Special thanks to Guro Victor Wong who came down to teach class while I was away. Guro Vic is a great teacher and close friend. His style of teaching seems informal but is always eye-opening. According on Lem and David (see notes below) it was a great class!
Guro Lem’s notes:
We had a great time with Guro Victor.
April 24, 2012: Victor W., David, Mosi, Lem, Brian, Ryan, Zavid, Martin, Asim, and Frank.
Guro Victor shared how a blade fight should evolve during a fight. He taught from a Feeder mindset who is either armed with the blade or not. First he had us (with the blade) evolve our feed when we saw/felt how the Receiver countered our attack. This process of increasing the level of attack made it more detrimental for the Receiver. Guro Vic reminded us that we cannot cross-tap forever no matter how good we are. He had us free flow with these concepts in mind. So this process made the Receiver evolve into controlling the Feeder’s blade arm. At this point, he introduced us into Phase 2 material. We then free flowed again and switched partners to get a different energy/tactics when free-flowing.
Last part of class, we had a person with the blade vs two people. This was very interesting to see. Although everyone eventually got taken down, the person with the blade learned to keep pressing forward instead of backing up all the time. Guro Vic later suggested to slow down to see what techniques work and what doesn’t.
David Davis’ notes:
Guro Vic gave us a revealing glimpse into his personal journey and discovery into Sayoc Kali.
In short, his presentation was informative. It was engaging and extremely interactive and identifying areas of weakness. His activities centered around learning needs that focused on situations and factors that contribute to solving significant problems and achieving significant outcomes. It reminded me about the importance of efficient movement. I came away with a new perspective for using Sayoc Kali as a tool to reach my potential not so much in a combative sense, but problem solve in other areas of life.
The best way, I can describe the class; it was a synthesis of applying various learning theories/techniques (behaviorism, cognitivism, information processing theory, situation learning, constructivism, and the newest connectivism). He described an evolution for cross-tapping and how it can improve performance. As a facilitator, he was careful not to force his mode of teaching that is he established an atmosphere that was comfortable to explore new ideas. It was nice to observe his method on “principled based” perspective, as instructional designer I am taught and trained to work from this perspective. I also, enjoyed his points on slowing down regarding adapting and adjusting to resistance. It makes sense while training to slow it down because the training provides much of the feedback for the learning which occurs through our insights and experimentation.
