My Week and a half in Martial Arts: 19/10/06 to 07/11/06

“Wow I just did it like it was natural” Richard said after blocking an Eskrima strike. Richard has been coming down to our Warriors Eskrima consistently for the last four weeks. Yeah that’s what you call subconscious competence I thought to myself. A term quite new to Lun and I, although this concept was what I called it 2nd nature or natural instinct in the past. Hang on, before I launch into another posting I must apologise for not updating in a while, I have been busy at work, Elaine came up for a week and I slowly getting my Martial Arts back together. Lessons? The past 3 weeks we only trained in one lesson as Lun and I have mainly been teaching the Eskrima class.

Friday October 20th we had an Eskrima lesson where I taught the double heaven six to the new guys Richard (who I mistakenly called Steve the previous week) and George. These guys were complete beginners in Eskrima (whilst our other beginners have a basic grasp on techniques as they have done Martial Arts), while Lun was teaching the more experienced beginners William and Stephen.

It was a challenge to teach complete novices. Everything is taken into consideration; co-ordination is the biggest factor dealing with weapon training. This involves footwork and getting the form right. There is a little trick I do to make sure the guy is striking properly with the stick which is just standing in front of them and using my body as a template for the strikes. I found this has helped the students (well 3 of them so far) but it’s difficult some times as I put myself in their shoes four years ago when I started in Eskrima, I can totally emphasise with them and I like to pass on little tricks I picked up so they can pick the skills easier. For people who have trained in a Martial Art previously I tend to teach them more stuff as they should be able to pick up stuff more easily. I also tell them the stories behind some of the moves and how it looks when it is applied, so they get a better idea.

I went to Glastonbury on Saturday 21st to see Elaine. On Sunday on the way to Bath to meet Elaine’s sister and her sister’s boyfriend Louisa and Carl who practice Wing Chun and Five Animal Kung Fu respectively, we stopped by Clifton suspension bridge in Bristol. I would say being a new instructor is like being a newly constructed bridge, bridges take a long time to construct and once it is built, it is ready for people to cross over to the other side; however people need to have confidence to cross the bridge first. Finally after being tried and tested many people can use the bridge to help them get across. That’s my analogy of it anyway and being of Chinese descent I have a right to be philosophical!..:)

On the 28th October I took my Mum to Birmingham and drove Elaine back to Glastonbury. I have done almost 20,000 miles in my car and I have only had it since December last year, in my last vehicle it took my five years to get to 31,000 miles!
On the way we went to Gloucester Cathedral as pictured and then Montacute House which reminded me of Wayne Manor from the Batman comics and films.


Friday 26th October we taught William and Richard some stick and empty hand stuff. One of the moves was a various jolt to the throat to rock the head back before finishing off an attacker/assailant with a few jab crosses to the throat William made an interesting point upon being shown this move “End up in jail, no?”. I told him that: “Well you don’t have to jab cross the throat in reality you can just jolt the throat and run, but he did have a valid point regarding the attack” In fact I think William is one of the most cautious people I have trained with and that’s a good thing. In fact all three of our beginners seem to understand that they can be taught something and not to maim or hurt someone with certain things they are taught. However as Krishna Godhania once told us we always have to train for the worst case scenario.

Thursday November 2nd Lun and I went to Steve Powell’s JKD class. Greg took the class and it was great to see Chris and LGM Chris there too. Greg is just an awesome teacher and as written earlier the stuff about subconscious competence is something that he told the class. Basically there are four stages, subconscious incompetence (you think you know it but your crap), conscious incompetence (you know you are crap but you are trying to fix it), conscious competence (you got the skills but need to think about it first) and subconscious competence (you are so good it becomes second nature). This concept or matrix is also used in business models but it’s a very interesting matrix to apply to Martial Arts.

Friday 3rd November Lun and I went through some basic drills with William, Stephen and Richard. As William and Stephen has had more lessons than Richard, I taught Richard some basics on his own and then finished with some focus mitt work.

Sunday 5th November: My Mum, Lun and I drive down to Birmingham to visit our Uncle who was recently diagnosed with Cancer. He was all smiles and showing a lot of vitality but my Mum always said that he is the kind of man who doesn’t want anyone to worry. It was there and then I decide that I am most definitely going to run for charity again next year, I am running for him and everyone of my family and friends who have somehow been effected by Cancer.

Monday 16th I went to the gym with Lun did weights. We then did some focus mitt sessions just doing 3 of 3 sets of 20 reps of various punching drills. It was a good and necessary work out.


Tuesday 7th November: I ran in the morning just once round the block…the running training has begun again.

Thanks for reading and enjoy the pictures.

Kit