Guru Dan means business

Guru Dan will be in next month "Irish Fighters" if you want to know what makes Guru Dan tick, check out the magazine, due out 1st June. Just stand well back when you ask him a question, that Keris is very sharp.

Animal Mac Young

One of my concepts is that each year to bring over World Class Instructors, leaders in their field of knowledge, so my students can experience and learn from this at first hand. And I very proud to be able to say after many years of trying to arrange it, we will be hosting Marc "Animal "Mc Young on Sat 28th Aug - 29th Aug 2010. This is Marc first visit to Ireland and will be a weekend to remember. Marc is a leading expert in the field of self defence knowledge and awareness, and has written many books and dvd's. Check out http://www.nononsenseselfdefense.com/ More details to follow soon.. This event is open to the general public and there will be a big demand for places, and due to nature of the training numbers will be limited so register your interest early, so you don't miss out! Roll on August......

Martial Arts Social Media

We now living in the age of social media, youtube , facebook, twitters etc..... everyone now has access to everyone. We can follow their every movement, every thought and just like our multi channel tv's where we have 100's of channels, or thousands of songs on I- Tunes. If our needs are not satisfied instantly or the views being express, don't fit in with our needs, we simply just click a button on the remote or the mouse and hey presto another range of views. We living in the age of "Instant" access.

At the beginning this was a revolution for the good, it's now in my view become a disadvantage to Martial Arts teaching and the development of students. We as a generation surf and scan over information, not spending time or going deeply into learning. We want everything yesterday and believe we learn something as fast. The concept of spending time learning something correctly is alien to the vast social media generation. With the easy access to email, youtube, dvd, downloads etc.. we are bombarded with information from every angle, which has meant we have turn into "info junkies", constantly looking for the next fix.

Now I understand there always exceptions, and everyone believes they are the exceptions, but for 99% of students training, this form of social learning, is going to end up making you unhappy, frustrated with your training and the end product of this is you leave your training.

I posed this question to my students last week and asked them to think about it. Which would you rather have. 5000 different techniques for 20 street defences or 20 Defences that will answer all 5000 different types of Street Attacks. Your answer will depend on how much time you spend on social media! Have a think. Do you have the skill to learn 5000 techniques or even 500 techniques? Do you have the ability to give all your time to learning, for example say 1 technique takes a hour to learn? 5000 hours. Do you have the ability to make it work in real time, under pressure and your life or your love one at stake? Would you bet on giving the correct answer? Or by researching and developing 20 techniques to perfection be more suited for you?

Train hard and see you in class...

Confidence

When you’re training and you may get knocked, or get something wrong or take a bit longer to get something learn't. The biggest thing you have to protect is your confidence!

It’s easy to focus on the negative stuff and think about the things that don’t go right, and when you’re training there are lots of times this happens. It’s easy to focus on the defeats and not the victories and give ourselves credit when something works. Having a healthy positive focus and mindset is crucial. Don't sweat the small stuff, enjoy where you're at, enjoy the experience and have fun.

Lameco Eskrima

The next Lameco Eskrima Course Starts Saturday 17th April at the Fitness Dock Gym Lower Camden Street, Dublin 2. This is a 5 week course and cost is €50. Class time 10am - 11am. This course will focus on how to successfully defend yourself if you find yourself on the ground, after been thrown, slipped or pushed there. Course is open to all, beginners and Eskrima students and if you like to take part email Guru Liam guruliam@hotmail.com or tel 087 9956569 The course numbers will be kept to a maximum of 12 to ensure quality learning.

Knife Training Seminar Dvd (New)

If you missed out on the great Knife Training Seminar last month, or would like a reminder, for all the material you covered, than this Dvd is for you! It covers every Knife technique you did at the seminar. From High Speed Takedowns, to Knife Buahs, to Multiple Attack Defences, to Knife Awareness etc... you can relive the experience and make sure you haven't forgotten anything. As this been our first dvd we offering a special price... €17 and what even better if you attend the seminar we throwing another 30% off, so you can get the Dvd for €12 as a special thanks for attending, and even better we throwing in free Posting to all our Long Distance Students across the World. So don't miss out !

I would like to thank Guru Dan for filming the seminar and Guru Jon for editing the Dvd.

Coming next month Bela Diri Vol 1, Bela Diri Vol 2