My Week and a half in Martial Arts: 09/10/06 to 18/10/06

Hey All
As you can see in my title I am trying to catch up with my blog updates. Yes my Warriors Eskrima instructor Simon Campion has picked up on the fact that I don’t update it on a weekly basis as often as I used too! So here it is Simon from the 9th to the 18th of October unfortunately I haven’t been to many training sessions this past week and a bit …but I have been training with Lun in the gym and at home and had a great Warriors Eskrima teaching session along with Lun.

On Wednesday last week we trained in the gym and we watched Simon and Ray go through their Sayoc Kali knife drills. They looked pretty good and I got a couple of great action shots of them. In the gym we concentrated on our triple weights formula, this is 3 sets of 10 of 3 different exercises for different body parts.

Friday we went to Warriors Eskrima. Well I was 10 minutes later due to work commitments but to my surprise 2 extra beginners George and Steve joined our class. Along with Stephen we have 3 beginners. Stephen has really good and advancing fast, the DVD’s by our chief instructor Krishna Godhania he purchased are also a contributing factor.

This brings me to my next subject; Martial Art instructional DVD’s/Videos. In my opinion they are only really useful if you are practicing the Art that the DVD is about. Even though you want to purchase a DVD to perhaps learn some moves, nothing beats the atmosphere of a real place to learn. Instructors who can work on physical and mental attributes, intricacies such as body mechanics and positioning can’t be shown effectively on a DVD. The reason is because no one can tell you if you are doing it right or wrong if you execute a move from an instructional. Again I think Martial Arts Instructional DVD’s are a great idea but only if you are practicing the Art with a live instructor and live environment. Having said this I highly recommend Krishna Godhania DVD’s I am not saying that because he is my chief instructor but saying this because the detail of showing the viewer is awesome(from different angles and varying speeds) but only if you are practicing the style or curious about Filipino Martial Arts.


On Saturday I met my girlfriend Elaine in London to see The Producers in the West End. It was a very funny show and well acted. We also did the touristy thing in London on a tour bus. However I enjoyed Convent Garden and the various street performers and a great little restaurant called the Crispy Duck and obviously walking the streets of London with Elaine. We went to the Shaolin Way Martial Art store, unfortunately couldn’t find anything but recognised the guy behind the counter from our previous visits. I saw Austin Goh, a Wing Chun Sifu in Chinatown. I recognised him from the old Fighters magazine that used to run in the 70’s to early 90’s. It’s weird as when I see famous or semi famous people I just don’t know what to say. It was a nice weekend.



Monday, Lun and I trained at home. We did some focus mitt work such as jab/cross variations. Due to work commitments (as I will be on an overtime rota) I have not been to Steves or Karls for a while. I am planning to get back to both Steve Powell’s Jeet Kune Do and Karl Tanswell’s Straight Blast Gym but probably need some time to fit it in so I can go to both consistently.

Today we went to the gym and did our triple weights formula. We then went over some double stick blocking drills and basically drilled our beginner’s techniques to teach the guys on Friday, later we saw and spoke to Ray and Simon who reminded me about the blog!

Thanks for reading and enjoy the pictures.

Kit