After having seen the numerous videos that Maul has on his You Tube channel I was convinced I had to meet him and try out his style. I was initially discouraged by the fact that he is always travelling to different places delivering seminars and that he is usually booked for a good part of a year in advance but, nearly by mistake I found out he was in touch with a local teacher of Silat that runs classes in Cambridge University, Lee Wilson, and so I caught the opportunity and turn up at a seminar held in Darwin College in early March.

Silat Suffian Bela Diri is a martial art that originates in Brunei and I believe it is somehow related to other Silat styles that are practiced in Indonesia and Malaysia: Maul himself admits to have little knowledge of those other styles and that what he practices and teaches is a direct lineage from his family.

The first impression of meeting Maul is warm and friendly: he appeared in the training hall greeting in a very friendly way people he met in previous occasions and welcoming in a equally warm way myself and others he was meeting for the first time.  His smile and facial expression is very reassuring and encouraging as well as his teaching style that is involving from the very first second.

Silat, similarly to other martial arts of South East Asia, is a martial art based on weapons, particularly knife: the training is usually starting by learning how to handle and defend against a weapon and moving onto bare hand fighting at a later stage.  As the seminar was open to all levels and there were people that, like me, had very little weapon experience he decided to start with the very basic drills that included the three basic knife strikes (cutting down vertically to the head, cutting across slashing the throat and stabbing horizontally toward the stomach).  Within minutes we were all practicing these basic drills and developed amazing ways of dealing with these kinds of attacks that would potentially be deadly if applied by an opponent with a live blade (all training is practiced with training knife blunt blades and edges).

The most amazing thing was seeing how Maul could handle these attacks with amazing precision and all counter attacks where at the same time conceptually simple and amazingly effective within a broad range of situations and circumstances.  The other hard to believe feature is his skill of moving incredibly slowly to demonstrate a technique that could potentially harm the opponent but then accelerating at an unexpected (even for a trained, expert martial artist) speed when showing how a techniques should be delivered in real life.

I was really amazed and totally impressed by Maul as a top martial artist and teacher as well as by his great personality and friendly manners: if you have a chance attending one of his seminars just go and try his style, technique and his unique teaching skills.

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I recently coordinated and performed in three demonstrations at the Martial Arts Festival UK organized in Leicester by Kwoklyn Wan, a well known martial artist and Jeet Kune Do instructor who runs a number of schools based in and around the same town.

Choreographing a demonstration always requires some level of preparation while I personally prefer avoiding a complete rehearsal of the whole thing. Punching, kicking and blocking, attacking and defending is something we do in every lesson so my basic strategy is always to have a script about what will be done but leaving the interpretation to the individuals in order to ensure the performance to be more realistic. Ultimately a fight cannot be rehearsed.

I believe that the main objectives of a demonstration are:

• To give a basic idea of the main techniques in terms of kicks, punches, stances and guards for your particular school or style;
• To be interesting for the person from the general public that doesn’t have even a basic idea about martial arts as well as gaining respect from fellow martial artists;
• To show the level of skill of your school or club;
• To be catchy enough to inspire passers by to stop and watch.

Given the final results and the video we managed to produce I am very happy of the overall experience: all CARISMA members that were there truly enjoyed it themselves.

A point I always try to make in my demonstrations is that we must remember that martial arts are about fighting, personal development, controlled actions and well harmonised attacks and defence. Movements should look smoothly and effortlessly performed, otherwise we risk to be looking too much like street fighters. On the other hand the demonstration should be and look realistic: for may taste a bit too many schools were running shows that appeared too much like dancing rather that expressions of fighting arts.

I was highly impressed by the organization of the show itself and I congratulated several times with Kwoklyn about location, quality of staff and their competence, the great variety of martial arts being showed and the workshops run. I firmly hope I will be invited again to be part of the second edition of MAF-UK next year.

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I was recently guest at a Wing Chun seminar run by sifu Benno Westra organized by my friends at Cambridge Kung Fu.  Wing Chun is a martial art originated in the South of China and it’s predominantly an bare handed based system that was initially defined by a woman: advanced forms use butterfly knives and long pole but the majority of applications and demonstration are done empty handed.  Wing Chun is a martial arts that to my knowledge has no sport application and it is taught primarily as a simple, direct and no frills self defence system.

