Nasubukang Arnis

Five days ago, I found myself doing something I told myself I’d never do again - teach Arnis.

I’d been struggling with motivation for a long time and teaching and training had really become an effort for me instead of the pleasure that it once was. When we lost our daughter in 2018, that flame was well and truely extinguished - not just with teaching but pretty much everything. I quit work and all of the effort and focus that I used to put into training and teaching, I now poured into my small home based business, mainly to numb the grief. Any connection with the martial arts I’ve had over the past 5 years has solely been through conversations with my Son on his own martial journey in HEMA. Now and then he’d show me a technique, it’s application and it would spark something inside me and we’d discuss similar methods within the FMA. I was happy with that, or so I thought. I think there was this small part of me that missed training but felt I’d been out of it for too long and it was easier for me to keep walking away from it, in the opposite direction than it was to go back to it.

A few months ago, Jim asked if I’d be interested in teaching a three hour workshop on Nasubukang Arnis. He’d asked a few times before but this time, I accepted. There were many times in those months when I really regretted accepting the offer. It wasn’t because I didn’t want to go back to it but moreover I wasn’t confident in my own ability anymore. I always had this one rule that I stuck by and that was I’d never teach anything I couldn’t do myself or hadn’t done myself in the past. I wasn’t sure I could go back to teaching and give a good account of myself. It was only 3 nights before the workshop that I picked up a stick again for the first time in five years and started to go through ideas I’d set out for Sunday. Until then, I felt I just wanted to get it done with and leave it behind. I wasn’t expecting to feel confident again about what I’d done for almost four decades. Surprisingly I was now looking forward to teaching again for a few hours.

When I think about it now, on the day, there were times when I felt the words coming out of my mouth were racing out at 100mph, trying to get everything out that had been kept inside for a while and had now found an outlet. Every one who was there made me feel very welcome and I was grateful, am grateful, for everyone giving up their time and hard earned money to come and train with someone they didn’t know and hadn’t seen before. Thank you once again for all of your kind words and support.

I was sitting on the sofa this evening, thinking about this and that and I remember this piece that I’d writen back in 2011. It wasn’t writen for anyone in particular - it was purely a note to myself of things I’d been thinking about at that time with regards to my martial journey. I think this is the first time I’ve published it here. Anyway I think it’s quite apt considering……….

"A silent friend

I have a friend, a confident, who’s walked beside me for two thirds of my life. It’s taken me all of this time to realise that I’ve never referred to him as such or even truly recognised the influence his presence has had on my life. Strange though it might seem, for the most part, I saw him as an “acquaintance” more than anything else.

He’s always been there, standing discreetly in the background, in every momentous occasion of my life from the darkest times when it seemed that I couldn’t find my way out, to the brightest, when I felt like I could achieve absolutely anything – anything life could throw at me I could deal with it. In all of those times, he was a constant for me. When my Father passed away, he carried me on his shoulders like my Dad used to do when I was a boy. He taught me how to fight.

He never pushed me this way or that, never imposed his point of view or advice. He never judged me even when I had already judged myself – more often than not too harshly. Instead, he patiently waited for me to catch up and realise what lessons he was silently trying to teach me.

For thirty years all he did was listen and let me find my own way through. He’s never spoken to me, not a single word. Most times all he did was to hold a mirror up for me so that I might, eventually, see clearly what was rather than what I thought there might be. He listens still. It’s strange that I’ve never regarded him a friend before now considering everything he’s done and all that he’s given me. In truth, I’m not sure why this realisation has came about at this particular moment in time. All I know is that it has and I recognise it.

Maybe I’ve reached a point in my life where I feel that I can’t escape or deny the existence of this relationship anymore. Maybe instead of wanting to secretly run from it like I have for so long, I should embrace it and celebrate its impact on my life.

There are other friends, lifelong friends, more brothers really, who have had an equal presence and influence on my life and you know who you are. Of everything, the greatest gift the martial arts - my silent friend, has given me has been showing me the path to your doors.

June 3, 2011"

I thought he’d left but I think he was just waiting for me again.

I used to talk about this a lot back in the day with the guys who trained with me - the importance of imposing yourself mentally and physically at the earliest opportunity in sparring whilst facing an unknown "quantity". Train yourself to not give anything away, no flinches, facial expressions, involuntary yelps LOL. If you get hit and it hurts, train yourself to acknowledge the shot and move forward. So much of life right there. When watching boxing, my Dad always used to say "It's not the size of the dog in the fight but the size of the fight in the dog" Sometimes cliche are cliches for a reason :-)

Never accept an inferior position to anyone. It is the strongest spirit that wins, not the most expensive sword. - Miyamoto Musashi
Photo by www.facebook.com/transcendingsamurai

In over 20 years of training together and sparring sessions too numerous to mention, you were one of only two people who always used to make me nervous.

