In attendance: (back) Warren D., Shaun X., Joe C., Maria H., Keith H., Mosi J., (front) Miguel A., Bob Shin, Tom M. and Frank R.
The weather was a little chilly (as was the reception from one of my neighbors, who took down license plate numbers). The sun was out, however, and the ground wasn’t too muddy.
We warmed up with 3/9 tapping in my garage as we waited for everyone to show up. We emphasized “intent” on the attacks as well as footwork.
Once everyone had arrived, we headed down the hill into the woods. The first part of the seminar was spent on blade disarms. The key for this technique is to angle toward the hip. The technique works with either blades or fingers; in fact, several people found it easier to get the disarm to work with their fingers.
Next, we reviewed basic blade passing protocol. It turned out that many people had never learned how to toss a blade properly, so we reviewed that, gathering in a large circle and tossing blades to each other. Once everyone got the hang of this, we tried passing the blade to each other while running. (Warren received an award for being far and away the worst at this.)
Just to break things up, we spent a little bit of time throwing trainers, so that people could experience being attacked that way.
Transition drills were next. Most of the time was spent polishing TD 1 and TD 2. There are so many important details that we could probably have spent the entire seminar on just one of the drills. Particular emphasis was placed on proper targeting to draw the receiver responses. Footwork was also emphasized, particularly for moves 7 and 8 (the armbars) in TD 1.
We broke out the padded sticks for the last part of the seminar to work on basic mass attack concepts. First, we had a couple of free-for-alls. The main lessons learned were to keep moving and to watch out for attacks from behind. A little bit of time was spent one two-on-one and three-on-one. As always, movement and stacking were the key.
I had a great time. I hope everyone else did too. Now all I have to worry about is getting reprimanded by the Home Owners Association for scaring the neighborhood children …
