Local West Belfast karate coach Eric Forsythe from Mushin Karate travelled to Ancona, Italy for a weeks training camp hosted by the Open Circle Fighting Method (OCFM) under the tutelage of Russell Stutely 6th dan and John Andrews 4th dan who is the 3 times heavyweight grappling champion. OCFM are an open-minded, pragmatic martial arts group with a variety of backgrounds. People with ju-jitsu, taekwondo, kung fu, tai chi, karate, door-supervisors, self protection personnel make up their numbers.
The timetable for the week was 6 hours of training per day working on a combination of their striking, grappling, and coaching syllabi. Boxing was a major part of what we were training for in relation to the striking, where knowledge and experience from Herol “Bomber” Graham was given to everyone in attendance – learning the correct foot position, delivery of punches, target areas, distancing – this coupled with the generation of power shots against the etha-foam pads using a variety of shots to different targets helped cement the principles behind what we were doing. The 27 circuits that we had to endure one morning to “warm” us up left quite a few of the attendees in a messy heap at the end, Russell stating, that “his ladies class do this at the beginning of every session before they move onto the real workout”.
Grappling was taught by John Andrews who has fought MMA, ju-jitsu, and grappling competitions where his European titles and experience really shone through in the techniques and concepts that he was teaching. Positioning drills, arm locks, chokes, strangles, leg locks, pressure points from the ground, the concept of what you can do standing up, can also be applied on the ground was explained and demonstrated to ensure everyone understood.
Pressure points was also demonstrated and explained (on me) to painful effect. Russell is renowned through-out Europe as one of the pioneers and most knowledgeable in this field so who better than to learn from the best and have it applied on you by the best. We at Mushin karate are of the viewpoint that pressure points are like the poisoned dart at the end of the technique, if you hit a point whilst delivering a strike – great, if not, then the power of the strike would hopefully give you the opportunity to flee which we teach is always our first and most important part of our self-protection strategy.
The final day was left for visiting the mountains to get some “action” shots for the hosts website (www.metacentre.com) before we had another 4 hours of training with the theme of 8 rounds of stand-up sparring, immediately followed by another 8 rounds of grappling trying to implement the principles of what had been taught up until then. Later on, we went to a local restaurant to have pizza and a few well earned beers to help numb the pain and to soak up the local culture with a great night had by all.
If anyone is interested in learning applied and pragmatic karate you can contact
Eric on 02890604769 or visit our website on www.mushinkarate.com. Alternatively,
you can come to our classes, which are on a Monday night from 7-8 p.m in St
Lukes School for adults and advanced juniors or a Wednesday night for everyone
else. Everyone welcome.