Just got back from the 2010 Philippines training camp with Grand Tuhon Gaje. We had to pleasure of training with Tuhon Philip Gelinas of Montreal Martial Arts. Tuhon Philip has trained with GT Gaje for over 30 years and is the highest ranking practitioner next to Grand Tuhon Gaje. Also in attendance were practitioners from the Bay Area (Alan and I), the East Coast (Rob Walker’s group), Canada, Germany, Texas, Philippines and ‘Crazy Marlin’ from Seattle.

Crazy Marlin unfortunately broke his leg during sparring but kept training for the rest of the camp on one leg - and these camps are hard when you have 2 working legs.

The camp started out in Bacolod City in the province of Negros Occidental. After coffee and Babinka (local sponge, coconut cakes in a banana leaf wrapper).. and maybe even some karaoke.. we started out with power training in Tuhon’s backyard. The exercises consisted of tire training, pull ups, iron ball, swinging weights and several other specialized exercises.

On 2-28 we hopped in a bus and headed for the mountains to Mambukal. Mambukal is a resort area in the mountains known for it’s giant Fruit Bats and hot springs. It is a great place to train to get away from the smog and heat of the city.

The training at Mambukal emphasized the Tri V formula, power training with the Malayu Sibat (long ’spear’ or staff), single and doble baston and lots of knife. The sibat training we did helps coordinate footwork with striking and tunes the body to full power striking.

The knife training consisted of various flow patterns and counter offense movements. During the day we would knife training in the pool that consisted of swimming with a doble pakal and sak sak grip and lots of other exercises and drills. We hit the hot spring a couple times too to ease our sore muscles. After dinner we’d train more in the pavilion until we were so tired we would hardly lift our arms.

From Mambukal we headed back to Bacolod. The training there consisted mostly of combative development and free sparring. The sparring was full contact with gloves and head gear only. It gave us a chance to try out some of the moves we had been working on in the camp.

In Bacolod we also trained some Dumpag (empty hand arm and leg destruction, locking and throwing), more knife and a great Sagung Labo and stick grappling class from Tuhon Philip that consisted of a counter for counter stick lock flow. Very cool stuff.

The best part of the Dumpag class was asking Tuhon ‘What else can you do from there?’ to get him to lock Mike (from Manila) up in more pretzel like positions. Having been in the martial arts for 20 some years I’ve seen a lot of locking and PTK Dumpag has some really, really nice locking. It all blends with the hand trapping and it all blends across the various weapon categories.

The ‘trapping’ in PTK is very highly developed as well. What you see on videos clips and youtube is barely scratching the surface. The hand trapping was developed from in close quarters blade work where if you make a mistake you are dead. The various flow drills lay a foundation of movement where you add variables one at a time until you can free flow from any type of strike or counter. One layer counters the previous layer’s movements. The result is a seasoned practitioner is always 2-3 steps ahead of you. The emphasis is always on offense and counter offense. Defense is for the opponent to worry about.

The sparring and technical knife and Dumpag training was a great way to finish up 10 days of hard training in the tropical sun with one of the last living great Grandmasters of blade fighting. Grand Tuhon’s vast knowledge of all aspects of fighting continue to blow my mind and remind me of why I train in Pekiti Tirsia Kali.

After the official camp Me, Alan, Mike and Dip’ got to train with a Russian group who didn’t speak much English for a day before they headed to another leg of their camp up north.

What a great way to break in 2010.

Grand Tuhon will be in the states starting in a couple months for his 2010 seminar tour. Stay tuned for that.

New skills, new friends, great camp.

Training will resume on Wednesday. See you guys there..