Zen Do Kai The Best of Everything in Progression

Late last year, some of my students and I headed out of town to the Kapiti Coast Taekwon-Do club. One of my students (Dai Sempai Tim Watkins) works with the instructor Ian Leitch. Ian was wanting to play/work with some of our self defence concepts, finding another ways of looking at things ... and I'm all for sharing the knowledge for those that are prepared to front up for the harvesting of knowledge.

So after their warm up (interesting how other people's warms up can warm you up differently), we worked through the basic breakfall progression and then onto wrist releases and then shoulder grabs. Having done some Judo and dabbled a bit in Aikido and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, a lot of my self defence stuff is about control, wrapping people up and giving them an opportunity to understand that having a go at me is a dumb idea. Although the basic principles existed, I do like to see a bit more footwork and finesse in the body and hand/arm movement so some of the deeper concepts seemed to be new to them.

We had an interesting discussion in the van on the way back. The most interesting point was that as I was saying 'damn, I missed that' and 'bugger, I forgot about that', my students were countering with 'as it was you blew their minds'. I felt I was showing them so little, yet it was a lot for them to take on board.

There has been mention of them making a return visit .. opening our minds to what they do .. I'm looking forward to that!

Early this year Sensei Greg Nesbitt from the Upper Hutt Zen Do Kai club spoke to me about coming along to help them out with the break falls and throws. On Monday I finally managed to make it. After another one of those someone else's warmups (mutter mutter), we went through the basic breakfall progression. Learning how to fall is an important part of the training we should be doing, and about the only time most of the people from the club had done any breakfall/throwing practise was at sessions run by me at camps. I'm going to leave them with that for a bit and then come back and expand on it more, extending the breakfalls into other ways to get people to practise the breakfalls ... yes, by throwing them!

Zen Do Kai translates to "best of everything in progression", we've taken things from other systems, expanded on those, changed over the years. A perfect system for someone who has always been one to hack at things, find out how they work and not be ashamed to put off going to learn new things and ways to do things.

The old saying "give a man a fish and feed him for a day, teach him how to fish and feed him for a lifetime" applies in martial arts as well. There are plenty of books out there to gather concepts from .. once you have an understanding of those concepts, you can understand why techniques work (or don't work) and how you can make them work better.

People that get out there and play with others are the people that will get the most out of their training. We have a couple of camps coming up before Senjo .. the weapons camp this weekend organised by Kyoshi Martin Brady and Shihan Shane Longstaff has arranged a Zen Do Kai training camp in June. Should be plenty of learning for those making the effort.

Get out there and play with others!