Last Day of Training at WWW

Yesterday, the Society of American Fight Directors concluded the Winterwonderland Workshop. As with any experience like this, I was really sad to see it come to an end, but felt so lucky and fortunate to have experienced it, and met all of the people that I did.

My last day of classes consisted of two more staged knife combat classes, and my final class was on falling techniques. The two knife classes were great, and although there was a bit of overlap with the other ones I had done (I once again earned a reputation as someone not to square off against in knife battles ;) I feel that the review was good for really crystalizing a lot of the concepts. One really cool thing was that after the second knife class (Which focused on nasty elements of knife fighting) I had a chance to talk with the instructor about his own martial arts background, and we decided to spend half of our lunch period playing around. He had a great deal of experience in the Fillipino arts, and showed me a lot of really cool (and particularly nasty) ways to manipulate someone's body off of a punch, so that was the highlight of my day.

The last class on stunt breakfalls was also excellent, as it was my first time getting to study them in English, and it allowed me to fill in a lot of gaps. The instructor (who had a ton of film experience) also had a lot of good advice about really effective ways to cushion falls (in particular for a roll) and it made me wonder why they hadn't figured this stuff out in actual martial arts gyms. (Although when I think about it, it's probably because they had never actually had to USE those falls on concrete or equally hard surfaces and he had). Very very informative.

The end of the Workshop consisted with a show of all of the masters putting together a series of choreographed fights. One of these simulated the possible way in which a sword duel that led to a particularly perplexing autopsy (with all kinds of stab wounds in crazy places) might have gone, and that was simply fascinating to see. The event itself ended with a huge party that unfortuantely I had to miss to catch a train, but overall this was one of the most fun martial arts related events I have ever been to, and I already can't wait till next year.