Peter Freedman on Training Slowly

This is from an email sent out by my friend Peter Freedman in response to a question from one of his students. Having taken a high performance driving course at the Jim Russell Racing Drivers School and done autocross racing, I think Peter is right on the mark with his analogy about driving, which is why this is posted here. - JF

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"Great hearing back from you again and thank you for your question. Well this is a really great question you asked here. It is also an extremely important question and I will try my best to shed some light on why most combative martial arts like Ketsugo Jujutsu and other systems train in slow speed.

First let's look at driving a car. Let's say you never drove a car before but you happen to watch and be a huge fan of Nascar. Now you want to learn how to drive and have high hopes and dreams of some day racing cars. So you sign up to a driving school to learn how to drive a car so you can first get your drivers license. When the time comes to actually drive the car, your mind is racing and you can't wait to go Fast & Furious.

Now when you enter the car you must first adjust your seat to the right distance. Put your seat-belt on. Adjust your mirrors. Start the car, and at this point in time your heart is starting to race and pump and speed up. You step on the brake pedal and put on your blinker. You shift the shifter into drive and you look over your shoulder and start to ease off the brake and out onto the empty road. You step off the brake and step slowly onto the gas peddle. Hand over hand, you turn the wheel as the car pulls out onto the road. Now when you are out on the road what do you do? Do you step down on the gas pedal and go as fast as the car can move or do you first get to know the car and feel the road underneath your tires?

You will need to learn to adjust your steering skills along with your braking and gas coordination skills. As you slowly get used to the car and the road you can gradually speed up the car. But at first your mind will be all over the place - watch out for other cars - watch out for people or kids - watch out for small animals. Your mind will be jumping around - brake - gas - steering, a little to the right, now a little to the left to get the car to straighten out. You are looking for red lights, yellow lights etc... Stop signs pop out at you. Now you must switch lanes - oh boy, how you going to do this, you ask yourself? But over time all these little things that you strain your brain to memorize to do become normal to the point where it is now automatic and now you can spend time on strategy of driving and less time worrying about every thing about how the car works or operates.

Did you know when you go to a school for car or motorcycle racing that they first sit you down and it will be mostly class room time and lecture before you ever get a chance to drive out onto the track or sit in one the cars? When you are ready to drive out onto the track, they will have you first walk it on foot so they can talk and explain to you where it would be the best time to start downshifting and clutching into the turn and when and where to step on the gas coming out of the turn.

They would walk you around to certain points on the track to show you where you would have the best chance of passing another car and where would be the worst places to pass another car. Once this is over they would have you go back into the class room and discuss what you just saw and felt. By now because you went (SLOW)and first WALKED around the track, you got a chance to see every bump and dip on that track.

They want to see what is going on in your brain and how you think long before you are allowed to get behind a wheel to actually drive a race car, and never mind about racing, you won't be ready for a while to race a car.

Just like wanting to learn advance techniques before you are able to actually do them, or get your black belt before you really deserve one but because your friends from another school got their bb in two months and you feel you deserve one as well, my question here for your friends is this: Can your friends drive?

The next step is they put you into a car and they have you drive around the track in slow motion, talking to you all the while you are driving. They give you commands and a set of instructions: when to down shift and when you should brake and when to step on the gas, when to speed up and when not to speed up.

In the martial arts this would be known as the martial science.

You go around this track hundreds of times slowly until you can learn their safety methods and proper racing techniques so you won't become a danger to yourself and other drivers(follow the rules of racing). These rules in Jujutsu would be considered the concepts and principles of why things work and when they would work.

Now once this accomplished they bring other cars out onto track with you and your instructor communicates to these other cars by way of two way radio. They set up fake scenarios like you are actually racing but only done in very slow motion. They talk you through each maneuver you do until it becomes ingrained into your being and you can actually see and understand what they mean. Once they feel this has occurred you are allowed to have a mock (fake) race and they practice giving you instructions through a radio in your helmet while you are racing to see how you follow their directions under stress and how well you listen to them.

Jujutsu is a lot like racing a car. First we must understand that we are dealing with the human anatomy here and we don't want to (Crash & Burn!) hurt our training partners or ourselves. Always safety first should be in the forefront of your mind's eye.

