MARPPIO- Davenport seminar review

[Chief Instructor]

I have met many good practitioners and been to many seminars/camps but when it comes to the Filipino Martial Arts, MARPPIO and NSI seminars are the best I have seen. Dr. Remy Presas and Dr. Wilfredo Matias never cease to amaze me. This past weekend in Davenport, Iowa was no exception.

I've been pumping iron, running miles, practicing well into the night, but I still can't come close to the lighting speed of Dr. Presas.

As for the material covered, WOW! I've been seen and experienced material from the MARPPIO tapes as well as material from others but Dr. Presas's stuff just keeps coming. He is a wealth of knowledge.

You should see their counters to the disarms. And then the counters to the counters. And then the counters to that. Years ago, I thought Tapi-Tapi was the height of it all but no...That barely scratches the surface!

Dr. Presas went over a lot of material. My favorite were umbrella blocking drills and wing blocks. With wing blocks, he taught disarms and, yes, you guessed it...counters to the disarming techniques from wing blocks. Oh wow, I was getting to see things the late Grandmaster never performed or taught in public and I have more tapes than you can swing a stick at. It's great seeing how Dr. Presas takes basic techniques and takes them to a higher level.

MARPPIO instructors also did an impromptu demonstration at the highly acclaimed Morrow's Academy of Martial Arts in front of a huge crowd. Dr. Matias had some poor guy in various joint and fingers locks flipping all over the place. I've seen this before but never to that extent. That poor guy, I feel sorry for him...Wait a minute! That poor guy was me.

Dr. Matias is so scary that at one point in the seminar when I was being used as the uke for knive techniques, nobody wanted to come close enough to hand me another knife. Everyone was simply tossing or sliding knives in my direction. LOL!

For all those who trained with the late Grandmaster, I HIGHLY urge you to check out his son, Dr. Remy Presas. Please visit www.modernarnis.com for a seminar near you.

Nothing beats getting it from the source!

Andrew Evans "going with the flow"

[kempomama]

So I'm running between classes after having a fun and informative weekend in Davenport and I'm asked to sit down at a computer to add a couple of words. So here goes, Yes! It was great. Yes! Dr. Presas and Dr. Matias were awesome. Yes! The hosts were wonderful. No! I did not feel sorry for that poor guy being flipped all over the room. LOL!

Back to studying for my finals.

Sheryl

[Gints Klimanis]

>I've been pumping iron, running miles, practicing well >into the night, but I still can't come close to the lighting >speed of Dr. Presas.

From your previous posts, you probably already know this, but I like to type.  Here it goes.

That sort of training doesn't produce speed.
Rather, it produces strong, tireless but sluggish performance.

Many weapons teachers recommend a few hundred
repetitions or slices a day.  This results in body mechanics and strength to, guess what, deliver a few hundred repetitions.   Here are a few practical example to help relate:

Running three ten minute miles will not produce one five minute mile.

Throwing 100 medium speed pitches will not produce one top speed pitch

Curling a 16 oz (1lb) bag of potato chips 100 hundred times will not produce a single curl of 100 lbs.

Generally, high performance athletes train for top speed and power with high intensity, short duration exercise with lots of rest.  This is not equivalent to medium intensity, medium duration exercise with little rest.
If you train while you are exhausted, you will have taught your body the mechanics of a tired man.

[Chief Instructor]

First of all, that training was in preparation. The couple of days before the seminar was used to rest and load up on carbos. Now that I am finished I can go back to a regular routine, which is very similar.

"pumping iron, running miles, practicing well into the night"

Yes, I do all of those things but I also don't do them all at once. When it comes to weights, I work my lower half and then on the days that those muscles are recuperating, I work my upper half.

As for "practicing well into the night," I'm a night owl and tend to do my best work in the dark.

Gints, that's a good point about not training while tried. How do you recommend balancing training with fulltime jobs, especially for those who have physically demanding jobs? Should they avoid training after work or should they only train on their days off?

Myself, I tend to find training refreshing and energizing after a long hard day at work.

[Chief Instructor]

By the way, before anyone pulls this thread and throws it in the thrash talking section, I want to say that I enjoy reading what Gints has to say. I noticed that he is especially vocal when someone mentions or hints at using archaic training methods.

Reading what I had initially written in this thread does create that image. I take (un)poetic license in trying to paint a tough training regime.

While I’m still a little old skool, I also subscribe to many of the new ideas.

Thanks,
Andrew

p.s. I don’t use many of my titles and don’t mean any disrespect to those who awarded them to me.  I am and will always be a student of the arts.

[Chief Instructor]

Back to the seminar...

I forgot to mention that Guro Ric Velando and Guro Gary Schroeder, their students and families were excellent hosts! They have set the standards in Midwest hospitality.

Guro Ric, the master of classical Arnis, did a good job of providing a sampler of his specialty.

Seeing highly skilled Guro Gary mix BJJ, Grappling, Silat and Modern Arnis plus loads of law enforcement experience in his session of Modern Arnis and groundfighting was awesome.

Incidentally, Guro Gary will be on Oahu in June. I'm going to try to hook him up with a good friend of mine. Is there anyone here who knows someone on Oahu that trains in the Filipino Martial Arts, especially Modern Arnis?

Thanks,
Andrew