Proud Dad :-)

Tom Tucker AKA "The Gentleman" is both technical and quick, making him our second Scholar Vic Pick for up and coming talent from our hosting School.

Instructor Daniel Pope promises this is a talent to watch!

Writen 7 years ago - looking at common denominators in the learning process.

"Martial Arts And The Way Of The Piano.
I've been learning the Piano now for about 6 months or so. I guess that in the time I've probably had about a dozen lessons or so but have practiced as much as I could at home. You know what I love about it? That there's so many similarities between this and learning the martial arts. In fact, I think it wouldn't really matter what field you have spent over three decades immersing yourself in, you would be able to see the similarities in whatever new activity you were undertaking and if you couldn't then I might be tempted to say you've wasted your time. Learning is learning. The process is the same no matter what. I had a lesson last week, I hadn't been for about five weeks. The teacher was pleased with my progress and the pieces I'd been practising and made a comment about how well my hands were moving up and down the keyboard and how much more fluid they were when crossing over. It would have been the same comment I would have made to any student whose form had noticeably improved - the fluidity in movement. I've tried to applied the same principles in learning the Piano as I have to learning and teaching the martial arts. First, no power or speed when learning a new technique because you have no idea at this point how to execute it properly. Practice it slowly, concentrate on your form, focus, feel how your body moves with the technique and rep it over and over and over. Make the technique a part of you and when you have it, I mean really feel it, start working on applying it with speed and power. The same is true of learning the Piano and learning to read music. At first there is a massive disjoint between your eyes trying to read this completely foreign language on the page in front of you, your brain trying to decipher the symbols and meaning and then sending a message to your fingers to find and play the relevant keys. So simple and yet so difficult LOL. It seems like the smallest, simplest thing in the world to do but also the most frustrating. Maybe it's an age thing? Trying to reduce the time between reading the note on the page, finding the key and then striking it - reducing the time between stimulus and response, between being attack and defending. As frustrating as it was and still is, I have secretly found it highly amusing and amazing to gradually learn this new language, decipher the hieroglyphics and teach my brain and fingers to work in unison (well, almost) to create a sound which ends up as "Ba Ba Black Sheep" or "Merrily, Merrily, Merrily". Thankfully I've progressed a bit since then LOL. When learning a new tune, I broke it down into section and repped it over and over, so slowly sometimes but always trying to maintain rhythm. Then I'd rep the next portion until I had it down. When necessary, I'd do the same with the transitions between the pieces (as in grappling, learning position and then transitioning between those positions whilst maintaining control) until eventually I had the tune. The next step was to commit that tune to memory. The notes on the page had served their purpose, They are a map which lead me to a destination. Now that I know my way there I don't need the map anymore. All of the drills that we spend countless hours and months and years doing serve the same purpose but more often than not some choose to continue performing them long after they reached their sell by date. Many of those those drills are designed to train certain attributes, or to correct ones form in executing a technique or series of techniques but once those details in form have been corrected and once those attributes like timing, reaction speed, range appreciation etc have been honed, the drills need to be put aside and new ones learnt. There are times lately when I cant help but smile to myself as I sit here in this study, sometimes when Bec and Tom have gone to bed, and practice the tunes I need to work on because there are moments when my head is completely free from thought and my fingers are moving without and mental restrictions, just finding the keys on their own. Just as there were those fleeting moments in sparring when nothing existed and the techniques were executed without thought in the purest expression of the self. And then I become aware of that moment and of course, it's gone. Just as it is at the moment with the piano. I become aware that there is freedom and emptiness in the movement of my hands and I hit a wrong key, sending my thoughts back in time to watching Les Dawson playing on Saturday night TV back home and intentionally screwing whatever piece he was playing up. Anyway, I don't really know why I've written this, I guess I just wanted to record my thoughts the similarities of learning two disciplines which on the face of it one would think shared no common ground."

Doug

A most excellent session this morning. We worked on forehand and backhand strikes as well as understanding when to use blocking and evasions. I even managed to squeeze in some foundational movements for good posture and increasing your sphere of balance.
On a side note I have to stop breaking sticks on people, especially Paul : )

Stick on baby!

Classes now on Thursday nights, and Sunday mornings. It's so much more than just stick fighting.

No, my face won't look like that in class, I'm a lot happier : )

Great first session for 2020! Word to Nasubukang Arnis x