Most of the techniques we taught to you and we share with you are extremely dangerous and are designed for crippling and killing. With this being said each student must first learn to go very slowly (to walk the race track) and learn all the proper methods and techniques first, so that your brain and body can learn to move in the proper way.

Most of the techniques we practice here in our jujutsu school, you just can't do fast with out first learning the proper technique of how each technique really works first. As you start to feel comfortable with the flow of the series of movements and timing and angles etc then you can speed it up a little bit providing your workout partner knows how to go along with the types of techniques you are applying to him/her, and this is for safety reasons.

Just by going slow can really help you to be able to see more options (creative techniques) or (openings - holes - gaps & weakness) in your opponent's defense, so that in future events if you should happen to get into a real bad situation with another person who has the same kind or set of special skills that you now possess, you will have a better chance to counter their attacks and go around their defense and win (stay alive).

When you first learn jujutsu you are learning things that go against the joints which if you go to fast can really over extend that joint or even worse break that joint and really hurt your workout partner.

There are three speeds we teach to all students here:

Slow speed for learning;

Medium speed for practice;

Fast speed for fighting.

If you train fast all the time you are actually slowing down your ability to learn fast and that is counterproductive. Also by going fast you are promoting fear in yourself and in your training partners. By going fast you lose the ability of understanding what you are doing. By rushing through your techniques you can't see the cool counter techniques that you can see when going slow. By going fast you concentrate too much on the end of the technique and miss the important things, like the beginning and the middle of what you are practicing.

Health wise, training fast is not to good for longevity. It raises your blood pressure and it hurts your joints. Also it taxes your nervous system. Yes, you will be fast but over long periods of time with age creeping up on you, joints will start to wear out, your nerves will cause you to shake. Your Ki or Chi or Prana will go in different directions. From a healing point of view, which seems to be the path way I am now on, I have learned to go very slow and take your time and this will produce better and safer results. Going slow teaches us which way to go under pressure. By training fast we lose our sensitivity.

I love what Bruce Lee, the founder of Jeet Kune Do, said in his movie Enter The Dragon back in the 1973: "It's like a finger pointing to the moon," then he goes on to slap the young man to whom he was giving the private lesson who was staring at his finger, saying "Don't concentrate on the finger or you will miss all that heavenly glory!"

That pretty much says it all right there, but I feel it actually went right over everyones' head. You see everyone seems to concentrate on the finger (speed - lots of techniques) and they are missing the rest of the big picture, - All That Heavenly Glory. A real shame.

The Tai Chi people have it right. They know the importance of slow training. So do the special operation groups in the military or law enforcement. They train really slow. When I first got an opportunity to watch them train one of the instructors came over to me and said "We train very slowly here so that we may learn more." I smiled and nodded in agreement with him and after I was finished training them they liked my methods of hand to hand. Not one person got injured and every one learned really effective techniques and had fun learning with my crew that I brought with me to help teach.

Well I hope this helps out ..."

Last Day For A New Year’s Blog!

January 31st; we’re already 8.49% of the way through 2009! Thus my belated last ditch attempt at blog for the New Year. I’ve thought of this often, ever since the 1st of the month, but after today, it’s too late! How’s that for self-motivation?

How many of us make New Year’s resolutions? It doesn’t seem as big a deal as it used to be. How many of us made martial art resolutions? In some places that is a tradition, more solidified and culturally reinforced than the kind of wishful thinking so many of us do as a parlor game and then so quickly forget.

In Japan, you may find the members of a dojo at the beach, standing in the surf while throwing 1000 punches, or maybe doing meditation under a waterfall in the mountains. This is a way of setting one’s focus and determination for the upcoming year, planting the seed for reaching one’s goals. It takes dedication to one’s practice to do such rituals, but our minds tend to note and follow more highly energized stimuli, so this is good self-programming which refreshes one’s attitude.

Using a memorable date provides a powerful anchor by which we can measure our commitment and progress. In Western society we go by calendars, so it’s never to late to start a new program. The first of the month, a birthday, anything can be used to set a starting point.

