Question for Ray Floro:
I seem to remember a thread recently where you stated that what appears in the book that is available on Kalis Ilustrisimo does not look like what you learned/teach. Is this correct?
If so - how is what you do different from the book, how is it different from what Tatang Ilustrisimo taught you (if at all), and how did what you teach/preach evolve?
Hi Tactical,
Yes, I did say that......probably will get me in trouble.
The difference in what I saw was in the techniques being fairly "wide".......if you will notice, the hands are fairly far from one another, and sometimes away from the body.
The way we used to train is to have the hands "close" into the body. In the beginning, we actually had to place a small item under our armpits to keep the arms and hands close.
I also don't think they portrayed "enganyo" which is faking and drawing; which is the essence of the system, nor did they show much of "praktion" or to put it broadly, stop hitting and utilising broken rythme.
My teaching has "evolved" only to the extent that I have included moves that I found valuable in my fencing days; such as timing, footwork, some of the counter parries, beat attacks, and A LOT of the thrusting......I was joking with Michael the other day saying that I should call what I teach "Combat Fencing".
I'm also starting to include concepts from Historical Fencing from what I'm learning off Paul Wagner.....really cool stuff.
Michael Jen has been helping me a lot in "fine tuning" the concepts and teaching methods. I find that I do a lot of things without even being conscious of them; and Michael has review our training sessions exhaustively (the guys got no life; what can I say...chuckle) and have gave some sound advice which I'm now incorporating in my teachings.
Do I move different to the guys in the Philippines? I probably do, I probably move and angle less, I probably use less techniques...........you will see my fencing lineage when I spar. I'm not saying I'm better, I just move the way I do because it works for me. I find it also simpler and easier to teach.
You will find though that all Ilustrisimo instructors will move their own "special" way.
Raymond
Cool, thanks for indulging my questions.