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.

Posted under events, styles

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.

Posted under events, styles

One of the models I used during my Professional Coaching Training describes competence in four broad steps or levels: I found this extremely useful and practical because it helps identifying very quickly at which stage a person is with her competence toward a certain subject.  I’ll add an example about driving a car that I hope can be useful for personal comparison: I apologise for those readers that never experienced what I am describing.

Unconscious Incompetence (UI)

This describes a natural status when we don’t know anything about a subject and to some extent we don’t care about it because we ignore it.  There are probably thousands of things in life that we won’t ever even know they exist.  If you are totally unaware about a subject it is unlikely you will realize how much you are missing and whether you care about it.  Imagine when you first were in a car, probably as a child, being driver around without realizing how it works.

Conscious Incompetence (CI)

Once you became aware of the existence of a subject you might enter your CI level, and acknowledge how much you don’t know: at that point you might also realize whether you like what you started learning and if you are interested in knowing more about it.  The  time you took your first few driving lessons you might have realized how many things you did not know about driving.

Conscious Competence (CC)

Building on the initial CI you learn about the subject, improve your competence about it and demonstrate it to some extent: at this stage your mind can access to some knowledge about the subject by using a conscious, often strong, effort.  When you passed your driving test and you were driving your first miles on your own you had to pay lot of attention to every single details involved in driving: how to use clutch, gear stick  and accelerator, how to turn, how to park, etc…

Unconscious Competence (UC)

At this stage you have a broad competence about the subject and you can access it unconsciously and without effort.   This is when, in this example, you can drive without paying too much attention to common details like accelerator, gear and so on: you seem like running on automatic pilot and you can simply concentrate on where you are going rather than how you are going.

Application of the 4 levels of competence to martial arts learning

If you think about it you can probably make many examples of the 4 levels of competence applied to your knowledge and your life.  When practicing martial art you start from a UI level when you barely know the name of a martial art or how it manifests itself.  If you attend a few classes you realize how much you don’t know: in fact the CI in martial arts is not limited to the knowledge about techniques themselves but also how to perform them.  A few months and many hours of practice later you might reach the CC level: you are aware of various techniques but you still spend much time thinking about how to perform them and you can still be somehow slow and partially unnatural.  When you achieve UC in martial arts (see also this article about martial arts and the subconscious) you can perform effortlessly and your conscious mind can be concentrated on broad strategic thinking rather than the minute details.

Once achieved UC if you are attacked by somebody your reaction is natural and immediate, without hesitation: if you practice a sports fighting style the UC is when you can spar by simply thinking to the broad strategy because you can access the whole knowledge about your techniques naturally and without effort.

Conclusions

The 4 levels of competence can a great help when you are assessing your own knowledge about a certain subject, understanding how and why you are experiencing certain situations.  I would be curious to have some comments regarding how you have  experienced the 4 levels of competence applied to martial arts.

Posted under educational

Somebody told you that martial arts are good for everyone? What about children, are martial arts good for them? I would say most definitely yes so let’s see together how.

Martial arts, particularly the traditional ones (e.g. Karate, Judo, Kung Fu – this is a non exhaustive list) maintain a heritage of the master-pupil rapport that instils discipline and respect.  Teaching children in very young age, should be done like a game: movements and techniques are not shown or explained in their full expression.  In the mean time the young minds develop body awareness that help them with their balance and coordination.  The repetitive work of the same techniques tried, improved and mastered over long period of time allows muscles to be worked out and to be strengthened.   By the same metric joints, muscles and tendons are stretched and exercised in a way that develops a lean, strong, tonic and fit body.  When techniques are practiced or even during sparring (kumite, randori…) the focus goes toward competitiveness while at the same time learning respect for the opponent, for the referee and people around you.

Children that have tendency to be violent toward their peers learn to have a better sense of self control and to avoid excessive expression of aggressiveness.  The physical training causes over time, like in adults, an improvement of self confidence in every life situation, not just for self defence.  The perseverance that a child has to put in learning and mastering a martial art will not just be useful for itself: the same perseverance can be later in life applied to studies and work.

Posted under children, educational, teaching