Training Log–January 2013

As you all know by now, the CSPS is an evolutionary concept and I pretty much apply that philosophy to everything I do, including my writing. At least, that’s the excuse I’m going to use for my complete and utter laziness of late with these training logs. As the year has become busier and busier with training, teaching and research (alongside everything else in life), I’ve found myself writing training logs later and later after the sessions themselves, and sometimes just not finding the time. As a result, I’m going to do them as a kind of newsletter format where I aggregate all the training news from the CSPS into one monthly little post like this. Any questions on CSPS training are, as always, more than welcome any time as this is primarily for you, the reader, to see what it is that we get up to!

January’s been a great month this year for change and progress, especially at PHDefence in Stockton Brook. With their newly-stabilised payment structure, there’s guaranteed training for their students every week regardless of numbers attending, which has pushed forward a period of great progress in this stability for their students. They’ve even got a new student who’s making great progress, and a couple of students who should be ready to grade soon so it’s a very exciting time for them!

At PHDefence, the higher grades have been focussing on their weapons techniques a lot, particularly the use of the long stick (Jō staff and Bō staff for the more traditionally-minded). So far it’s been mostly stick acclimatisation drills and basic striking as this weapon’s new to them, but soon they’ll be progressing to more in-depth stick usage. They’ve also been doing some aerial coordination drills as a preliminary to their spinning and aerial kicks.

I’ve said this before, but I’ll just say it again here, especially with talk of the spinning and aerial kicking:

I’ll just take a moment to explain what PHDefence is and what my relationship with it is. PHDefence is a local martial arts class, based in Stockton Brook at the moment though it’s been all over the place through the years. It’s owned and was founded by Shifu Paul Horrobin, who created a hybridised martial art mostly based on concepts from Wing Chun (yǒngchūn ~ 咏春 ~ ‘Spring Chant’), Jun Fan Jeet Kune Do (zhènfān jiéquándào ~ 振藩截拳道 ~ ‘Jun Fan’s “Way of the Intercepting Fist”’) and Shaolin Kung Fu (shàolín gōng fū ~ 少林功夫 ~ ‘Young Forest Kung Fu’) among others. The basic premise of what they do there is the attempt to take traditional martial arts concepts and make them practical while retaining their martial-arts focus. I alternate between teaching and training there every other week, with Paul teaching every other lesson. While on occasion I mix in odd concepts and training ideas from the CSPS, this is not a CSPS class.

The snow’s been a constant source of amusement and difficulties, but as my friend (and excellent Systema instructor) Rob Poyton mentioned in a recent YouTube video, these difficulties only present opportunities if you approach your training with an indomitable warrior mindset. Whereas for PHDefence the problem was merely students getting to the session and needing to dry their feet, for CSPS students the opportunities for development were more apparent as we were training primarily outside!

Chris returned to his long-term training recently, and so we got straight to the point with a lot of drills involving use of the shoulder, elbow striking, hammer fists, knee striking and I don’t even know how many other striking methods. Taking an initial contact as a reference point, we used a set framework of movements to efficiently train the different muscle groups of the body to work together efficiently to present a functional combative response.

(What that means is, the pad got bashed hard, fast and lots!)

For Chris, the focus has been on brushing off the rust of Christmas and sharpening up the basic concepts of the CSPS with a slew of new approaches to the same things to further increase the adaptability of their application.

For Matt, the focus has been on initial training of the basic concepts, and I really must say how proud I am of both students with their continued effort and skyrocketing progress week on week.

Other students preferred not to be named, unless you count my brother Jake, with whom I just fight, and that’s pretty much his training most of the time! We just fight. That’s what brothers are for, right?

February’s been an amazing month so far but I’ll elaborate more on that next time!

All the best,

FCIns. Josh Nixon, CSPS