Modern calendars are reliable but not always in sync with natural rhythms. In older societies passage of time was marked by observing celestial transitions. Lunar cycles in particular are good for measuring shorter passages. The new moon often sees the setting of new goals, which then symbolically evolve as the moon waxes, or one could project one’s aims to coincide with the full moon, or use the waning part of the cycle for more closely guarded endeavors.

For slightly longer phases, one can go by seasons. Those who follow a more natural diet, whether by local availability or preference, might note the effects of seasonal produce on their bodies, just as animals do in the wild. Spring foods might be cleansing and restorative after the winter, then summer foods for energizing and building strength. Autumn is a time for fattening up, while winter is often lean, when we live off our stored resources.

So on New Year’s Eve I had my weekly class. Not surprisingly, some whom I’d expected didn’t show up. Perhaps the party spirit prevailed, though my class ends early enough to do both. The next day I practiced with one of my students and we kicked the new calendar off with a good dose of intensity.

So far I’ve been carrying that through these following weeks. I’m training harder myself and with students, and some old faces have popped back up for refreshers. I'm going back to more serious conditioning routines that have been neglected over the past year, in particular resistance training and hitting the wooden dummy.

2008 was a rough year; here’s hoping 2009 shapes up as a better one!

Doing Simple Things

I’ve always placed a lot of emphasis on doing simple things in my martial art practice. It comes from my Kenpo teacher, Al Thomas, who taught that complicated techniques were nothing more than longer combinations of simple things. Master those elements, and the whole comes together better.

As beginners all we can see is the gross form of something, and we need to create a structure within which to work. As we develop and acquire breadth, though, there are fewer and fewer new structures to build. Rather we develop depth through developing control of smaller details, polishing what we have.

Consequently, my job as taskmaster is to insist students go back and figure out what I showed them to prove they understood the concept. Sometimes I’ll scold them by saying “You’re paying me for my knowledge, so why aren’t you paying attention?!”

It gets frustrating at times, as a teacher, to see that other people don’t grasp this. Sometimes I show a very specific move I want practiced, then I’ll turn my back for even just a few seconds, and when I look back guys are already experimenting with variations or even completely different moves.

Recently I thought of this analogy, that a technique is like a car’s engine. There can be a lot of moving parts, but if only one of them screws up, the whole thing might fail. Things like precision and accuracy in timing and motion get honed by conscious repetition, paying attention to consistent efficiency. The payoff can mean success under stress.

A personal example of that comes from my old Kenpo days. I was a brown belt, sparring against a green belt named Eric to help him prepare for a tournament. Eric was about 6’1” tall, 220 lbs, a deep chested physically fit lineman for a utility company who won trophies as a black belt in point and semi-contact competition. I was his tune-up, but facing him I felt like more like tuna.

On our first face-off, I beat him with a quick and unexpected jab. He looked like he expected to box and I caught him by surprise, a lucky shot. The next point was more of a setup, faking him and then catching him with a backfist on the reverse.

Now Eric was angry. As we squared off I could see the flames in his eyes and thought “this is it; what will I do?” I swear I remember thinking of the old story of the monk who offended a samurai.

Not wanting to dishonor his sword by simply killing the man outright, the samurai told the monk he had three days to prepare for a duel. The poor monk, distraught, sought out a local fencing master who took one look at the monk’s lack of skill and said “Just hold your sword over your head like so, close your eyes, and when you feel “coolness”, strike!”

All the monk did for those three days was practice standing and meditating on feeling coolness. When the time came for the duel, the two faced off and the monk did as he had been instructed, expecting to die at any second. A few moments ticked off, then a few more, and finally he opened his eyes to see the samurai bow to him and say “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you were a master!” and then stride away. By concentrating so fully, the monk (or a tea master in some versions) attained a state of grace which was impenetrable, and the samurai recognized the power of such commitment to a single moment.

Well, Eric was not about to stride away, but my commitment to the next moment was absolute. As soon as our teacher shouted “Hajime!” and Eric started forward, I through the straightest, strongest, most single-minded right punch of my life, powered by a kiai that shouted I had nothing to lose.

The punch caught Eric square in the center of his chest. His legs kept churning towards me; his upper body stopped cold, and an instant later he was flat on his back, both of us in disbelief.

