One of our talented female instructors, Madunong Guro Eugenia Valente, is heading towards Helsinki in Finland to have a seminar.
The host is KSI Helsinki with Club Trainer Mika Kauranen and the seminar is over the weekend of 21-22 of January 2012.
Please contact Mika at email mika.kauranen@kalisikaran.com for more information.
With the final preparations ongoing we are looking forward to this years long awaited event; Mandirigma Camp!
This will be the fourth consecutive year of this annual event and with North Africa being less and less of an option we will for the first time be in Southeast Asia. Thailand is tourist friendly and safe and provides us with a beautiful yet challenging place to train. It is also a central hub for travelers from all over the world and provides us with a great opportunity to bring the global KSI team together.
There is still opportunity to join us at this world class camp with master instructors as Punong Guro Johan Skålberg and Grandmaster Andy Elliott. The camp is open to all levels and styles.
The latest information can be found at www.mandirigmacamp.com and our Mandirigmacamp Facebook Page.
On Sunday 21 August 2011 Kali Sikaran HQ in Australia is hosting a seminar with Master Craig Bajraktarevic-Hayward, 8th degree black belt in Doce Pares Eskrima.
Seminar special: A pair of rattan sticks, a Kamagong training knife and a bonus stickbag for only $75AUD (value $130AUD)
Master Craig Bajraktarevic-Hayward is one of Australia’s best authorities on the Filipino fighting arts of Eskrima, Eskrido and also Pangamot, a Philippine art similar to Jujitsu, but more street-orientated. In November 2010 Craig was promoted to 8th degree black belt in the style of Grandmaster Cacoy Canete – famous for his fighting ability and his no-nonsense approach to the art.
Craig has traveled to the Philippines many times to study directly under Grandmaster Canete and has brought him to Australia to conduct seminars. A practical master who believes in testing his knowledge and ability Master Craig regularly competes in tournaments and is the current Cacoy Doce Pares World Kulata Champion.
When asked to describe his teaching style, Master Craig often says that he “teaches by confusion”; a teaching style seemingly often used in the Philippines. Master Craig allows his classes to develop and move along at an irregular pace so that students do not get locked into a single way or approach. Master Craig’s greatest wish is to produce students with integrity, commitment and a desire to improve.
Craig is devoted to promoting the art and founded the East Coast Doce Pares Institute in February 2001 after forging good links with other respected teachers in the Western Sydney area. With the organization growing rapidly Master Craig was able to open his own facility after four years of teaching at five different locations around the city.
Sunday May 29th 2011 the third Western Australia State Grading took place at AMAF (Advanced Martial Arts & Fitness), the KSI HQ in Australia.
The grading was a great success as not only the gradees were evaluated, but also the job of the most isolated instructors in the KSI Instructor Team, Kadua Guro Beki Kapetanovic and Club Trainer Mike Waite. The grading and evaluation was overseen by Katalungan Guro Heikki Martikainen who has moved to Australia to help Mike Waite to spread Kali Sikaran across the nation.
Mike Waite was introduced to the Kali Sikaran system in April 2008, prior to the IPMAF World Camp held in Gothenburg, Sweden. He then introduced Kali Sikaran to his Arnis and Zen Do Kai Karate students at his club through the guidance of Kadua Guro Beki Kapetanovic in December 2009. In April 2010 Mike Waite returned to Sweden to train Kali Sikaran for a month and get into the KSI Instructor Training Program. When he returned to Australia in May the Arnis classes changed to Kali Sikaran.
In August 2010 Katalungan Guro Heikki Martikainen travelled to Australia to have seminars in Cairns and Melbourne on the east coast and finally arrived Perth, Western Australia to officially launch Kali Sikaran Australia as a part of Kali Sikaran International.
In October 2010 Kadua Guro Beki Kapetanovic arrived to Perth to teach Kali Sikaran at AMAF and learn marketing and management. The 3rd State Grading was kind of an exam for her as she has been working with the groups for eight months and was about to head back home to Sweden.
The State Grading itself was a gruelling 3 hour test from Phase 1 up to Phase 3. Everyone grading did a great job pushing themselves and showing great spirit throughout the entire grading. Katalungan Guro Heikki Martikainen was very pleased with the results of the grading and the level of the gradees also showed how much effort the instructors had put into teaching the KSI program.
One of the toughest tasks for the three instructors during the day was to name the gradees of the day for each Phase.
The results were awarded after presentations of the diplomas. Gradees Of The Day are as follows:
There will be dedicated Instructor Training Program training at the camp which will be set up by the KSI Instructor team.
KSI Instructortraining
This is for the people who will start to teach at their club or the ones who are
looking at the possibility of opening a Kali Sikaran group at their own place.
