Ouchie mini-seminar

Well, our wee mini-seminar started well last night - tripped over someone during the *warm up* and cracked my elbow off the wall. Since we were training in a judo dojo and there is matting part way up the wall, missing the matting and hitting the dado rail was impressive. Right on the point of the elbow that was .....

That set the tone really. I have many many bruises this morning. I suppose you could argue for judging the quality of a seminar by the number of bruises you acquire. If that's the case, then last night was a very good seminar!

It was run by Mark Davies who is the founder of the Tactical Edge system. Now I know why the krav maga guys that I train with are so keen on him. Mark has black belts / instructor credentials in multiple martial arts, and it shows. This guy knows his stuff! I liked his presentation style - he talked a lot about the principles behind what he was demonstrating and broke techniques down into their component movements. He was also excellent at helping a short arse like myself adapt moves to suit their height.

I also really liked the fact that he wasn't up there promoting his own system whilst disrespecting others. I've been in and around martial arts a while now, and I've come across more than one instructor who will extol the virtue of their own system whilst loudly insisting that taekwondo / karate / judo etc are rubbish and have it all wrong. In my very humble opinion, there are no bad martial arts. There are certainly martial arts which are very strong in some skills and perhaps weaker in others but there are definitely a lot of very poor instructors out there. The more martial arts available, then the more chances there are that people will find an art which suits them. I have a very strong preference for the modern, very practical systems (eg MMA, krav maga etc) but I have every respect for the traditional arts and for those who train in them. Kuk sool didn't work out for me, but that was my issue and certainly not the fault of the art.

- climbs off soapbox and puts it away tidily -

Anyway, getting back to last night's seminar. We worked empty hand defences against close range elliptical attacks, gradually building up from limb destruction entries through locks (hullo nikyo!) into takedowns and finishes. We then moved onto using the same techniques against impact weapons. Some cool stuff, possibly made slightly easier for this occasionally hard of thinking student by having covered similar material with kupso and CREST.

Really enjoyed the seminar and glad I went on a very cold night, even though it took me 15 mins to find somewhere to park. Needless to say I was the only female there again, but I can live with that lol.