Our teacher called “Point!” and every hand in the room except one pointed to me. The last student crossed hands and said “I couldn’t see it because of my angle.” The teacher burst out laughing, saying “When someone goes down like that, it’s a POINT!” Everyone started laughing, the tension was broken, and Eric, as I recall, went on to do well in that weekend’s tournament.

The point is this – back then in our training we threw thousands and thousands of punches. Every day we’d do hundreds, in horse stances, side stances, hitting the heavy bag, hitting each other. Classes would last up to a couple of hours, and we’d punch and kick until we felt our limbs would fall off and there was no choice but to be efficient, because we were too tired to put anything extra into our movement. Thus when the moment came, the body was primed to act; the mind said go, and so it was done.

Beyond that moment, though, are the many attributes one gains to get there, and these are the things that we can apply to daily life, as most of us aren’t required to punch our way out of many situations. We learn to persevere, to endure the effort to reach our goals. We develop stamina to work harder, and efficiency to succeed with less expenditure of energy. These are not just characterizations of physical movement, but qualities of the mind that foster determination and courage. We learn to stay calm through patience and to act decisively when necessary. We become observers of the human condition, both our own and of others, and so develop appropriateness of action.

Like that punch, our qualities of wisdom await the right moment to act. To the unprepared, the unknown can be overwhelming, while those who have developed their inner resources will always have that strength to sustain them. Lately I’ve been dealing with my mother’s death, the passing of the matriarch of our family. Such occurrences often upset equilibriums, changing the balance of relationships between family members. No matter how one might prepare, the reality remains a challenge, and I’ve found my ability to remain centered has been a great attribute not only to myself but others around me as well. People react to stress by feeling stressed themselves; it can be contagious. Conversely, having a place to feel secure can allow problems to simply be what they are, without necessarily becoming overwhelming.

No one becomes a black belt or escrimador overnight, and looking at the whole process taking years can be daunting. However, when we approach things one step at a time, just taking on what needs to be done next, things are more manageable. Remember to breath and relax; tension isn’t going to help. As the old saying goes, “Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water ….”

Knowledge, Skill and Ability

Today I began thinking of various elements of training and these three words – knowledge, skill and ability – stayed with me. This is another use of the triangle as a concept, keeping in mind that it is still a single integrated structure and why it is commonly shown within the circle to denote wholeness. So why did I choose these three words? They are a reflection of certain memories that surfaced, and so are representative of key concepts.

It is said that knowledge is power, but I think it would be more correct to say that knowledge is a key to power. One can know something without grasping its value or understanding the implications. It takes action to apply knowledge for effect. Nevertheless, knowledge is the foundation, the means from which understanding can grow. Great thinkers like Archimedes and Descartes understood that having a single certain truth enabled them to establish valid and logical principles.

Serrada founder Angel Cabales understood the value of knowing the principle of one. He taught to hold the ground on which you stand because we already know how to move; being immovable is much harder. By not moving, we are the leverage with which to move others. This doesn’t mean we lack mobility, but that we can ground ourselves where and when we need, and this is a great generator of power. Similarly, our defenses use a single point of contact to create a powerful fulcrum. Two points are inherently unstable because balance tends to shift back and forth, but one point simply controls the balance, as it has nowhere else to go.

Skill is application of knowledge. How many of us have trained with people who can explain the how and why of techniques in intricate detail but cannot demonstrate them well enough make the application work? I specifically remember one guy back in my Kenpo days who was an orange belt (the first promotion) back when I was a white belt. By the time he got his next promotion I was already several belts past him, and over a decade that was it for him. Now this guy was a walking encyclopedia of details from the day I met him, a veritable engineering whiz at blueprinting every move in our system. He was also built like a warrior dwarf from “Lord of the Rings” and was one tough punching bag, emulating his hero boxer Tex Cobb, who was known for relying on an iron head to survive his fights. Unfortunately Kenpo is designed for speed, accuracy and mobility, all of which my friend was lacking. Perhaps it was a bad match of body type and the art (he’d have made a good MMA guy) but all his knowledge of this system seemed of little practical value.

