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

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

My week in Martial Arts: Sept 18th to Sept 22nd

Hey All

Another good week in training! Monday my brother and I worked out a schedule for our gym work out. This is because we usually get to the gym around 5.45 or 6 depending on what time we finish work and then have to make the Karl Tanswell’s Straight Blast Gym class at 7 which is a good 10-12 minutes drive. So we worked out we are going to do 3 different exercises for each body part which consist of 3 sets of 10. This was perfect as it lasted 45 minutes approx. After the workout we went through some drills that we were taught at the Rick Young seminar held at Steve Powell’s JKD class. We also went through drills that were taught at the Krishna Godhania seminar and drilled our Eskrima stuff and what we were taught at Karl Tanswell’s the week earlier

Wednesday we went to Karl Tanswell’s class, for the past few Wednesday’s the class has been taken by an Estonian instructor called Jorgen. We did some interesting takedowns from the clinch. As Jorgen is about my size(i.e. not very tall) he told us what clinch control point(as in under hook or grabbing the head) would work best depending on what size you were, which put an interesting perspective on things.

Friday we went to Warriors Eskrima. Back to teaching! A new student Stephen showed up and it was cool to teach again. As this was the intro class I went through a variety of things including footwork, single stick, double stick and empty hand stuff. The interesting thing was that Stephen has Filipino heritage and this he told me, was one of the reasons why he wanted to learn. He told me that he enjoyed the lesson and I emailed him the list of what we did. I think I will save this list as the intro class template. It was good as he picked up the lesson pretty well.

As I was teaching and Lun was too busy training with the other guys, we couldn’t take any pictures! So I included a picture of the old “classic” pad we use to use at Steve Powell’s. The pad has “Smash the Pad!” written on it which I guess Lun put to motivate us when we were training.

I also included our Martial Arts book collection (part of it) which is a crazy mix of things. These books are there for reference really. I must admit I always found it hard to follow instructional books unless the moves presented were very basic. 2D photos never could catch the full motion of the more advanced moves unless they were really good photos coupled with good explanations. Plus nothing really beats being taught at an actual class where you can experience everything first hand (although DVD’s, videos and good books are excellent references).


At the weekend I went to Wookie Hole caves in Somerset with Elaine. It was fascinating to walk around, especially the inside of the caves as pictured. Elaine also showed me how to play the piano too, so the deal is that if she teaches me to play the piano I will teach her what I know in Martial Arts!

A special mention to James who writes this blog which is a cool blog all about swords. He asked me for a link exchange via my email at kiteskrima@yahoo.co.uk and if anyone else would like one please don’t hesitate to drop me a mail.

Thanks for reading and I promise more action pictures next time!
Kit!

My week in Martial Arts: Sept 11th to Sept 16th

That’s more like it! 3 lessons and a seminar for Lun and I this week. So we trained 4 times and good session in the gym. On Monday my brother, Lun and I went to Karl Tanswell Straight Blast Gym and were taught some great stand up skills and takedowns. It was a great work out and we swapped training partners several times while sparring. It was cool to get a different feel of energy. Lun and I have trained these stand up skills in previous classes as it was a stand up intro class. It was basic but training basic manoeuvres is very beneficial as I will discuss below.


Wednesday Lun and I had a great workout at the gym as we lifted heavy for a good 40 minutes and then went to Karl’s again and worked some techniques from some close up stand up wrestling. Basically escaping or avoiding counters from body locks. It was fun stuff.

Friday we went to Warriors Eskrima. We had a great work out there drilling roof blocks and reverse roof blocks. Sparring with sticks and going up and down striking and blocking each others sticks. We also did some double stick drills as well which we haven’t done in a while. It’s good to train with the lads again as I mentioned in my last blog and take a break from the teaching. My brother and I however have been practicing Level 1 stuff in the event of some students joining. Again refining the basics…..


Saturday was seminar day with Rick Young(the second time this year, as the first time was in February) at Steve Powell’s JKD gym . It was a great seminar and great to see the regulars such as Chris, LGM, Greg and Rick. It was also the first time we seen Steve for a while who kindly provided us with the photo. Thanks Steve!

