About the 2018 Whistlekick Free Training Day Event
Six, one-hour long time slots. Twelve talented individuals, each with something different to share. Choose your own adventure, come and go as you please, keep what you like and forget what you don’t… All for the low, low price of… free. This is the idea behind the Whistlekick Free Training Day.
In our daily lives we all hear variations of the same lines – Get out of your comfort zone, think outside the box, try something new. So I decided to get out of my comfort zone to see what could be learned from this event. The wide variety of styles and philosophies represented by the multiple teachers would certainly play to that.
The scheduled events included everything from Medieval Dagger techniques, pressure points, and Capoeira to more familiar but still interesting sparring techniques, Filipino martial arts concepts and the “Superfoot” system. The offerings were diverse enough for everyone to try something that was a little different.
My Experience
This is the first time that I have attended this event, which has just completed the third annual session. My initial thoughts were, if I took one or two things back to my school that we could use it would be worth it. The scheduled events were reviewed and it was easy to think to myself “Well that’s neat but it’s not my thing.” or “That could be fun to try.”
I don’t know if it was planned or not but the genius of this event is that, with only about 50 minutes with each instructor and so many different interests represented, you end up with tastings of the best that that instructor has to offer. This includes working with people from other styles who react to your techniques in ways that you’re not used to. This not only means that the instructors were focused on concepts that could be retained and investigated further if it interested you but also forces you to look at how these things work outside of the vacuum of your existing habits.
“I’m trying to fit 35 years of experience into an hour,” joked one instructor. He put us through a two-step drill that could be repeated enough to be remembered and prove that the concept was valid. It was a simple concept, a simple drill. And on more occasions than my pride wants me to admit, my partner and I laughed as we messed it up. We had to collect ourselves and start again. Adjusting to each others different styles and habits while learning the concept and having fun.
During the day long training, we all laughed, learned, and had a great workout. I was able to think about things in new ways and retained enough ideas for drills to bring back to our school to fill up entire classes; using both new concepts and new looks on concepts I was already familiar with.
After the Event
Following the training day, I found ways to implement some of the drills and ideas that I had chosen to share with my students. This was a measure of both my ability to transfer the information and my students’ receptiveness to that same information.
The first challenge was new variations of kicking drills. Some of the students took to it right away, some had difficulty with it. I considered it a success at the time. This feeling was reinforced after class when I asked the students what they thought of the drills. One of the yellow belts told me that they didn’t like that it made their legs hurt a lot. But then he followed it up by saying that it was really good and would help his kicks. The changes were minor on these drills. Many of my students hadn’t picked up on the fact that they were any different from what we normally did. This was a minor success.
Getting kids into the habit of using combinations when sparring is something that I have struggled with. It seems that no matter how many times we reiterate that you should use combinations, many students revert back to a single strike or striking at the same place over and over. After drilling some of the “Superfoot” combinations that we worked on at the training day, and explaining to the students who Bill “Superfoot” Wallace is (Yes, needing to do that made me feel old) a proverbial light went off in their heads. You could see it on their faces and the students approached the drills with much more focus and enthusiasm. (Editor’s note – for more on the challenges of sparring, read Ron Amram’s article on tough sparring.)
Conclusion
Next year I will be attending and bringing some of my students. I suggest that anyone interested in the martial arts and who is able to attend should try to make it. We have all heard, and many repeated, that we grow the most when we are outside our comfort zone, when we try new things. It’s rare to find a single event where you can try so many new things in this way.
I would love to hear from anyone else who attended or anyone who couldn’t but wanted to. What was your experience? Let me know in the comments below! And check out the full photo album on the Whistlekick Facebook page.
- Whistlekick Training Day Review - November 2, 2018
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