The third level is ability, a term I’m using as a catchall to describe a level encompassing and surpassing the previous two. It is how well we exhibit our knowledge and skill, as having those things does not intrinsically qualify our performance. On the one hand we each have natural potential, greater for some than others, but which can be enhanced for any through proper physical conditioning. On the other hand, ability goes beyond the physical to include our willpower. Training can build physical and emotional toughness, but then sometimes athletes leave their game in the locker room. Certain things cannot be coached beyond narrow limits, such as size, speed and desire. Heart is something that is revealed only when it is tested, though it can be nurtured through the learning process as steps are mastered.

Physical strength is always an asset, though perhaps not as vital in weaponry as in other arts such as grappling. Still, one needs to be strong enough to handle pressure and have the endurance to finish a fight. A problem I have in teaching is that I see most students only once a week for a couple of hours. Escrima can be very technical and requires focused attention. When training time is constrained, it is imperative to work on skill, leaving conditioning for the student to pursue elsewhere. Leaving conditioning to chance is a mistake, because hard, grueling practice can reveal character. To excel takes hard work, and as they say in motorsports, the last 10% of performance is 90% of the expense. The mountain is always steepest at the top.

I miss the old days at the Kenpo school because we had access 24/7, and classes ran several hours every day. With that much time, conditioning was well-integrated into training, as opposed to haphazardly hoping students will take it on themselves to get sufficient work in on their own. We had a basic conditioning cycle we used to do, consisting of 100 jumping jacks, 25 pushups, 50 situps (or crunches, done in pairs with our feet interlocked and slapping hands with each other when we came up to add torsion), and then 25 more pushups. We would typically open class with 2-5 cycles, done quickly to get warmed up before bagwork, kick trading or sparring; we always worked up a good sweat quickly.

Another component is stretching, which again is less significant in Escrima than in an art that emphasizes kicking. Current recommendations are to stretch when fully warmed up, better at the end of a vigorous workout because muscles are more pliable when hot. Not only do we not spend time on this in short classes, we rarely get that hot in Escrima, even when sparring hard. Back in the 70’s when I did a little Tai Chi with Master Chiang at the Wen Wu School, I was taught that flexible legs were a key to longevity. In my 20’s this was a distant concern, but now I can feel what a difference it makes. In the last 8 years I’ve gone through graduate school and endured a period of difficult health. During those times my conditioning was neglected, and I can attest that it doesn’t come back as easily as when I was younger.

Many of us take up martial arts to defend ourselves or for sport, health being the third reason people often give. As we get older and our skills become honed, we come to rely on efficiency rather than strength. This is all well and good, but to maintain our health we need to still make room for the less glamorous side of training. As the saying goes, what we do now will show up in our health in 10 years. The work we do today pays off in the future.

Progress in Training

Progress in martial arts training is rarely a linear progression as growth comes in spurts. The fastest and steepest learning curve is at the beginning, when all seems new. Even then, everyone has their own rate of learning. Some absorb information like a sponge while others struggle to squeeze in each drop.

Ironically, it’s the latter who most often seem to rise to excellence. Knowledge that is hard fought to acquire has value. Those with great talent sadly seem rarely destined to achieve their potential. Taking their abilities for granted, it’s “easy come, easy go.” What is learned without effort seems of little value, another way of interpreting the phrase “you get what you pay for.”

I sometimes compare learning to building a dam on a river. As the dam rises, the water fills in the reservoir behind it. That filling in takes longer than building the dam. So it is with learning. Acquiring information is one thing; having the knowledge of how to use it is another. The dam represents the structure of your learning; the water is your experience.

The water level rises as it fills in behind the dam, quickly at first where the reservoir is narrowest at the bottom, more slowly as the surface area increases along with depth. When the reservoir has filled, one can then raise the dam, and once again it will take time to fill the volume behind that interface. Thus a new dam may need to be fairly tall, but successive levels might go up in smaller increments.

Similarly, with experience it becomes harder to learn new things because so much is already understood. Eventually any new nugget of information is like a precious jewel, adding some glow to what is already polished.

Our unconscious mind operates like water. We are only aware of what floats or is reflected on the surface, though we may intimate the ripple of currents below or surmise the contours of the bottom.

Knowing how to learn is its own skill set, related to but separate from the actual subject at hand. One’s internal perspective can either help or hinder the learning process. Meditation is helpful because it turns down the volume of self-talk, the dialog we carry on with ourselves. As we learn to tune out distractions, we gain clarity, which helps us become better focused on what is important.

