Damian Mavis
Master Black Belt
So Tonight I went to train at Asia Pacific Tae Kwon Do run by Master Don Ferguson in Bangkok. He's a 5th dan in WTF style TKD and a Canadian like me! I called him up earlier today and asked if he minded me coming by to train since I'm from ITF and he had no problems with it so off I went. He let me wear my ITF uniform and I lined up with his other black belts for class. The training is similar to other WTF training I have done and had similar aspects to the ITF training I'm used to. There was an equal amount of foreigners and Thai's that train there and they were all very nice and some of them were very skilled. Master Ferguson himself is an amazing technician. He has better technique than me by far. Normally guys with really good muscle control and perfect technique dont always have killer power but I held the kick shield for him a few times and his turning sidekick had rib shattering power. He seems to be a very good well rounded TKD artist. We did kicks in line for awhile and then lined up to kick the clapper for a bit before trading the clapper in for a kick shield. Kick shield work is my favorite part of training besides sparring. After that we did a bit of partner work and then class was over.
After class I talked to him for a good 40 minutes and we compared our lives as TKD instructors and there were alot of similarities. It's not often martial arts instructors meet that have very similar opinions on how schools should be run and have past experiences that have so many similarities. Then I found out just how different certain aspects of our lives truly were. Turns out he has acted in several martial arts movies with guys like Jackie Chan and Steven Segal and even a few Thai movies. There are posters everywere here for a new Thai movie that is coming out that he plays a bad guy in. Guess I will be going to that movie to check him out in action! I thought it was pretty kool that he had worked with some pretty famous people and was on the big screen. He told me some interesting things about some movie stars! During the class I thought it odd that alot of the women training here were some of the most beautiful women I had seen in Thailand.... turns out they are all models and movie stars. All in all an interesting school to train at!
I'm hoping we spar on Wednesday which is the next adult advanced class at his school. In the meantime I will go check out some other TKD schools here in Bangkok.
Damian Mavis
Honour TKD
After class I talked to him for a good 40 minutes and we compared our lives as TKD instructors and there were alot of similarities. It's not often martial arts instructors meet that have very similar opinions on how schools should be run and have past experiences that have so many similarities. Then I found out just how different certain aspects of our lives truly were. Turns out he has acted in several martial arts movies with guys like Jackie Chan and Steven Segal and even a few Thai movies. There are posters everywere here for a new Thai movie that is coming out that he plays a bad guy in. Guess I will be going to that movie to check him out in action! I thought it was pretty kool that he had worked with some pretty famous people and was on the big screen. He told me some interesting things about some movie stars! During the class I thought it odd that alot of the women training here were some of the most beautiful women I had seen in Thailand.... turns out they are all models and movie stars. All in all an interesting school to train at!
I'm hoping we spar on Wednesday which is the next adult advanced class at his school. In the meantime I will go check out some other TKD schools here in Bangkok.
Damian Mavis
Honour TKD
