ago). The new department is cool but that’s way too much talk about work…this blog is about what I do after work.

First of all I like to address the subject of Martial Art politics. I know or met most Martial Artist of most categories of Martial Arts. I know modern martial artists, traditional martial artists, martial artists who compete, martial artists who are or were doormen and those in the arts who look for the spiritual side etc. In fact right now I know people obviously doing my Arts that I practice like JKD, MMA and Eskrima but arts such as Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, Tae Kwon Do, Wing Chun, Five Animal Kung Fu, Aikido, Capoiera, and Thai Boxing. All have different view points in the Arts and that is great as it’s their individual choice. The common denominator is that they train in what they believe in and that’s all that matters.

I brought this up because in my last post Chris put a comment on it and Lun responded. In the end they emailed each other and it was agreed that they had different viewpoints and opinions. It wasn’t really an argument it was getting the point across to each other and they did it really well and respectfully. This is because they believe in what they do and both have no egos.

However ugly politics and ego is still alive and well in Martial Arts.
I have seen videos on the internet containing guys practicing the same art from different branches jumping each other unexpectedly. It’s deep rooted politics such as we have the best Kung Fu or insert “Martial Art here” is all to do with the ego maniacal person running the class fuelling other bad egos creating ego’s and more egos. The worse example however is when one club actually tries to stop another club from practicing their art. It happened to my Capoeira Instructor Danny Henry who was visited by a few Capoeira guys from another school a few years ago who asked him to stop. Can you imagine if you were asked to stop something you love to do and intimidated by other people who also practice your art? I found this very disturbing but Danny stuck to his guns, explained his position peacefully and still teaches.


I am proud to say that in all the classes I take at Steve Powell’s Jeet Kune Do, Warriors Eskrima and Straight Blast Gym and the instructors I ever trained under from 2001 have never presented me with ego or political problems.

Another thing that I want to talk about is the awareness of Martial Art clubs in Manchester. There is an abundance of clubs in and around the centre of Manchester...but to our amazement even some people who work in the centre are unaware of this. My brother sometimes parks outside a newsagents on a street just a block away from Steve Powell’s in fact you can see the big banners of Steve's club from the outside of his newsagent if you walked a through yards up. Anyway the guy who works or owns the store saw my brother park outside his shop the other day and started chatting with us.
“Hey what do you do man?” asked the Shop owner.
“Oh I am going to an MMA class” said Lun.
“Yeah I wanna do a bit too,get rid this”(Pointing to his own stomach”) replied the shop owner.
“Well why don’t you?” questioned Lun.
“There ain’t nothing round here man” answered the shop owner in a worryingly convincing manner.

Our jaw's just dropped…this guy owns a newsagents minutes away from Vang Dang’s Martial Art Centre, home of Steve Powell’s JKD, Master Chu’s Lion Dance Club, Golden Cobra Thai Boxing, Ground N Pound and even a Yoga class if he fancies it (apologies if I left any clubs out). Hell he can even visit the Vang Dang Martial Art shop and pick up dozens of leaflets on clubs in Manchester. He is literally 3 minutes or so away from Karl Tanswell’s Straight Blast Gym, he is yards away from a WTF Tae Kwon Do class, only a short walk away from a Wing Chun club run by Billy Davidson who for the record used to come to our take away. This guy is literally in the Martial Arts hub of Manchester and said “There ain’t nothing round here”??? We told him about all the places he could go too, but I really need to write an article on what I call the Martial Art Town of Manchester to make people more aware.

Anyway’s had a good week of training we went for a good gym session Monday and went through some stick work. Wednesday Lun and I went to Karl’s doing some basic stand up fighting stuff which was a great work out. Friday my brother and I taught Stephen who came to the Warriors Eskrima. We went through numerada which is the 12 basic strikes but taught him to do the 1st five. We taught him some punching drills and moves and then I showed him the second instalment of the heaven six double stick drill. It’s cool that he seemed to be enjoying the class. Simon also taught me some cool sayoc empty hand drills. It was good to see Paul Ray and Baz there too.

So here you go I hope I made up for the lack of blog with this one.
Enjoy the pictures and thanks for reading.
Kit