Kali Escrima in Coventry

By Gaz under Martial Arts

Last time I returned to England, I lived for a short time in unfamiliar territory, and spent a week auditioning local martial arts. After some deliberation, I happily settled on Wing Chun, but had no sooner started than Customs forced me to leave England. This time around, I’ve been lucky enough to be reunited with my Jeet Kune Do sifu, now also teaching a plethora of Filipino styles in addition to the JKD family of martial arts.

After neglecting my training for the better part of a year, on Monday evening I went to my first training session anticipating pain due to my lack of fitness… thankfully, this was a technical lesson. No doubt that fitness session will come around before too long though!

Training Times

The class kicked-off a little after the scheduled 19:30 start time, and lasted a little over 2 hours. In addition to this Monday class, the 16:00 to 18:00 Sunday afternoon sessions I had a love/hate relationship with throughout 2002 and 2003 will be starting again on October 7th.

Why love/hate? Well, I loved how fast my knowledge and fitness improved at every single session, and yet hated the fact that being able to do that required having to spend 2 hours a week right at the very edge of my comfort zone. Having said that, while working to my push my limits may have hurt physically and psychologically at the time, I would always finish on a triumphant high. I’m looking forward to getting back in the saddle again.

Lesson Structure

With so many martial arts to draw upon, I imagine that there will be an enormous variety of material to learn from and incorporate into my personal fighting style, and I have no doubt that each student will take away something different. This particular lesson involved some basic Kali Escrima drills with a single rattan stick, and thanks largely to Andre’s boundless enthusiasm and careful attention to each of us, what looked like a frighteningly difficult drill at the start of the class was becoming second nature by the end. This lesson was built around 5 angles of attack to practice with a single stick, alone and with a partner, trying several variations and punctuated with demonstrations of how the very same principles applied to using a dagger, or machete, or sword or even empty hands.

As a long time student of martial arts, I was delighted that as each demonstration of a variant was given, we were also told how it all fitted into the culture and history of (in this case) the Philippines — which is particularly relevant to me, since I’ll be living there for 3 months when we leave England again at the end of November.

Students and Instructor

Andre Martin needs no introduction, beyond what I’ve written already; Except to say that I’m certain that anyone who has the chance to train with him will gain a whole new outlook on the role of martial arts in their life. I know that he likes to keep class sizes down to 20 or fewer, this being no exception with about 15 of us present. It’s testament to Andre’s ability as an instructor that even this small class contained a mixture of all ages (no children however), abilities and cultures — although Octavia was the only woman present. The atmosphere was informal, with students working alone or with a partner and free to talk or ask questions as we pleased.

With such a good student to instructor ratio, and the phenomenal amount of information packed into that two hours it worked really well… unlike certain other schools I have attended, where this format has given the lazier students opportunity to goof off and become distracted.

Despite the small class size, and the excellent instruction, the cost of a lesson is exceptionally low compared to just about everywhere else I’ve trained.

Style and Techniques

The lineage of the MCMAA comes from Guro Inosanto’s Jeet Kune Do Concepts (which he in turn learned directly from Bruce Lee), incorporating teachings from many disparate styles of fighting, with the idea that every martial artist will find techniques that work well for them, and others which do not. The techniques that work should be perfected, and after appropriate disection the techniques which do not work should be discarded. Naturally, each martial artist will perfect and discard different techniques. Eventually, armed with a selection of techniques that work at different ranges, most likely taken from disparate martial arts, one is able to progress to blends: moving swiftly and cleanly between that martial artist’s perfected techniques. For example closing range from a Savate toe-kick, through a Muay Thai knee strike, and then from a Silat nerve point attack to an arm into a Jiu Jitsu lock and then choke.

There is no favouritism between techniques of any style, and of course there is much to learn for many years before reaching this level of expertise. The concept at the core of a system like this is to always be learning, and to be critical about the techniques being used. When I was studying Jeet Kune Do with Andre previously, the techniques were drawn from fencing, western boxing, Wing Chun and Jun Fan Gung Fu. The MCMAA adds Jiu Jitsu, Savate, Muay Thai, Kali Escrima, Ninjutsu, Aikido, Panantukan, Silat, Kenpo and Pekiti Tirsia Kali, currently experiencing a surge in popularity due to it’s use by Matt Damon in the Bourne Identity movies!

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