Sifu McFann Seminar

Wednesday, 12 August 2009

Last night saw the return of Marc McFann to AMAG, after a long while and a tough year. He was looking great and was buzzing with his usual humour, stories and passion for the arts. Marc is a real inspiration to me and many others including Pat and my brother and manages to mix hardcore/hardwork with the art aspect of the Martial Arts.
The seminar was split into two parts. The first part was Silat and an area that Marc has studied a lot. He has taken the art and applied its application to the West. The art tradionally is a weapons based system that comes from a culture where everyone carries one or more blades. This causes the system to sometimes look a bit poor when shown without that context (blade). Marc applies the art to the way we behave and fight in the West and blends and shows routes into other systems such as BJJ, wrestling, CSW etc.
Last night was no exception - he showed us several take downs from a cross entry and several finishes including a type of juji submission/break with strikes and a crussifix stock applied from a Hari Mau kneeling position.
The second part of the seminar then went into an area of Kali that had no weapons. Here we applied sectoring to understand the different options we have. Then from those sectors we learned to employ some striking and du mong (Kali grappling techniques) to chokes and take downs.
Everyone left with a big smile on their face and some will be looking forward to the weekend where we will continue the training with Marc at the UFA Instuctors camp. Ajarn Chai our Muay Thai instructor will be there too and several people will be testing under him. So good luck to them!!