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Nothing like starting off the weekend by blowing off a little stress. Sparring what its all about; its where you bring everything from your classes and put it all together. We were supposed to be at fight night, but upon hearing that it was cancelled, I came to do a little training instead. Here are a few photos of what we got up to on Friday. Osu!

Sparring on Friday

Sparring on Friday

Sparring on Friday

Sparring on Friday - perfect leg block

Earlier this year I found a little two hour, once a week class offered by Martial Arts instructor Jordan Lawrie. I don’t recall the name for his class, and maybe there wasn’t a name for it, come to think. But to describe it, I would call it ‘Creative Self Defence’. We did lots of things I was familiar with, and Jordan added lots of creativity to the mixture. I wasn’t able to continue the class, but looking back, it was a great class and I learned lots.

I shot a little bit of video, although just with available light. Settings have been tweaked to bring out the action just a little better. I caught up later with Jordan over coffee and pannini and asked him to tell me a bit more about his background, his personal philosophy on martial arts, and his training drill featured in the video, which he calls the ‘Seven – Eleven’.

The class:

Jordan’s 2 hour class was a grab bag of techniques, but we focused a great deal on the clinch.

“The clinch. The clinch is sort of the lost range – there are a few ranges in fighting, out of range, kicking range, punching range, knees and elbow range, and then you have your ground – grappling range. The clinch is the range before you hit the floor, when I can grab on to you. The clinch is very important in order for you to be able to defend yourself, and to have tricks, like getting behind your opponent because you are safe there… feeling that dynamic of the opponents body weight is important, having a good firm base and knowing how to manipulate your opponent’s base… You don’t have that in kickboxing, where as you are a free individual out here working in space, dealing with gravity and your opponents kinetic energy. Getting in close is a way to deprive your opponent of weapons.”

The Seven Eleven Drill

“I got the name from one of my old instructors, he was a really well trained guy, going to some or another corner store, late at night, got swarmed by some teenagers. He told them he wasn’t looking for trouble but suddenly, a kick to the groin turned on his adrenaline and he ran right through the first guy he saw and kept running… a really well trained guy, trains all his life, gets swarmed, doesn’t see it coming. Violence happens now. You don’t see it coming at all… I like to do a lot of multiple attacker scenarios, realistic, in that a couple more individuals really changes your game plan. Attacks occur often by weak people, with backup. Attacks among men have back up and weapons.”

“Kickboxing is good to learn the mechanics of punching and kicking, to develop your power, but if you want to train for the real world I really think you have to be training more intensely with these kinds of drills – multiple attackers, multiple weapons, I’ve got several variations on this one, the defender has boxing gloves on, and he’s being attacked by a boxer, essentially, and a wrestler who’s got a (rubber) knife in his belt. The wrestler can pull his knife out once he gets the clinch, and then he can start stabbing.”

“So it teaches him to use the clinch to prevent that guy’s arms from going into his belt to find a weapon. I’ve done it also where the boxer in the middle didn’t know that these guys had weapons. And then once he gets stabbed, its 20 or 30 seconds added to his drill… The drill also teaches line theory, which says put something between you and your attackers. In this case he is using one of the attackers, he’s forming a line. If there was something in the room, even better. So many variations on this one. This drill was mostly appropriated from different martial arts, putting different theories together, and developing my own take on it.”

About Jordan Lawrie

Jordan describes himself as a Jeet Kune Do practitioner. He has come by this title by the path of training in martial arts that he has taken over the years, starting with Aiki Jujutsu and moving on later Chinese Kempo, with its hard and soft styles for about 5 years. Later Bruce Lee’s writings had a strong influence on the idea that he could train in whatever he wanted. He got in with an MMA practitioner friend and got to learn a lot more about the clinch, the standup clinch, Jiu-Jitsu, kickboxing and boxing, tried lots of classes around town; Wolfe’s Defendoo for a year.

“Once you have enough experience in Martial Arts you can learn… a lot in a short period of time… so, I dont have a lot in the way of belt credentials, but I really carry with me the Jeet Kune Do, Miyamoto Musashi philosophy of learning what you can- a little bit of everything and just challenging yourself to make yourself a little bit better… if someone were to ask me what I train in, although I have never formally trained in it (except for a few classes at Ed Wong’s school), I would say it is Jeet Kune Do.”

Jordan now teaches at http://www.elementsacademy.com/ , a modern styled Hapkido school, with a strong fitness component in the curriculum. He is able to teach kickboxing, self defense, MMA – a little bit of everything, true to his traditions of being creative.

“Being creative. I think one of the things that Martial Arts is really lacking is creativity, its an art form, its like a dance, its like an interpretive dance, but a combative form. Because, I don’t think you can be held in a dogmatic believe that once a system is set its a fixed system. A system is always shifting, right down to a cellular level… its always in flux, its never completely in balance. To continue to be an art form it needs to be adding and subtracting from multiple sources.”

Web links in this post:

http://www.uss-canada.ca/index2.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeet_kune_do

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miyamoto_Musashi

http://www.elementsacademy.com/

Sparring on Friday was tough. Our sensei came in and sparred with three of us. Sensei Blake is an extremely tough guy and we all took some heavy licks from him. It doesn’t look very nice at first glance, but this is a new year, and we students have been with Versus 21 since or almost since it opened, almost a year ago. So as we progress, the challenges are sure to only get greater. And as we learn more we can also expect to be coddled a bit less as well. If you get into marital arts, especially in the harder forms, you are probably going to get hit once in a while – and you need to learn now to take a hit so you don’t just crumble when it really happens. I feel neither malice nor humiliation from the experience. Nor should I ever. Sparring is a test; we take responsibility for ourselves and what we know and we act upon it. What would we be learning anyways if we were never exposed to real conflict once in a while. And it wouldn’t be such a great class if it weren’t so intense. Successes give us confidence; failures help us learn. So by Saturday morning, one corner of my eye was blackened and my left eye inside the socket felt like it has been scraping against sandpaper. Both eyes are totally bloodshot; an ice pack helps all of this. And I am thinking about what I did wrong – I let my guard down at some point and I am responsible for that. Something tells me this wont be the last time either. But by defending myself, and responding appropriately to my opponent it shouldn’t have to happen more often than necessary. Osu!

Friday is the day for sparring. That is when I go to Versus 21 and try and put together what I learned there. It involves facing off against another human being and trying to get a good kick or punch in, and of course I take a few myself.

When I started sparring, I discovered what a huge challenge it was to apply what I learned in class on a heavy bag against a real opponent. Everything is changing. You have to pay attention. You get tired, sloppy, you miss, your opponent frustrates you, you drop your gloves or he or gets through your block somehow. Or maybe, the level of conflict escalates and its up to you how you want to respond. Its about taking responsibility for what you have learned.

I have heard a general criticism of martial arts before, that it is too much about an instructor at the head of the class, telling you want to do and you dont think for yourself as a student. To even warrant such a comment, there must be examples out there where that behavior is taken to an extreme, even parody. But sparring is the remedy for all that. You are put in charge of your learning.

And what a Its a huge shift it is from simply blocking that kick because the sensei told you to, and taking responsibility for it yourself. Its up to you to block that kick now. You dont want to block that low kick? Fine. Dont block the low kick. Feel the consequences. Because having the best sensei in the world wont matter if you dont take responsibility for the lessons you have learned. And by the way, it turns out that you lose less energy by lifting that leg and blocking that kick rather than leaving it on the ground and taking it.