The seminar was cool. We did some single sticks and double sticks and some panuntukan (Filipino Boxing) and some Chi Sau (sticky hands) to incorporate into hubud drills. It was a varied and interesting seminar. Rick Young also mentioned the importance of training the basics. He stated that the basic are all part of a good foundation. This was something I strongly agree with because my brother and I still attend the stand up intro class at Karl Tanswell’s and always drill the earlier levels of the Warriors Eskrima class.


I reckon as well as progressing and drilling your skills in Martial Arts, re-visiting past skills is also very important.

Special shout out to my old mate Paul Thunder(not his real surname) who reads this blog on a regular basis and of course my girlfriend Elaine who always asks when am I next posting it!.:). Enjoy the pictures and thanks for reading.

My week in Martial Arts: Sept 4th to Sept 8th

This week I was almost back to normal.
We did a good session at the gym and at Steve Powell’s JKD Class and also had a lesson at Warriors Eskrima

My digital video camera is still without a power supply and therefore I haven’t got any shots of the class, so here are some shots of Stourhead and Dunham Massey where I went with Elaine this weekend. We had a great time! I like to go these kinds of places with Elaine away from the corporate and commercial hustle and bustle of the city and the hypnotism of television. Places like these which are relatively inexpensive and for Elaine and I this is where it’s at, just awesome scenery and wildlife.

Anyways my brother and I did a really half ass session in the gym but on Monday but that was due to a killer headache. Wednesday my brother and I went to the gym and this time had a good session with lots of work on the upper body and then later went to Steve Powell’s. Greg took the class and we had a really great varied class, from the focus mitt work to combat training to hubud very varied and very good.

Friday I did Warriors Eskrima with Lun. There was no one there to teach so Lun and I trained with the rest of them. It was cool to train with those guys again and I forgotten how fun it was as Ray and I drilled stick sparring techniques. We also went through the lesson we had with Krishna Godhania


We did some knife defence where I got unintentionally kicked right in the knee cap by one of my fellow Eskrimidor, who will remain unnamed here. It hurt and instead of my usual charging into the guy like a footballer who gets up from a bad foul from another player I said he hit my funny bone and carried on. I emailed him about the matter and explained to him what he did in private.

Should I publish this? Yes, it’s my blog and it’s what happened, as I said it’s unintentional and I harbour no bad feelings. So they should be no problem. I have also known the guy longer than anyone else in that squash court. In general, I think that if someone goes in a bit hard in Martial Arts you have to tell them or they will carry on doing it or worse still you will react and a brawl will happen. If people don’t have an understanding with each other in training then accidents will happen. I am talking in general here over the last 5 years I had constantly training in these various Arts.


I once trained with this guy about 4 years ago in one of my classes who was a bit over zealous and had an ego problem, I can’t honestly remember his name but once we had to do knees on each other and he made some standard breathing noises like “ossh ossh” or something like that. When it was my turn to knee, my breathing noises were slightly different and for some reason he didn’t like it and said something like “That’s not very nice” and he went in a bit harder on his next go. To this day I don’t why he did that but he only had one lesson and I never saw him again. In fact maybe I dreamt it because no one else remembers this guy! But that is a great example of miscommunication between training partners.

As always you drop as an email at kiteskrima@yahoo.co.uk about this blog or any of the lessons mentioned as I can give you further information about them. Well I probably will tell you to refer to the links to the left of the page but I can give you information about the Warriors Class on Fridays.

Anyways that’s my 2 cents or pence as it were.
Thanks for visiting and enjoy the pictures.

Kit

I'm back!

3 weeks worth of blogs that what I owe my blog viewing public, I didn’t do many lessons over these past 2 weeks. So here is an overview of what we did the past three weeks

Aug 14th to 18th
This week Lun and I went to Karl Tanswell’s Straight Blast gym, Steve Powell’s JKD Classand Warriors Eskrima ..
Monday: At Karl’s we did some jab and crosses and footwork. It was a great work out and what was interesting was that it was one of Karl’s students taking the class. The interesting thing was that the student was able to take the class in an effective manner.

Wednesday I hit the gym and then Karl’s and Steve’s. I worked on bicep and shoulders and then my brother and I hit Karl’s. It was a great workout as we seemed to be work harder than usual. We then went to Steve Powell’s which was taken by Rick. We smashing the pads to hell with some reverse punches (well I was more liking smashing my fist to hell until I get the punch right).