How many people beat themselves up mentally and emotionally when they make a mistake? What a huge waste of energy that is! Such a person is stuck in the past, which cannot change. A feedback loop of negative self-talk is called “stinking thinking.” It’s better to stay focused on the positive. Simply acknowledge the error, recognize what needs to be fixed, and correct it.

One form of negative belief is that it will take a long time to learn something. If that’s what you believe, then that’s what you will get. We program our experience through such internal structures. I use a Huna technique, which is to program new patterns in three repetitions. It works like this:

The first time you do something new, your unconscious mind ignores it. It’s busy thinking about someone on whom you have a crush while digesting lunch, maintaining heart rate and metabolic temperature and balancing a tall vertical structure on the narrow platform of your feet.

You then repeat the behavior (thought or action) immediately and EXACTLY. Not similar, but as close to duplication as possible. Your subconscious mind still hasn’t paid attention to the content of your new behavior, but because it is a repetitive pattern, it rises to a higher level of significance. Your mind is geared towards noticing things like patterns.

Now you repeat the behavior for a third time; your subconscious has been primed to pay attention to the message itself. Add to this the fact that your conscious mind is focused on this exercise, which will increase its attraction to the unconscious.

Programming the basic behavior can be that quick, but without reinforcement it will be forgotten. Each subsequent repetition over time will deepen the channel. We build our neuro-networks to find and access our information. This is why it’s important to learn something correctly the first time, because it is harder to change established patterns of behavior than it is to create new ones.

Some teachers will let students flounder for a long time without correction. Perhaps this is to allow the chance for self-discovery, but then isn’t the function of the teacher to point the right direction? There is plenty of self-discovery to take place even when looking in the right direction. That is why I take pains to establish the foundation with beginners, because then they can go much further on their own. At least this way, if they don’t stay in the art, at least they will understand basic principles, which will be of more benefit in the long run than merely trying to remember sequences of movements.

As martial artists, one of our skills is to become fighters. Even in arts like Tai Chi, to raise energy and focus there should be a sense of an enemy standing before oneself. In arts like FMA, this goal is explicit. Some people are born with a fighting spirit, or acquire it early from their environment. Others have to learn it later, and perhaps more by choice than necessity.

There is a difference between “knowing” and “not knowing” that is irrespective of intellectual content. As Sijo Adriano Emperado has said, “one must turn on the light; once it is turned on, it cannot be turned off.” One obstacle to overcome is equating anger with intensity. Think of the scene early in “Enter the Dragon” when Bruce Lee gives a lesson to his young disciple. Anger clouds judgment; intensity focuses it like a laser.

It is the natural fighter who seems to learn quickly. One of my recent students was an experienced martial artist who learned six angles of escrima in three months and was able to use them fairly proficiently. At the other extreme I have a student who has been with me for half a dozen years, and it took much of that time for him to become actualized, someone in whom the art lives as opposed to “just doing it.”

The first guy is tough, already knows how to fight. Escrima added a new skill set, filling in knowledge not yet acquired. What he learned serves him well as he is proficient with those basics. The question is whether he will deepen that skill or whether he will set aside his training as he goes on to other things. The only way to really become good is, just like tennis or many other sports, to continue to test oneself against better opponents and thus elevate one’s game. As I wrote at the beginning, it is rarely the fastest learner who excels. Hmm, like the tale of the tortoise and the hare.

The second guy is a professional who likes to spend his free time outdoors. Escrima was just an add-on activity, something he found interesting. For a long time he seemed to be sleepwalking through training; my challenge was to find a way to awaken him. The trigger finally turned out to be switching from stick to blade, sparring with the swords I’m now making. That one change injected a higher perception of risk that propelled his skills to a significant level, and suddenly he has become very hard to hit.

To see the light come on is the moment I wait for as a teacher, because I know that now the art lives in this person. When it takes a long time, as it sometimes does, the struggle itself has meaning for it is what gave birth to a new reality.

What difference does this make? For one who has “seen the light” the answers come from within. In practical terms it means this person will perceive and counter attacks even faster than he consciously realizes them. When I spar such a person I can simply attack, knowing that it will take all my skill to find an opening I can exploit. Against someone who is merely proficient, I not only must protect myself against their attacks, but must also take responsibility for protecting them against my own!

