I was kind of surprised to notice that about 3 years have gone by since my first encounter with Master Steve Tappin, the founder of the Escrima Concepts style, a complete fighting system that teaches weapon based attack and defences to start with and the explores what happens when you have no weapon available.

One of  my main purpose of attending a martial arts seminar is to have the opportunity of learning, usually new things, from a master or instructor that is usually not available for local tuitions, and share with a few others his/her expertise in a session that is normally longer that the average class. However last Sunday I was particularly lucky; I attended, together with 3 other CARISMA members, a seminar organised by my friends at the Cambridge Kung Fu and I was pleased to find out that just 13 people, including us, were taking part to the event.  The real luck was having Master Tappin in person taking care directly of us for a generous amount of time and really ensuring we would get a great training.

Master Tappin’s teaching style is very clear and effective and he always manages to simply explain the essence of why one thing should be done in a certain way and shows it directly, helped by his expert son Wayne.  It’s shocking to see a man who had a broken back and an injured knee, somebody who struggles to stand and limps visibly but then, when demonstrating a technique, moves with the speed and the grace of the great martial artist he really is.

Weapons are tricky to handle and they open a complete new dimension about what should and should not be done while fighting.  While I don’t feel my skill level has grown substantially I can acknowledge I learnt a lot of useful concepts and by repeating and rehearsing the moves my skill will improve over time.

Whether you have experience in weapon based training or, like me, passionate and curious about exploring a new art I would definitely suggest to join one of Master Tappin’s seminar at your earliest convenience.

Posted under events, styles, teaching

It’s a fact that martial arts are great to reduce stress: I have written one of my first posts on this topic.  Training keeps your mind occupied because most techniques are not obvious so you cannot really think about something else while doing them.  Then adrenaline is released during training,  endorphins and dopamine are released while doing something that works well and they are just excellent to feel great at the end of a session.

A challenge I recently encountered was to help group of students from the University of Cambridge and then some of the members of the Springboard(); startup accelerator to get some martial arts workout and have some fun at the end of a very stressful and demanding working week.  Delivering martial arts training to a large group of total novices can be difficult because of the following questions to be asked:

• how do you get a bunch of total beginners to get some martial arts workout for an hour without spending the same amount of time teaching a one or 2 basic techniques?
• are there techniques that people can do almost immediately without too much explanation and get a decent workout in the process?

When teaching martial arts at my club or in seminars and workshop I can rely on existing experience; when teaching to a beginner’s course I know I will have those students for several lessons so I can concentrate on a few basic techniques at the time, ensuring they assimilate the concepts before moving on.  Here it’s different, very different; I wanted to deliver a satisfactory experience, real stuff, while ensuring they would not hurt themselves or others in the process.

Most martial arts techniques imply posture, guard, balance, weight transfer and so on… so for these workout I cut to the very basics and relied on basic co-ordination from the various individuals to pick up the basic moves.

First we used Thai pads to protect the legs and deliver low round kick to the back of the knee; it’s nice and safe and a lot of power can be delivered with low risks of damages.   Round kick, particularly low one can resemble when people kick a football and it becomes pretty intuitive after a few attempts.  Most people were wearing shoes to protect their feet although some, initially wearing flip-flops trained barefoot.

Second we tested circular elbow strikes, hitting focusing mitts, easy and simply amd again low risk of injury for the person performing the technique, as long as they avoid sliding the elbow on the surface of the mitt and they strike well in a perpendicular trajectory.  I usually avoid punches on the mitts if, like in this case, we were not using boxing gloves and hand wraps available; there are too many things that can go wrong in a punch and it take too long for people to get all of the basic concepts.

Third we were striking the mitts in a descending hammering motion; it’s possibly the most powerful strike that any novice can learn in a few minutes and it delivers such an expectedly powerful strike.

Last but not least we tried hitting breaking boards; I had a set of three, yellow, green and brown with an increasingly high breaking point.  For many people breaking an object releases a great level of satisfaction; even great is when you have the impression of breaking it and you can put it back together.  Everybody managed to strike through the yellow and green and more than half attempted and succeeded in breaking the brown one.

Given the nature of the training and the limited time we simply used these techniques because they work, they can be physically demanding and a good workout without worrying too much how they would work for real; quite probably they wouldn’t and what we did was ignoring basic concepts  of guard, active protection while performing the technique and what to do next.  Result was good anyway as none of them have ambition of becoming martial artists anytime soon (although perhaps some might) and therefore I believe the workout did fit its initial purpose: being a stress buster and have fun.

Well done to everyone!

Posted under educational, teaching

Recently I was running a lesson with the Cambridge University Kickboxing Society and I was pointing out to two beginners young ladies how one was not hitting has hard as she could while performing a simple exercise.

Her partner was surprised of my remark and she stopped asking how I could tell she was not hitting “as hard as she could”.  Surprisingly that was the first time somebody questioned my teaching in this way and I pondered for a few seconds before answering.

Many years of experience allow you to recognise and evaluate very quickly, within matter of seconds while a person is practicing martial arts, whether the he/she:

• Is Powerful
• Is Fast
• Is Well co-ordinated
• Has good reflexes
• Can bear strong attacks
• Has a good sense of fighting
• Her body mass and shape allows a certain level of power

As I listed to her the above, non exhaustive, list of features and mentioned my experience in years that exceeds by a decade her age she quickly accepted my comment and carried on training.

Many instructors like to feel powerful and imposing their dogmatic teaching to their students expecting them to simply trust and believe him/her.  As my teaching is fully based on scientific principles everything can be explained and showed how techniques can be improved and fined tuned to deliver maximum efficiency and power.

So I quickly helped her partner to adjust her posture and angle of attack and within a couple of exercises she was hitting 20-30% harder.  Physical fitness can be and will be improved by continuous training  while the right technique will improve your performance in a very short time.

That’s what experience gives you.

Posted under educational, teaching, theory

Matthew Absokardu the author of Ikigaiway blog has recently released a free EBook titled “Surviving a Traditional Dojo” that I suggest to all of my readers.

The EBook describes in great details what a novice should expect when entering a traditional dojo with a lot of information about etiquette, behaviour that people in the dojo will expect from you, as well as what you should expect from them and from the master running the dojo itself.

I believe this EBook will also be interesting for people that are already part of a non traditional martial arts club to understand what and how other martial artists live their training.

If you are interested, and you should really, please go to the download page of the book and simply download it: as I said it’s free but it has a great value!

Posted under book_review, teaching

Some times at the end of those intensive lesson when everybody is pushed to the limit some of my students come to me and congratulate or thank me for how good the lesson was.  Curiously this happens more often when I happen to run a “low tech” lesson with simple and immediate techniques that simply require intense and fast workout.

Some martial arts can be a hard and sweaty job: repeating many times sequences of punches and kicks and other strikes at a fast pace can surely be a physically demanding task.  At the same time those who feel that a good lesson should be just the one that makes you sweat profusely I suggest to go for a run, do a round of circuit training.

My main goal as a coach is surely to prepare students in most aspects of performing martial arts, including teaching and improving techniques, combinations, balance, foot work, guard, strikes, defence and so on.  When sparring there are also aspects like release tension and being relaxed while having another person in front that is there to punch and kick you.  In certain cases an individual gets stuck in a situation where a certain kick or punch doesn’t work or it is not as efficient as it could be.  These are the times when the expert teacher or coach can really help to  get things working.

To some extent when I enter more complicated areas of training, explain or practice a difficult set of combinations it seems that a smaller number of students find it useful: is it perhaps because the others don’t really grasp the full essence of the lesson?

Posted under educational, teaching