After a week in Cebu we travelled by ferry to Manila where Pangulong Guro Tino Ceberano greeted us. He would be our host with his team from Filipino Elusive Warrior. We were accommodated at MMLDC, a great location in Antipolo, Manila.
The first days or training was conducted by Pangulong Guro Tino Ceberano himself. We made a new aquaintance – the Shadow Boxer! A resistance system to use for any cardio and boxing workouts. Very interesting. It didn’t look like much but after half an hour the muscles were burning and the sweat pouring! The training grounds were different outdoor locations around the complex and we were constantly looked after by the staff and our hosts.
Our first guest instructor was Master Boy Garcia from the Yaw Yan system. Yaw Yan can best be translated with “Dance of Death” and it is a filipino form of kickboxing that uses the normal kicks and punches but also uses unusual kicks and lots of elbow and forearm strikes. The first training with Master Boy Garcia was pretty basic but that did change. It was interesting to learn how they trained to defeat for example thaiboxers with a barrage of reverse elbows.
Master Boy Garcia is without a doubt very well versed in ringfighting as he has more than 100 fights under his belt and has held three different titles in the Philippines. It will be interesting to follow up on these training sessions.
After Master Boy Garcias visit we had the pleasure to meet up with an old friend, Grandmaster Rodel Dagooc. GM Rodel taught us his altered version of Modern Arnis and it is easy to understand why he has the nickname “Smoking Sticks”!
His stickwork is fast and fluent despite his age of 63…
We also agreed on a trip to GM Rodel’s Arnis Village in Batangas outside of Manila.
Before we went to the Arnis Village we had the pleasure to have a day of training with Agalon Kit Ascenas from Pekiti Tirsia Kali Manila. Agalon Kit is a very symphatical person with a gentle attitude and sharp and crisp technique. The training consisted of stickwork with direct translation into bladework and knife drills with applications and variations. It was very confusing at times and as you surely already know, confusion is good!
When we went to Grandmaster Rodel Dagoocs Arnis Village in Batangas, about 60 kilometers outside of Manila, we started the day with training at this awsome place. The entire yard is filled with toys for FMA practitioners! Basically it is a training circuit with many obstacles that you can kick, strike and whack with sticks. It is a good workout to go through the obstacles and GM Rodel is as energetic as ever when he pushes the students to go faster and harder.
We also had a class indoors with GM Rodel and since he also sells a lot of FMA training material we did a bit of shopping before we went for a late lunch.
After lunch we went down the street to shop live blades at the roadside stalls in Batangas. Here you can find a lot of filipino blades and copies of other famous blades. To round off this day we went to see the bladesmiths of Barangay Balisong where they make the world famous Balisong knifes.
Our journey back to Manila was along the ridges of volcanoe mountains with a few stops to admire the view of Tagaytay and Taal, two of the old volcanoes in the area. Simply beautiful!
The day before we left Manila we had some Kali Sikaran training. Katalungan Guro Heikki Martikainen showed the team the simple complexity of Kali Sikaran. We started with Hubud training drills that transformed into blade and stick drills from the same concept. All participants enjoyed the simple way to learn complex concepts and we felt really stuffed with information after another long week of training!
The training week was over. Almost. Agalon Kit Acenas had invited us to train at a Pekiti Tirsia Kali seminar arranged by PTK Manila with their chief instructor Tuhon Rommel Tortal. This was his last seminar before he left Philippines to go to USA for quite long time. The training was outdoors at White Sands in Manila and we stayed for the morning session as some of us was flying out of the Philippines later the same day.
The training was a mix of stickwork, empty hand and knife. Very nice, lots of devastating techniques and we made many new friends at this seminar. Tuhon Rommel Tortal did display an array of deadly knifework with lots of cuts at all unthinkable places. We were hungry for more but we felt that we didn’t want to stress to get to our plane so we thanked our friends at Pekiti Tirsia Kali Manila and left for this time…
Three of us flew to Thailand to train Muay Thai for two weeks and the rest of the team had a final chance to train with GM Rodel. They gathered at a regular sunday training session at Rizal Park in Metro Manila. The team trained with GM Rodel for about two hours and after the training many masters displayed their arts. Aussie team leader Mike Waite also met up with Datu Tim Hartman from Modern Arnis Alliance USA.
After the training session the team headed to the airport. The Aussie team headed back home, except Mike Waite who travelled to Hinigaran to pay his respects to the Presas family by participating at the IPMAF World Camp for a week.
We will be back in 2013 for more FMA adventures!
This year we are organizing our summer-camp in Strömstad/SWEDEN. It will be a 5 day event with loads of high level training. There will be:
and a lot more cool and fun stuff. More information and signup at THESUMMERCAMP.SE
Register early and get a cool hoodie for free!
We are looking forward to give you the best camp ever!