At one level, one trains a student to spar by giving them opportunities to succeed; there is a danger that they will see this as ultimate success. It seems particularly true in fencing arts that it is easier to attack than defend, lending credence to “the best defense is a good offense.” Perhaps, though, it is simply harder to learn good defense, as that involves reading the opponent’s intentions accurately rather than leading them, or worse, ignoring those signals. Boxers may be willing to trade blow for blow, but with weapons that is rarely a wise course of action. Those that strike without concern for safety risk getting set up in the worst way.

To quote another saying, “There are bold pilots and there are old pilots, but there are no old bold pilots.”

Training with new training blades

It’s always special to see something come together that’s been a long time coming. Sometimes a small change makes a big difference, breaking up what is routine and opening new possibilities.

My inspiration comes from the late great Sonny Umpad. Last weekend was a gathering of the Visayan clan. I was already thinking of how to get copies of a magnificent 12" training blade Sonny made for me many years ago. It was so nice I never wanted to use it or risk losing it (which I did for about 2 years, another story). With the cost of manufacturing so high around here, I decided to make my own copy by hand.

The first one took me hours. I traced the original, scanned it into the computer, then resized it to fit a piece of paper and printed it out. I cut that out and taped it to a solid billet of plastic and then went through various stages of cutting, grinding, filing, sanding and polishing. When I was done, I had a really cool training knife!

The next day I decided to make another, which went faster. Now I was more confident in the techniques I needed to make these. I had one last odd shaped piece of material left, which I turned into two 19” krisses.

Here’s where the fun began, because now my students and I got to start playing with the new toys to see how well they hold up in use. The plastics I use are much tougher than almost any wood yet gentler against other sticks than metal. The way I finish these makes them look like wood. Sometimes I have a hard time convincing folks it isn’t what they think.

What surprised me was the sudden increase in accuracy my students showed with the krisses compared to regular sticks. While the techniques themselves required some adjustments to really align the blades, it was the basic strikes that caught my attention. Whereas I’ve critiqued students at times for holding back and not throwing strikes to the target, with the krisses their attacks were as close and precise as I could wish. There was something about the mass and shape of the weapon that focused their mind and body into the strike in a new way.

The krisses, at 19”, are heavier than most sticks but feel secure because of the grip. The triangular blade shape seems to draw attention towards the tip, which has a slight downward hook. One student called it a “hawk’s beak”, saying he felt as though it wanted to bite into the target. Whatever the reasons, drills and sparring this week hit a new high, and those are moments a teacher savors and will remember.

Of the two large blades, the first has a thinner handle because my material was oddly shaped, missing a rectangle I’d cut out years ago for the prototype of my commando blade. It lacks the mass of the lower guard in front of the knuckles at the bottom of the blade, which helps balance the tip, so I made the blade thinner and lighter (except for the tip, which I’m leaving blunt). I always say the weapon will tell you how it likes to move; this one has a light feeling, responding like an extension of the fingers with quick reversals. The balance is almost like an Indonesian kris.

The second kris feels bigger, with a slightly broader handle and blade and a straighter alignment. This is more similar to my heavy Moro kalis seka and is more suited to powerful slashes, with control coming from the wrist.

My smaller knives follow a similar pattern, with the first slimmer in the hand and the second one more robust but with more defined grind lines.

After 2 hours of heavy use yesterday, they don’t look quite as shiny and new, but that’s ok, these are supposed to be training weapons, not show pieces. I love having these in my stick bag, but I’m sure they won’t stay there much when it’s time to play!

I’ve already had several people ask if I’m going to sell these. The answer is probably yes. These are labor intensive, but if I make them by hand I can sell them retail for what machine shops would charge me just for cutting the basic form, which I still have to finish by hand. I won’t have large quantities in stock, and each one will be a little different, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I just need to keep honing my skills so I can refine various grips and blade balances towards specific goals.

Note: Last night, after writing this, I went to a party at grandmaster Mark Gerry’s house, a fantastic gathering of masters and grandmasters attending Wally Jay’s 90th birthday weekend events. The first, lighter kris really caught the attention of everyone who played with these.

Nice!