Training With A Legend

 

Twice a year we attend seminar here in Atlanta with one of our instructors, Guro Dan Inosanto.  Seminars, and I’m specifically talking about fitness and martial arts seminars, are a dramatic spectacle to behold.  Lots of egos, hero worship (and sycophantic behavior that goes along with it), folks taking themselves way too seriously, and big showmanship by those stepping up to demo.  The rumor mill is hard at work, giving the political factions plenty of fodder to occupy their time.  When I began attending many years ago, it was a lot like drinking from the fire hose, to borrow a phrase from a former training mate.  Too much too much!  It is difficult to grasp, much less retain that much information crammed into your gray matter in the space of eight hours.  Nevertheless, it has gotten easier with repetition.  I began to realize that I have seen much of the material before at different intervals, and through no conscious effort, it has begun to jell. 

 

I always enter a strange head space during and after the event.  Guro Dan makes me think about things differently, and I see in his words, actions and approach to martial arts a philosophy for everyday living.  He is a student of life, just as Bruce Lee was, and everything he learns in other areas adds to his purpose and his passion, which is martial arts.  Even at 70+ years young, he is expanding, honing, overcoming adversities, and generally absorbing what is useful.  He shows no indication of stopping any time soon, though he admits adapting to physical aging with each passing decade; it is a must for longevity, he posits.  He exposes his personal struggles in his stories; he is human, and a very humble one.  I think his warnings about pitfalls are just as much a reminder to himself as they are to his faithful students.  Some would love to elevate him to the status of a god, which is folly.  His is not THE way, but A way.  He encourages us all to find our own, as any great mentor would.  He has my greatest respect.

 

I walk away from seminar each time with similar thoughts in my mind.  One is that I can never stop learning.  Another is that I must be tested in order to approach mastery, and true mastery often requires teaching concepts to another.  It is so easy to become complacent in the idea of mastery, and I must humble myself continually by remaining a student in many disciplines with many instructors.  A third is that following a passion takes discipline.  Last and most important is this: I can just never stop.  Period.  The key to life is getting in motion and staying in motion.  Stopping is akin to dying.  I have heard Guro Dan say in the past that he would rather wear out than rust out, and I must agree.

http://inosanto.com/

Striking BOB, Left-handed

 

We are taking the time to train the left side.  It was absent in much of our training at other schools, and true proficiency requires that we remedy this problem by practicing on what I like to call “my stupid side”.  You can call yours whatever you like.  No offense to lefties, of course.  You guys need to train the right in just the same manner.

Striking BOB, Angles 1 Through 5

Tuesday’s Class, 9-23-08

Sticks

I wanted students to really feel and utilize their bodies in each stroke of the Kali stick, so we hit the BOBs.  After a general warm-up, we warmed up further with a simple X pattern on the dummies.  Pulling the stroke all the way through and using our bodies instead of just our arms was the focus.  The same goes for any of our weapons.  Using two BOBs, one to practice the right side and one for the left, we worked in 20 second intervals.  In addition to angles 1 and 2, we worked in the horizontals: angles 3 and 4.

 

Horizontal Elbow

 

I went into detail about form with elbows, though we have used them in the past in combinations.  I taught the Thai way, since that is my background.  Technically, what we looked at was left and right snap elbows because there was very little expansion in the chest.  In Gutterfighting, that is just minutia that is unnecessary!  My main concerns were protecting the face, using the correct striking surface, the folding of the hand of the striking arm and the targets (jaw, bridge of the nose, brow, etc.).  Elbows can cut the face so easily, so we have to take care when working with partners.  We must exercise control.  Again, I wanted students to use resistance with focus mitts and BOBs to really put their bodies into the strikes as they do with everything else.  This will make the difference between a weak strike and a devastating blow against an adversary.

 

Review

 

We drilled open double stick patterns along with Heaven 6.  We also took another look at gunting (scissors) with knives, angles 1 through 5, paying close attention to stopping the incoming strike with the blade before passing.

Thursday’s Class, 9-18-08

 

Kicking

 

After we warmed up, we launched right into the BOBs.  Twenty minutes of kicking—whatever anyone knew.  I was thankful for all of the hip mobility I have been working on recently.  Mind you, we did have breaks.  Rapid fire kicking for 20 seconds with a few seconds to move on to BOB #2, then shuffling in circuit format to allow others to jump into the fray.  I cannot speak for anyone else, but I had a blast.  Thai kicks, front kicks, side kicks, round kicks, foot jabs and some knees for good measure.  Coming from a strong Muay Thai background, I tend to favor the Thai kick for conditioning.  And it’s so powerful.

 

Shadow Boxing

 

Once we were good and sweaty, we shadow boxed for many, many rounds.  We included boxing, ground work without implements, ground work with pads (rolling with an angled pad or Thai pad—hilarious to witness!), and karenza (shadow boxing, Kali style) with sticks and knives. 

