Hello Tim,
IÂ’m glad you mentioned Mike Morton. It brings me back memories of the original training camps. Michael Morton was a fixture at the early camps in Philadelphia. They were a direct product of the first camp in the mountains of West Virginia. Those camps were one full week and two full weeks long. One week was for the Basic Instructor course and two weeks for the Advanced. Most of the serious people came for both weeks it seemed. You didnÂ’t always notice people as much if they came for one week only. Of course, some people made up for the second week in future training camps but there was nothing like the total immersion of two full weeks. I became hopelessly biased in favour of the two week camps. Many, if not most, of the great instructors were products of those camps. Some may not have remained as current as the art evolved in the nineties but they all had one thing in common: strong basics. Professor used to point out to me that the students from those camps had strong Sinawali and basics, thus a certain power and strength that was important.
When Professor first shortened the camps to four days, and sometimes only three I could really tell the difference. With a full week you could obviously cover more material, also environmentally you were more isolated and separate from the outside world. There was also a lot more training during free time as there was no distraction of a car, restaurants and hotels. I also thought the full week was necessary to cover all the material. The isolation of the week long camps was more like a boot camp and focused you on the material. You stayed in dormitories on site so you didnÂ’t waste time driving to the hotel and to restaurants. As everyone ate together it was more of a training centred isolation. When you had free time there were fields and nature to train around without many distracting cars.
Of course the four day camps opened the art up to a lot more people. In later years the camps became more like extended seminars with a lot of new material. Only people testing were likely to do forms and basics at many. This was in part a product of there being fewer candidates for the basic instructor level, yet more advanced people who had learned the basics and wanted new material. The later camps were less intense in covering the core technique, less isolating and with more distractions. Certainly the teaching was always dynamic and intense throughout the years. Just less total hours.
Of course the instruction just got better every year as Professor continuously improved his art and his skill. This was one of the things I found most remarkable about our beloved teacher. I could never understand how he managed to improve despite aging and all the stress from travelling. More than anything else, I was always in awe that someone already so great could even get better. It was like there was never any summit. Professor just kept raising the height of his excellence. Some of his amazing skill in later years was his ability to become so much more gentle. There was never any doubt, from day one, that Professor could crush any opponent. In his earlier years in the Philippines Arnis was very combative and the fighting more real. Even those who didn’t fight to cripple nevertheless were very brutal and powerful when they did practice and spa. Professor sought to modernize the art and take it to a higher level and wider audience. Over the years he had more and more experience training people who were themselves not so rough, including children and more women. As a result Professor just seemed to gain more finesse at working with these people without hurting them, while becoming even stronger and tougher with those of us “lucky” enough to get that attention. As I’m sure Tim could confirm, it was something to work out for many years and be lulled into thinking you had become strong because your strong students thought you were tough, then you’d go with Professor to a new location to do a demonstration and he would beat you silly. Your strength would suddenly amount to nothing.
Professor was also very playful, he never truly aged. In seminar and demonstration you generally tried to follow the drill. If nothing else as a way to plead for mercy. But no matter how you playfully attacked him the techniques still somehow worked. Just more painful really. I remember in about 1985 in my apartment in Salem we were in the kitchen getting ready to eat breakfast. I challenged Professor with the butter knife, with my free hand extended to ward him off. I said, “Aha, now I have you.” His hand flashed by my free hand and a fraction of a second later I was on the kitchen floor, totally immobilized and unable to respond other than to laugh in amazement and shout my surrender. I know many knife and stick fighters consider disarming and locking to be near impossible in reality, but Professor could really apply it with amazing, speed, accuracy, control and power.
Also as the student levels became higher Professor could cover more advanced techniques and practice on a higher level with more people over all. The later camps were more comfortable, more often held in modern, climate controlled hotels, but when we would need to take several cars to go to a restaurant full of strangers, and people talking on their cell phones and what not, I would think back wistfully on the earlier camps when between classes you were more likely to practice by a pond and be relatively not distracted by the outside world.
Mike Morton was a fixture at the early two week camps in Philadelphia. He was especially adept at the empty hand because of his extensive Wing Chun and sparring background. People enjoyed working with him and he added to the instruction. Over the years I was in contact with him from time to time. Once it was a bit humorous because I saw an advertisement from someone in Colorado using the triangle crossed swords over the sun with the two stick at the bottom logo. I had designed this logo myself based upon the Filipino flag. You will have seen it on t-shirts and ProfessorÂ’s video series. Also on IMAF letterheads in the late eighties. I was convinced someone had stolen my logo as I didnÂ’t see IMAF or Modern Arnis with the add. So I checked up on it. It turned out to be Mike who had moved to Colorado and was teaching Modern Arnis there. So of course, I was pleased that he was using my artwork and especially that he was actively promoting the art despite living in the Rockies. Since then I have lost contact with Mike. Hopefully he is still teaching somewhere and sharing his martial arts and Modern Arnis skills.
