This morning at 0500 hrs. I helped a good friend of mine who is in the military. He was told by his Commanding Officer to instruct a hand to hand combatives class in a certain specific way to several platoons. My friend has been training with me once a week for several months, so we had already been familiar with what we are capable of & what not, even though on paper our backgrounds in the martial arts may seem very different. So while it was still dark outside, I went with my friend to Lackland AFB to instruct approximately 60 men & women of the US Army. They were instructed to stuff their duffle bag with clothing & such to make it into a punching bag, they also had gloves. After a long time of signing in, they lined up & began their own warm up exercise PT style. Then we took over. Showed them the basic mechanics of a Wing Chun style center line punch along with the primary targets. And then had them pair up & take turns punching their duffle bag. And then they were ordered to strike for 1 min. straight, then switch. Then another min of striking then switch. After this my friend demonstrated basic parry, salute, trap, a movement found in Wing Chun, various Chinese & Philipino martial arts, even some styles of Karate. They drilled this exercise over & over as a defense to a punch. We walked around keeping an eye on how they were doing. A few questions arose, some people thought it was not that great. And then my friend & I demonstrated the drill infront of them in almost full speed. My friend clocked me earlier when we were warming up, & now this time, I clocked my friend. We both laughed about it later. As for the 60 or so soldiers watching, it seemed like it was impressive to them, & perhaps sparked a little bit more interest in doing this drill as well as earning us some respect. After some more drills and showing them some more details, we finished up with another demonstration. My friend & I did the exact same hand pattern as we taught but with double sticks vs double sticks. We started slow & gradually increased the speed, then my friend got down to a knee as I hammered double sticks from on top, then he got all the way down to his back on the ground continued to defend my onslaught & got back up by this time we were going faster than we have ever gone before. Personally I think this was when they were really impressed with my friend and understood why he was chosen to teach the combatives program & why I was there as a special guest. I think then they knew that they had learned something that was more valuable then they had first realized. It was truly an honor to be there & lend a hand to the men & women who serve. But more than anything to help out my friend.
-peace             

What is with my interests in tactical folders? I believe them to be the samurai sword of modern times. This is what we can carry & walk around with. Many of them are legal & do not draw too much attention. Let's face it, a knife is just a really handy tool. A folding knife is great because you do not need a sheath, it looks less dangerous for some reason. I guess because in general a folding knife is smaller or appears to be smaller than a fixed blade. There are some people who believe that in combat a folding knife should not be used at all. They feel that it is too slow, or unreliable in strength, or simply just too small. All I have to say is that there are some really good folding knives out there. I have collected many catalogs, have a small collection of various knives, designed a couple myself & contacted several very successful people in the knife industry. Doing this kind of research has definitely improved my knife fighting skills considerably. And to top it off, I train in stick fighting for my knife fighting. That may sound strange, but to me it's like a boxer who runs, skip ropes & does other things that may seem like they have nothing to do with boxing, but actually greatly enhances one's boxing skills.
-peace