In the spirit of cross training that Coach Freedman advocates, he invited Master Spencer Gee to visit his studio up here in New Hampshire this past Saturday. Master Spencer Gee is an instructor of traditional Kung-Fu and Pankration. He is also a Master of Pananandata, the Filipino art of weapons. On top of all that he serves as a guest professor at Hofstra University for the Tai Chi and Self-Defense courses. So to have him up here at the Studio was a real treat for all who came.
As you can see in the video Master Gee opened up his bag of training weapons and asked us what we wanted to train in most. Seeing all those training weapons had the participants quite excited. It was hard to keep our hands off of them. It reminded me of the Jokers comment in the 1989 Batman movie “Where does he get those wonderful toys?”
Starting in the morning, the first choice was knife training and Master Gee wasted no time getting down to business. Master Gee took the simplest attacks and begin to work them. If you thought you knew everything about how to defend against an angle cut down to the neck, you learned quickly that you were very wrong.
The first lesson was to not expect your finely tuned parry and cut defense to work perfectly against a knife attack in the street. There is no accounting for the reflex that your defense may cause in your attacker. He demonstrated how this automatic response could lead to you losing a finger, suffering a damaging slice wound or even end up impaled on the attackers knife. Very sobering indeed. The result of this was an increase attention on training by all the participants’. The lesson “It is not over till it is over.” We all want to keep our body parts intact if we are ever in a knife defense situation.
After lunch it was decided to train outside as the weather was unusually warm for a New Hampshire November afternoon. Master Gee had us all grab our arnis sticks and proceeded to go over the twelve positions of his system. We spent over an hour on this warm afternoon with a partner crossing sticks until our arms and legs were sore. However we all felt that the exercise was a valuable addition to our stick training.
Master Gee finished the group class with a Filipino blade form. He had us perform the simple form several times explaining every move and cut.
He finished the day by taking the various weapons out of his kit and explaining their use and showing how they could be used in combination. His collection included sais, swords, knives, hatchets, sticks and tonfas. His collection also included various paddles, odd sticks and even the remnants of a fishing net. All had a purpose as he so aptly demonstrated. He is the master of improvised weapons. He would pick up a balisong and do some quick openings and closings that were hard for the eye to follow. Everything he put in his hand seem to have a life of its own.
Master Gee taught with just the right balance of seriousness and humor. His patience and detailed instruction were very valuable and I for one can say that I learned quite a bit from his teaching. I suggest that you check out his website at www.spencergee.com. Master Gee teaches in the Sea Cliff, NY and Greenvale, NY areas. He is available for seminars. I personally am looking forward to the next opportunity to train with Master Gee.
As usual Guro Philip Duldulao was there with his handy Flip camera filming away. The attached video is his work and we appreciate him keeping a record of that.
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