The course was organised and delivered by Professor Wayne Swietoslawski Shihan, a member of the "Martial arts Hall of Fame". Shihan has too many qualifications to list here, but be assured, he knows his stuff.

We arrived at Farnborough to a warm welcome, other styles and arts were represented, so what was the day to bring?

After a lengthy warm up we got involved in some Arm and Wrist locks, these were applied gently but with intent, this was to get us to know what sort of pressure, strength, needs to be used to cause pain and discomfort, strangely not a lot, but it did achieve the aim. Some of the moves are as in Shotokan Kata , now we were getting somewhere.

We then moved onto Wrists from grabs, again practicing with a buddy to get the required result, then taking the hold further to see what could develop, again with care due to the pain inflicted.

After a break we moved on to pressure points in the arm, only 3 were used. We had time to locate and "test" on our buddy. As we are all different it takes some time to actually locate them, then apply the pressure in the right direction to get a response. This was comical at times as when I applied pressure my buddy would giggle, a slight adjustment on pressure delivery and a big OUCH would ring out. The techniques were applied to me, we found that I have a prominent Pressure point that made it easy for my buddy to get his revenge.

Now lets see what happened, you guessed it, go from the grab to escape, and apply Pressure point technique and use what developed. This was good, but the arms were tiring, the mind was overloaded, things started to go wrong, just as they would in a real fight, so we had to adapt swiftly to change if it didn't work straight away.

We all volunteered to be knocked out for a second or two with a short Shuto tsuki to the neck, One minute you were there looking around, the next, coming back from a short rest.

The last part of the afternoon was spent with 2 Silat Guys, we started with finger and thumb grabs, very painful, I didn't like that at all, the body was beginning to wish it was not there, everything was starting to ache. The Silat guys finished off with follow ons from the grabs to take downs and finish.

It was good to see how the Kata moves can be interpreted as we trained, some other Styles/Arts are similar to ours in there techniques, thoughts and theories.

I am looking forward to the next session, see diary for dates.

Those of us that went would like to thank Shihan and his uke for the day, and we will see you again soon.

Oss Sensei Dave.