Wing Chun is in reality a family of different styles and I personally trained many different ones: it is intriguing to see how each of them is similar more or less to the others while it interprets various aspects in a totally different way.  In general emphasis on one or the other technique is due to the lineage, the master or grand master that defined the style and his/her personal taste for one or the other aspect.

The first impression of seeing and meeting Benno Westra is warm, friendly and encouraging: a big step forward compared to many high ranked people in the Wing Chun arena that like to look down to the common mortals and use intimidation and nearly mystification to justify their position.  His practical approach to Wing Chun is meant to enable any practitioner to have a good structure and a no non-sense preparation to situations that can happen on the street.

Given my exposure and years of training in other styles of Wing Chun I was some times performing instinctively in a way that was substantially different from what being practiced.  When he corrected some of my techniques he was explaining and justifying why in his style things work that way.  I appreciated hearing a number of times how there isn’t a right or wrong approach to one or the other situations: that leaves a great level of freedom to analyse and appreciate what works and what doesn’t for yourself.

Starting from a simple drill that was deflecting punches to the face we built in a number different variations of lat sau, using wu sau as a central, main technique for the day.

It’s difficult to measure results out of a 4 hours seminar, because it depends very much on what you expect to get out of it.  My approach is usually to go with the flow, experience and see what comes out, trying to be totally unbiased, objective and to learn something: I was happy to exceed my expectations in this occasion.

I liked Sifu Benno’s style of teaching: he uses many interesting metaphors and humorous stories and jokes while presenting top quality techniques and offering comparison to many other martial arts of which he has practical experience himself.  I am looking forward to the possibility of participating to another seminar.

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After the post about Summer Camp 2008, follows now the video:

Enjoy!

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I was recently invited by my friends at Cambridge Kung Fu to an “Escrima concepts” seminar run by master Steve Tappin. Escrima is a martial art originated in the Philippines and it’s predominantly a weapon based system that teaches fighting by using sticks, machetes, knifes and daggers in various combinations of one of two weapons handled at once. The same concepts, moves and drills are applied regardless of the weapon used by the practitioner or his opponent in order to develop automatic reflexes that would work in any situation, at least in theory. If you heard of Kali, Arnis, Doce Pares or Cadena de Mano they are all similar styles: in fact I was told by an instructors that in the Philippines there are literally hundreds of different flavours of this styles, some of which are kept secret and developed among single families.

I heard great things from different sources about master Tappin’s skills: he is one of the (if not the) biggest experts of weapon based martial arts in the UK, with a large number of followers around the world and his seminars are always fully booked. This was an opportunity not to be missed, in order to improve my limited experience of weapon handling that is mostly limited to nunchakus, katana and sai, weapons used by Okinawan styles. When I first saw him I could not believe to my eyes: master Tappin is a large stocky men in his fifties that looks more like a large door security person rather than a martial artist as I was used to think of one until that day. In any case, within a few minutes into the seminar it was obvious that appearance is some time misleading.

The first exercise we were asked to perform was to face, armed with one stick, an opponent with two: the concept was to attack first, one stick at the time, to create space and allow getting close to the opponent and eventually disarming him. We then carried on working in various possible scenarios of one person with two, one or no stick facing another that as well can be armed or bear handed. All concepts explained were amazingly interesting as they could always be transferred across without thinking in what situation our opponent was attacking us. Master Tappin, with his 36 years experience of weapon handling, pointed out and repeated many time that when you are facing a weapon the correct technique makes the difference between walking out of that situation and being killed. A stick or a bottle can break your skull while a knife or a machete can seriously injure you or kill you: the quality of the concepts and the techniques practiced is vital.

It is obvious that a four hours seminar cannot teach stick fighting or defence against weapons: in fact I believe that fighting against a weapon cannot be guaranteed safe in any situation even after years of training. At the same time I was impressed by how many important concepts can be learnt in such a short time and by how many things can be overlooked unless you are taught by a real expert.

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