Katja got up early as we start training an hour earlier today. What’s with that chick? If we are to wake at 7:00 she puts the alarm at 6:45. Why?
I crawl out a bit later and find her with the nose deeply in Facebook. So much for quality time in the morning.
We start training at 8 today as we plan to go to the beach with Cydel in the midday break. That gives us an extra hour in between training. Unfortunately the weather is rather grey and cloudy today.
We dive straight into training and fire up the stick work. The flow is coming and moving from left to right hand with change of footwork and simultaneous use of the live hand makes me feel good. Not that I claim to be good, but I feel good. Might be a difference there.

We go from single to double to single to empty hand to double to single to….. I guess you get the picture. Two hours just flies by when you’re having so much fun.
Katja was quite empty after training, and I of course ascribe that to the fifteen minutes she wasted out of bed this morning. I’ll probably get hit “accidentally” tomorrow, but hey… Gotta call it as I see it.
We went through the usual routine after training: Washing the clothes, washing the body and trying to rehydrate. At least we got two out of three, and that ain’t bad.
We got into the DAS-mobil with Cydel and set of towards town to get lunch. When that was consumed we sat a course for the beach. It’s not right outside the door, more down the road and around the corner in Australian terms. We used about 40 minutes there. The beach was a stone beach, but Cydel knew the area and brought us to a secluded little place. Sitting under the shadow of a big cliff and just listening to the waves was wonderful. It’s a lot of noise and sounds everywhere, so the tranquillity of the place almost made me fall asleep.

We took some pictures (of course) and found a rather strange fishy-thingy I have never seen before. It looked like a crossover between a frog, a lizzard and a fish and jumped out of the water and crawled onto the stones. A strange thing that might have been in the Jurassic Park movie.

We got back in the DAS-mobil and headed toward town. Alone in the back I arranged some padding and fell asleep. Anyone who has slept in the sun/heat know that you’re pretty groggy when you wake up. I was no different. Pretty disoriented, hot and sunburned did I sit up, and then we arrived at the coffee shop. Getting in there was almost another shock as the air con had the temp at least ten degrees colder than outside. Slowly I got my wits about me, though Katja may find that exaggerating. We did the coffee and a muffin (it’s cake friday) to go, did some grocery shopping and headed back to the gym.

Thirty minutes to training, we gulped down the coffee, change to the newly washed (and already dry) training clothes and Ding! it’s 15:00 and here we go again.
This session we did espada y dag (sword and dagger, for our readers that aren’t familiar with the terms). We worked on basic patterns and then combining these to an endless stream of possible moves. Then we mixed it even further and did free flow moves with footwork. Sometimes when you do this you feel like the King of the World, other times you feel like you don’t even know left from right and up from down. It might even shift between those in one free flow move. The mind works in mysterious ways.
We continued our work on the disarms as well and started on 21 and 22. Now it’s getting increasingly difficult to separate them and the drills with two attacks and disarming on the last one confuse it even more. I guess that’s why Johan had us run through heaps of these in our preparation before our Kadua Guro grading last X-Mas Special. It worked well then, it works well now. It’s confusing as hell, but when you get the trapping and disarms to work in a more fluent drill than the mere 1 attack it’s extremely satisfying.
Svusj, and another two hours had passed. Cydel came in during training as took some pictures. They can be seen on Facebook here.
As earlier informed the whole local experience here includes a rather simple bathroom. What used to be freezing cold water in the shower is now a delicious cool down after training. Funky how fast one adapts to such settings. We are enjoying ourselves here and tomorrow we’ll go to the park in Taal and do some outdoor training with the training group there. GM is going to Manila to witness the grading for his group at the University there, so Getchin will be in charge of tomorrows training. It’s normally he that teaches the Saturday park sessions, and we are looking forward to participate in that. There are more activities planned after the training, I’ll post about it tomorrow.
Today’s quote is a good one for all of us who have found ourselves with the face down in the mud. I’ve been there and probably will be again…

A Setback Is A Setup For A Comeback

-Dr. Willis Jolley