First European Sayoc Kali Seminar review
It was the first chance to see and train Sayoc Kali in Europe. From Oct 10th to 13th I hosted Guro Steve Lefebvre, in Warsaw, Poland.
Guro Steve came exactly at noon on Fri, so on the way back from the Warsaw airport he got unusual chance of watching and participating in our traffic jams. That, and our way of driving for sure made him feel like in Boston...
We started from a general Q and A session about Sayoc Kali techniques, tactics and differences to other blade and Filipino arts. Then we spent some time on drilling Vital Template # 3 of 9. We also did a little bit of grappling and some stick and blade sparring. It took us only ?7 hrs?, so we were hungry for more, during Sat and Sun seminar training!
The first Sayoc Kali seminar was held on Sat and Sun, both days from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. We concentrated on feeder mentality thinking, blade manipulations, 3 of 9 template done in various positions and ways, basic tactics, and then Transition Drill 1. Guro Steve patiently corrected us and answered all the questions, and there were a lot of them! Both days we checked some of these techniques in sparring, both between ourselves as well as against Guro. In fact our goal was to make him tired and finally beat him, but to be honest we were not successful...
At the end of seminar on Sunday, everybody was impressed after Guro Steve?s weapons and empty hand demonstration. Although the number of participants at the seminar was not that big, we had people from Poland, Sweden and Lithuania. Participants were also from a variety of arts, ranging from Pekiti Tirsia, Lameco and even Inosanto blend, everybody trained hard and for sure would be dedicated Sayoc Kali students in the future.
Evening trainings were dedicated to polish all techniques and learn more about fighting applications. We asked hundreds of questions and I think finally got some of these things installed in our brains;) We did knife techniques as well as some stick and empty hands training.
Monday's training was a little bit different. Having 3 of 9 installed (I love this word now!) we practiced 3 of 10 and 4 of 12. This training was last at the end of the day, (I think Guro couldn't stand more questions and decided to give us something to just stop us asking and have a few minutes of break;)
All of the training sessions, were held at Saleta Fight Club (
www.Saletaclub.com), a professional fitness club owned by Polish pro-boxer, Przemek Saleta. A Pool and sauna were just a few things we could use after these hard trainings.
Of course training was not the only thing we did. From the first day we did everything to teach Guro Steve the basic and most useful words from our language. After many, many hours of teaching Guro learnt the most important phrases, and was finally able to order a beer and say "thank you".
I can say that for sure we got a lot of fun and ate tons of good food... about the rest ask Guro Steve, please;)
It was great event and we found Guro Lefebvre great teacher and very nice and friendly person. It's our pleasure to have him as our teacher and friend. I hope the next visit will be very soon!
Gumagalang
Tomek Foik
www.impact.waw.pl
