My new group

[Headhunter]

So I've been out a while from here being busy but I'm still training in Muay Thai and Jiu Jitsu and enjoying it but I also wanted to continue my kenpo and frankly in my area there's not many great schools around but I've spoken to a few friends and we've started a little group every Sunday. It's at a sport centre hall and there's about 6 of us who just train and exchange ideas in kenpo. I'm the one that's in charge because I'm the highest rank everyone is different degree of brown belt and 1 green belt. It's not a formal club and I will not be promoting anyone or looking for new students and there's none of the yes sir no sir stuff so not a formal martial art school at all. If I get interest off some I'll consider it but I only open it to brown or above simply because I don't want it to be me spending more time teaching of course I'll help people out if they need it but it's about me getting in training as well. I did let a green belt in because I know him and I know he's easily good enough for brown. I don't charge anything for it as I know the guy who runs the sports centre as he actually worked for me for years so he's let me have it for free.

It's a nice training environment and good to just keep up training kenpo

 

[hoshin1600]

Sounds great. Good for you.

 

[JR 137]

Kinda reminds me of our “Fight Club” when I was in my 20s. I worked in a brew pub, and half the kitchen guys were MAists at different schools and styles. After a few months of genuinely good-natured banter, one of the guys said “why don’t we get together at my house and spar.” It was one of those why didn’t we think of this before moments.

We went to his house, took moved everything out of the living room, and started sparring; bare knuckle, padded, light contact, heavy contact, etc. We were all friends and there wasn’t any ego nonsense.

We started doing it every Sunday afternoon. We’d bring friends every now and then too. I was Kyokushin offshoot, the coordinator was American Kempo, we had TKD, Wing Chun, and a few other karate styles. One guy brought a boxer a few times. I brought my big mouth brother who didn’t train but thought he knew how to fight. One or two other non-MAists came every now and then too.

It was a lot of fun. No rank, hierarchy, experts, etc.; it was a group of guys sparring and giving each other pointers. No one got out of hand and no one got injured.

I ran into the guy who started it a few years back. He said “why did we bring everything outside? We should’ve just sparred outside instead.” Why we didn’t think of that at the time is beyond me. I guess it was because the hardwood floor made it official or something.

Sorry for the sidetrack headhunter. Thanks for bringing back those memories. But thinking about it a bit, would you consider a fight club of your own? Think “spar club” more than actual fight.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

Sounds like fun, Headhunter. There's a group of Karateka (Shorin-ryu, I think) who use the same center I do - just some guys with noplace else to train, most holding rank.

JR, I've thought about doing something like that, if I could ever get together a mixed group. I just don't have enough contact with folks in the area to run into martial artists.

 

[Headhunter]

Kinda reminds me of our “Fight Club” when I was in my 20s. I worked in a brew pub, and half the kitchen guys were MAists at different schools and styles. After a few months of genuinely good-natured banter, one of the guys said “why don’t we get together at my house and spar.” It was one of those why didn’t we think of this before moments.

We went to his house, took moved everything out of the living room, and started sparring; bare knuckle, padded, light contact, heavy contact, etc. We were all friends and there wasn’t any ego nonsense.

We started doing it every Sunday afternoon. We’d bring friends every now and then too. I was Kyokushin offshoot, the coordinator was American Kempo, we had TKD, Wing Chun, and a few other karate styles. One guy brought a boxer a few times. I brought my big mouth brother who didn’t train but thought he knew how to fight. One or two other non-MAists came every now and then too.

It was a lot of fun. No rank, hierarchy, experts, etc.; it was a group of guys sparring and giving each other pointers. No one got out of hand and no one got injured.

I ran into the guy who started it a few years back. He said “why did we bring everything outside? We should’ve just sparred outside instead.” Why we didn’t think of that at the time is beyond me. I guess it was because the hardwood floor made it official or something.

Sorry for the sidetrack headhunter. Thanks for bringing back those memories. But thinking about it a bit, would you consider a fight club of your own? Think “spar club” more than actual fight.

Nah because it's not just at someone's house it's at an offical centre and if we started doing that it'd get into more having to sort out safety measures and insurance etc plus the fact its not the biggest area and it does have a few hazards which arent a problem doing forms and techiques but would be an issue with sparring and I got enough headaches going on without all that lol. It's a cool idea though but nah I do my sparring at Muay Thai training anyway and this is mainly my way of keeping training the kenpo techniques and forms not sparring

 

[JR 137]

Nah because it's not just at someone's house it's at an offical centre and if we started doing that it'd get into more having to sort out safety measures and insurance etc plus the fact its not the biggest area and it does have a few hazards which arent a problem doing forms and techiques but would be an issue with sparring and I got enough headaches going on without all that lol. It's a cool idea though but nah I do my sparring at Muay Thai training anyway and this is mainly my way of keeping training the kenpo techniques and forms not sparring

Good points.

 

[JR 137]

Sounds like fun, Headhunter. There's a group of Karateka (Shorin-ryu, I think) who use the same center I do - just some guys with noplace else to train, most holding rank.

JR, I've thought about doing something like that, if I could ever get together a mixed group. I just don't have enough contact with folks in the area to run into martial artists.

You genuinely need the right group of people to do that. We were all friends at work. Anyone from the outside was brought in by one of us and figured out the atmosphere after watching us for a few minutes. I think it came about by more of a chance than anything else. If it was something planned, I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t have gone the way it did. Most of the time it was 6-8 of us. Thinking about it, how often do you get about 7 or 8 active MAists working in a place that’s got about 35 employees total? And none of us trained at the same dojo.

And there was no shortage of beer afterwards. We worked in a brew pub after all.

 

[marques]

It was my dream. Good luck. Hope you can keep it going in the long run. I didn’t succeed on it (for several reasons).