Friday my brother and I went to Warriors Eskrima, again another great intense lesson with a load of stick sparring techniques.

August 21st to 25th-I had a rest as I took a week off work and spent time with Elaine who came up for a week. We had a great time going to my cousins wedding, Tatton Park and Stapley water gardens.

August 27th to September 1st
We had an awesome instructor’s lesson in Warwick on Sunday with Krishna Godhania . This was attended by Rob and Simon Campion, Johnny and Lun and I. We did some knife to empty hand translations.

Basically this is learning how to use knives in one situation and then empty hand in the same situation. Krishna also went through some history about how Filipino infantry men travelled in a triangular 3 shape with swords with the front man striking their Japanese nemesis with bolo machete's while the remaining two finish their enemy off. We also were taught some new sword techniques, thanks to Elaine who was travelled all that way with us!


I promise things will get back on track by next week. I didn’t do any lessons this week because I need to sort out some stuff that I hope to get resolved soon and therefore the blogs might not be as frequent or depending how I feel I might be compelled to write about what I am feeling. However I leave you a plethora of pictures to enjoy from the Warwick lesson, thanks for reading and visiting
Thanks
Kit

My week in Martial Arts: August 7th to Aug 11th

This week we managed just one lesson due to work commitments, as Lun explains in his blog. We made only the Warriors Eskrima class where we did some cool circuit training and some stick sparring techniques. Simon then split the class as he went through stuff with Paul and Ray.

Lun and I went through some techniques with William, who we are going to try and get to a grading at some point. For any South American or Spanish readers please check out William’s site. Elaine came again to watch us and filmed us as well! Thanks for the great shots again Elaine!



As I didn’t do many Martial Arts I don’t have many words for this week. On Saturday though, we did see a parkour exhibition in Manchester by a group called Team Sinister. Parkour is free running and consists of crazy acrobatic flips off walls and things. It’s a great spectacle but even though it looks like they look like they are all “messing around” I am sure these guys actually trained for these kind of stunts using safety mats etc in a safe environment( well the PA guy said that as well) . I found the Team Sinister page while surfing.

Anyways till next week (in which I will try and make a longer post).

Thanks for reading and enjoy the pictures.

P.S Any comments about the website, the lessons I attend or life itself or if you want a link exchange you can either post a comment and no spam please…or email me directly with any query about anything at kiteskrima@yahoo.co.uk I cannot promise I will reply to every email but will try my damn best.

My week in Martial Arts: July 31st to Aug 4th

This week Lun and I started Brazilian Jiu Jitsu at Karl Tanswell’s Straight Blast gym

We practiced a counter against a guard position and it was quite an interesting lesson. At the end of it Karl got his most senior guys to see if we can counter their guards and also there was a sparring exhibition in the end where Karl would call out 2 people to roll and see who would win via submission. It was good to experience another Martial Art and to finally start.


As my brother and I walked out of the gym we noticed a very tall guy walking into the gym area in his street clothes. The man looked so familiar yet I couldn’t place his face initially. I had a think about who he was “Damn I am sure I have seen him before” Then it hit me! Matt Thornton! My brother who didn’t recognise him until I told him told me he was watching the whole time too…pity we didn’t look great because it was only our second lesson in just under a year. It was also a shame we couldn’t make his seminar.

Wednesday Lun and I returned to Karl Tanswell’s Straight Blast gym and we did stand up fighting, jab crosses and knees, it was a great lesson very energetic and lots of focus on technique.


Friday we did Warriors Eskrima class. William came down as well and rather than splitting the class we decided to let him join in the rest of the guys so Simon took the full reign of the class that included Paul and Ray. It was a great lesson; we did some hubud drills, stick sparring and circuit training that was devised by Lun.

Hopefully we will make the Steve Powell’s JKD Class next week.


I am enjoying my hours outside of work more than ever now spending time with my family, friends and last but not least my Girlfriend! Going to different places each week, practicing Martial Arts etc, I live for the weekends and what happens after work…..but one thing I will always remember is what Rick Faye once said about trying to live for more than 2 days a week and try and do something you can enjoy so you can live for 7. In that I still strive for….
Enjoy the great pics from footage filmed by Elaine(thank you!!!)and thanks for reading
Kit