On April 15, ten Kali Sikaran students and instructors met in Manila, Philippines. The purpose was to travel to Cebu City and Manila with surroundings to explore the FMA styles of its native country. The network KSI has in the Philippines had set up some interesting training sites and fantastic Masters and Grandmasters who would show us their styles.
After the usual commotion at Filipino airports we assembled in Cebu where our guide Andre took us to our hotel on the Mactan side of Cebu. A nice hotel that would be our daily starting point and base for the week of training in Cebu.
The first three days of training in Cebu was scheduled to be with Grandmaster Nick Elizar from the Nickelstick Balintawak Eskrima system. A little man with a big heart and lightning quick reflexes! It was really an amazing art to train and we really enjoyed the way GM Nick and his sons Neil and Norman showed us basic strikes and blocks and started to combine them to quite advanced drills.
All instructors were truly great with lots of patience and humour for our struggles to keep up with their rapid strikes, grips, sweeps and disarms! The energy and passion these three men displayed while training was awesome and made us very motivated to train hard even if we at times started to be dehydrated and dizzy due to the heat and malnutrition. It is really hard to drink as much as you should when one gets to the humid heat of the Philippines and most of us lost quite some weight due to dehydration.
We had the opportunity not only to train at Balintawak HQ in a back alley in a suburb, but also to train in the old spanish fortress San Pedro, one of the first settlements near the natural harbour in Cebu back in 1571.
It was really cool to train there as the history of FMA and its use was very present. And we managed to shock some asian tourists with our training.
The training consisted of 12 basic strikes and blocks, completed with direct counterstrikes. Footwork was added to this and it all made quite an interesting drill to methodically train correct movements and angles for striking.
Soon after this GM Nick started to add specific grab/disarm drills where one aims to grab/disarm and the other defends against it. We got 5-6 variations of this and really tried hard to keep up with Neil and Norman as they played with us and with their dramatic bodylanguage tried to make us react in the right way. AWESOME!
The next great instructors we had the opportunity to train with was Grandmaster Ondo Caburnay and Master Jun Igpit from the Lapunti Arnis De Abanico System.
GM Ondo Caburnay is 68years old and not at his best health so he let the young and vibrant Master Jun instruct most of the time under GM’s supervision. GM Ondo did show his flow and speed a number of times and it’s always impressive to see oldschool Grandmasters show off!
The Lapunti Arnis De Abanico is a system that drew influences from chinese kung fu and one of the most notable characteristics is the way they use a cross-leg step to turn their bodies to generate torque, speed and power. It is a graceful and fast art where the abanico (fan strike) is dominant. The fundamentals in training are 12 basic Lapunti strikes, 12 counterstrikes, how to attack and retreat. Basic defence and disarming is a part of the style and multiple strikes is a characteristic feature.
The way Master Jun Igpit displays his skills in anyos (forms) and drills is really impressive. Without a doubt he has spent hours and hours on twirling the sticks as the speed and power he displayed was baffling! Master Jun is a very softspoken man and definitely one of the nicest FMA practitioners that we ever met.
We had the opportunity to train at Lapunti Arnis De Abanico HQ in Tisa Barangay Hall in Cebu and we also trained in Lapu Lapu Park (see below) and under the shades of big trees at a beach resort. Besides the drills and anyos Master Jun Igpit also taught us Lapunti’s version of Hubud. We trained that with and without sticks and applied disarms and takedowns.
One of the most important excursions we did on this trip was to the birthplace of all Filipino Martial Arts, the Lapu Lapu shrine. This is where Lapu Lapu is supposed to have slain Ferdinand Magellan April 27, 1521. A commemorative stone is raised at the place and there is a beautiful statue of Chieftain Lapu Lapu looking over the bay.
For practitioners of FMA this is a must see in the Philippines! We did have a few hours of practice in the park surrounding the statue and of course we took a group pic of the Explorers on site!
Again KSI has branched. This time it is Waterford Martial Arts in Waterford, Ireland, that has joined the expanding KSI team.
Katulong Guro Heikki Martikainen was invited by the founder of WMA, John McGrath, to spend a weekend in Waterford and present the KSI training concept to the instructors.
Punong Guro Johan Skalberg and Katulong Guro Heikki Martikainen met John McGrath at the 9th bi-annual Kombatan World Camp in the Philippines back in 2007. John McGrath is a High Performance Fitness Coach and is exeptionally strong. Some of his feats of strength is to have driven a nail through 2 inches of timber with his bare hands, bending a horse shoe, tearing a full deck of plastic coated cards in half and bending a 300mm steel wrench in two.
Waterford Martial Arts joined KSI.
At Waterford Martial Arts mr Pat Evans will be in charge of the Kali Sikaran classes and after many hours of training going through the concept and various training methods of KSI we are proud to announce Pat Evans as our newest member in the Instructor Training Program.
We welcome all Waterford Martial Arts students who will join the training and we look forward to see your progression in Kali Sikaran!
