May 22nd Ohio Seminar

On May 22nd, 2010 I taught a Presas Arnis seminar at Wolfpak Martial Arts in Mt. Gilead, OH. The drive down was pretty easy. Only a 15 minute delay in the metro Cleveland area. There was one minor headache during the trip. I got word from home that my dogs (Bear & Freyja) decided to go on walkabout. They have a knack for finding ways of getting out of our backyard. No fear though, they always get back in about an hour.

Mr. Wolf and I sent Friday evening going over WMAA business, event schedules and the Edged Weapons cutting templates. At the same time we watched Diana Inosanto’s movie, “The Sensei”. It was an interesting movie. I would have loved to see what they could have done if she had the backing of a big studio.

The seminar went well. I started with teaching the Sumbrada drill. We did the basic six count drill with the group and taught the sungkiti version to Mr. Wolf and one of his instructors. We spent a good portion on Sumbrada. We worked on the medium range of the drill although Mr. Wolf assisted me in a Largo Mano version of the drill. It was the first time I used my Kampilan trainer in an interactive drill. I was pleased with both Mr. Wolf’s and my sword’s performance.

I decided to finish the seminar with elements of my PSC (Progressive Sword Concepts) program. I taught the Edged Weapon Cutting and Thrusting template. In addition, I taught how the templates can be used on one and two handed swords. With the help of Mr. Wolf, I demonstrated how it could also be applied to shorter weapon such as axes, daggers and karambits.

Overall the seminar went very well. The only thing that would have made it better was to take a group photo before some of the participants had to leave. We have scheduled two return events. November 19 – 21, 2010 will be the Ohio State Presas Arnis Camp. We will only be accepting 10 participants for this event. March 12, 2011 will be a one day seminar open to all. For more information on either of these events contact Mr. Wolf of Wolfpak Martial Arts at info@wolfpakmartialarts.com or 419-947-9900.

Queen City Laban Laro and 45th Birthday!

The other weekend I hosted the Queen City Laban Laro VIII and celebrated my birthday at the same time. Both events were a very enjoyable experience. I have seen many martial artists have their body destroyed by the time they reach my age from improper training, over aggressive sparring, or just plain old age. I feel that I am very fortunate that I only have little dings, but overall I am in good health.

Running a tournament on the same weekend as your birthday could be a formula for disaster, but everything this year ran like clockwork. This is the second time we have split off all of the Filipino divisions from the main tournament into its own tournament. We hosted the tournament at our school, Horizon martial Arts, which was more that sufficient room to host this event. We decided to run just two rings for the afternoon which worked out quite well. In addition to our normal local support, we had schools from West Virginia, Minnesota and Toronto, Canada.

The divisions were running fast and furious starting with our youth competitors. The ages of our competitors ran from four to fifty four years old. All of the divisions were jam packed with excitement and none of the age groups failed to entertain the spectators. This year’s point stick fighting champion was Ryan Monolopolus, who is now a two time Laban Laro champion. And this year new women’s champion is Valerine Bachowski. This year we added some new features which included a rebate program for the instructors bringing their students, paid judging and electronic score keeping to our event.

After the event I followed up with many of the participants who had nothing but rave reviews. We are looking forward to next year’s event which will be May 14, 2011. We will be adding double stick sparring as well as knife fighting to our divisions. To keep updated on next year’s event, go to the Queen City Laban Laro website or Facebook group. And finally I would just like to thank everybody for making this year’s event a fun and exciting one