 

Blend 25

 

Soon we will make a short video of the Blend 25.  Remember guys, it teaches you the strokes we utilize.  We don’t necessarily fight like this, as we don’t know what each unique fighting situation requires—it is just a teaching tool and nothing in life happens in a vacuum where you control all the variables.  You are taught possibilities and practicing ingrains the movements into your nervous system so you will have more tools to draw upon from your fighting toolbox!

 

Knives

 

We practiced angles 1 through 8 from Blend 25 with knives.  It was all about flow:

 

Angles 1, 2 and 5 (5 times)

 

Angles 3, 4 and 5 (5 times)

 

Angles 6, 7 and 8 (5 times)

 

Remember to practice everything with your right AND left side!

Tuesday’s Class, 9-16-08

 

Class was all about being fit to fight.  We did include our combatives in the circuits.  We needed to kick it up a notch, as Emeril would say, and we did.  Bands, balls, BOBs, bells and more!

Thursday’s Class, 9-12-08

 

Ground Warm-up

 

Rolling, lifting the glutes and legs. . .that was a cake walk until I placed my foot on a medicine ball, bearing weight, and attempted to lift my legs and torso.  I discovered weakness in my right hamstring.  Ouch.  The left seemed to be fine, so I didn’t feel like a total failure.  J  We did a little exercise we often do with kettlebells.  We placed our hands on the medicine ball as we moved quickly from the soles of our feet to our knees.  It is important to make a soft landing on the knees, of course!  This gets the heart rate up fairly quickly.  We talked a little about foam rollers.  I guess I need to break mine out and roll out that hamstring.  Oy.

 

Hopping and Slashing

 

Look ma. . .we’re jumping with knives!  We broke out the short hurdles, hopped and lunged, and practiced our knife slashing and thrusting.  Too many rounds to remember all the details, but think of Blend #1 through #5 with a knife instead of a stick, and that covers a lot.  We also performed our attack sequence (slap, low line kick to shin, 2 ax hands to the throat and a swivel punch) with hopping.  It was a bit of a challenge WITH the hopping.  I imagined my hurdle as a small shrub.  Imagine whatever you will.  I seem to recall some knees in there along with pluck defense for front choke and front kicks.  It was a very physical night and we were living our fit to fight mentality.  We spent the last 30 seconds of each round on punching blitzes.  Jabs and crosses and uppercuts.

 

More Knives

 

Students played with the five angles in different ways; first with a thrust and a slash in the X pattern followed by thrusts and horizontal slashes.  Then, students partnered up and practiced stopping each angle with the blade.  Following the stop, we passed the hand through while cutting through with the knife for a gunting (scissors).  After everyone felt comfortable with these movements, they added the follow-up, a thrust to the body, after each gunting.

Balancing, Kicking and Ball Squats

 

This was subsequent to sufficiently tiring our legs with squatting and kicking from the ground.  We enjoyed these with timed rounds.  At the end (and the next day), our legs were fried.  J

Tuesday’s Class, 9-9-08

 

The Ground

 

We worked a lot on the ground last night.  We practiced breakfalls (falling forward and backward), the hip bump and shrimping.  Until anyone gets more time on the ground under their belt, they feel silly and uncomfortable.  What I would say to that is, “Feel uncomfortable!”  It’s going to feel so much worse if an attacker takes you to the ground and you’ve never spent any time there.  You are probably in a world of hurt at that point.  In the age of MMA, there is great likelihood that the fight will go to the ground.

 

We also worked on our kicking from the ground.  The focus was on front kicks.  This is very valuable training, in my opinion, because it feels so much different delivering a kick from the ground as opposed to standing up, though the body mechanics of the hips and lower extremities must be the same.

 

Making the Hips Mobile

 

If I had time, I would spend even more time working on the mobility and flexibility of the hip region.  Most functional problems affecting the lower extremities originate in and around the pelvic girdle.  We warmed up the hips with leg swings (knee to chest and side to side), fire hydrants and hip circles.  We cooled down with some of the “big bang for your buck” stretches from Stretch to Win.  These cover the glutes, inner and outer thigh and spinal twisting.  I also try to include more spinal twisting in the warm-up to get the hips moving independently from the torso—we need this rotational movement to get the most of our powerhouse, the hips, for fighting!

 

The Teacup

 

We learned a new stretching/mobility technique that was picked up at the latest IKFF kettlebell certification in Atlanta.  It is called the teacup.  The imaginary teacup in your palm rotates around your upper body, and you must keep it in place.  Easier said than done, of course.  This exercise warrants a video because it is practically impossible to explain.  J

Counter Drill

 

This is the Contra Y Contra drill.  Each practitioner will feed and counter the same strokes: Blend #8 (overhead), Blend #1 angle and Blend #4 angle.  The counters here are the roof, inside deflection and the drop stick, respectively.