Learning to teach, teaching to learn again.....

Hi All!

Its been a long time, I have obscured myself from the blog World as all I have been doing lately is working and teaching once a week until the past month, as I have been hitting the gym and managed to attend a seminar and instructors lesson!

Work has been hectic but satisfying, in my previous role at the place I work in, I never felt fulfilled and was partly the reason I did a weekly blog (as well as keeping motivated). I also intended this post http://kittomainia.blogspot.com/2006/11/my-weekend-in-martial-arts-november.html to be my last. However I carried on a bit , stopped and now I’m back because I thought I was becoming a sell out and not really caring about the hobby and art I have done for the last 20 odd years (on and off). I would say on the hobbies and sporting front apart from teaching Warriors Eskrima I have been lost for the last 6 months. I even played five a side football or soccer (for my overseas readers!) with workmates…that’s how lost I was.

But now I’m coming back to a higher conscious of my own training as well as teaching. I have been trying to get as fit as possible this month by hitting the gym and working on the weights and cardio. In addition we are prepping two of our best students for a grading. We got the date set we just to have work towards it. Lun and I are also combining our own experiences to work out the best parts from each Martial Art to see what works for us. In addition we attended two great seminars this week.

March in Wigan is freezing but it was freezing all over England after recovering from some Easter snow. However the room was hot with activity as the sounds of sticks and knives were clanging each other as Lun and I reached Mel Corrigan’s Kali Group gym. We never been to Wigan before but we greeted with smiles and handshakes from Mel Corrigan and Rick Faye! It was great to see Rick again, we went through some stick and knife work( in which I used the sticks Elaine got me as a present), pantukan (Filipino boxing) and some great focus mitt work. Rick laced the seminar with his usual great humour and knowledge. It’s always interesting to hear a story from Rick Faye. In fact I would say when I am teaching I am most influenced by Steve Powell and Rick Faye, in terms of the humour and knowledge they have as they know when to be serious but also keep the tone light. Lun and I do try and train our students hard but also keep the tone light but not constantly if there are serious matters to talk about such as situational training etc… speaking of which.

“Do you do any pressure training?” asked my MMA colleague work (whose going for his first pro fight soon so good luck to him) “What’s that?” I replied
“Real life scenarios”
“Yeah” But my “Yeah” wasn’t convincing because I couldn’t think of any examples that we did(even though Lun and I have done recently with a blunt Stanley knife) and we call it “Live” training anyway..sigh I am really sick of these different connotations for training techniques not because it all should be called the same thing but I personally get caught out when people from other Arts ask me stuff. Like when someone once asked me “Do you breath in or breath out when you get punched?” sigh…..I don’t think I could help my breathing if someone punched me in the back of the head but to be honest I have never been trained in that(so I can't pass fair comment) and I don’t think I could be patient enough. I have been in only 3 real life situations in my life. The only thing I was thinking in all situations was to defend myself.

I am trained in to keep a constant guard up or parrying/blocking/destroying an attack by attacking the attacker. Of course in real life you will never know what the attacker will do there’s no way on Earth he’s going to stand there and throw the straightest punch ever for you to block or wait there until you to put him in a lock. So I am all for Live or pressure testing. We live in probably a crazy world more then ever, I say train one on one or two on one situation with constant moving. But before that beginners have to learn all the techniques necessary to garner the knowledge to defend themselves.

Moving on…………………

In contrast to the wet, windy and cold day in Wigan, it was a wonderfully sunny day in Warwick. It had been exactly a year to the day since Lun and I had attended an instructor’s class and what a great class Krishna Godhania taught us. We had stick sparing techniques and knife techniques. A good thing that was emphasised was how dangerous a knifeman could be with his empty hand. It was great to stick spar with guys I haven’t trained with before and each of the instructors there were really friendly. These classes are held monthly and Lun and I shall try and get there as much as possible this year.

Other than that I am going to try and find a regular Martial Art to do. I was considering MMA with my colleague. But I had a think about it and the only person that I could properly train with is my brother Lun who had been having a bad time as of late with stress but is slowly but surely is getting better.. so I am going to try and organise something with my bro.
Anyway that’s all, I shall answer a comment from my last post in my next one which should be soon!
Thanks for reading