Private Training with Dieter
I picked up my friend Dieter Knuttel from the airport last
night, after having a light meal on the way home we came to our house and Dieter
asked what our password was for the WiFi. Duh I don’t know, I racked my brain, I couldn’t
even remember setting up the password, so for the next 20 minutes or so I try
and figure it out to no avail all the while feeling like an idiot. Emily and Holly get home and we ask them and
Emily’s says “Oh I got this” and gets him connected. I was shocked but then Dieter said kids know
this stuff because when they bring their friends over they all want to connect
to the WiFi. Simple statement and true,
very logical and straightforward. I had
no clue that this simple straight forward, logical approach, to problem solving
would set the tone for my arnis lesson later that night.
Dieter was use to traveling so he knew to push through
wanting to sleep when crossing time zones, so when Holly needed to excuse
herself to head to bed she warned me “He looks tired don’t keep him up!” It was about 11:00pm or so.
“I won’t honey he wants to watch some videos, I’m not
keeping him up.” So I got the computer
and we watched some videos I recorded at some recent camps. I tried to set up the sound but Dieter says “I
don’t need the sound I just want to watch.”
This should have been my first clue but I thought how will you know what
we are doing? (I’ve never claimed to be
the sharpest tool in the shed, well aside from my family but….) Anyway that’s when it hit me or I should say
the stick hit me, obviously I still didn’t get the lesson cause it hit me again
and again and again for the next couple of hours. He just wanted to watch how I did things and
help me do them better, he didn’t need sound, he just needed to observe what I
did.
It started off with releasing his hand from grabbing my stick
hand. As we watched the video he said, “I
teach it differently, we call it Stopping #1 and #2.” I figured I saw this lesson at an earlier training
camp so I had the correct answer to the problem. Dieter says “Why do you release my hand?”
As I’m staring at him holding his stick above his shoulder I
reply “To defend against getting hit on the leg.” This is a standard response in the Tapi drills
and we were just drilling on this Wednesday night in class based on his lesson
from the Brevard camp in 2005. “OK
release my hand” he says. So I go for it,
WHACK he hits my hand, “Try it again” he tells me; so I got for it WHACK he
hits my head. It was a painful lesson cause he keeps telling me to go for it, so I do and I keep getting hit.
“Why do you release my hand?” Now I’m confused, if I don’t release the hand
I get hit in the leg, if I go to release the hand I get hit on the arm, if I go
to release the hand and even make it I get hit in the head. Dieter turns it around on me then. “You release the hand only because I’ve given
you a problem to solve (as in defending from an incoming strike), otherwise you
don’t have to release the hand. If the
person has their stick up here they haven’t given you a problem to solve so you
need to not provide an answer to a question that hasn’t been asked. So why do you need to release the hand? Hit me with it.” As he shows me that his face
is open.
Dieter explained that they train with a different attitude,
a different training methodology. The
feeder, the leader, or the driver in the above example is the one who is in
control and must give the student the proper problem to solve, otherwise what
happens is the student in going for the hand release is actually leading the
drill at that time, because the instructor then would automatically feed the
low strike since that is what is expected in the drill. So everyone (as feeder’s) waits for the
student to release, when actually the feeder is open for a counter, like the
head hit by waiting. So then he starts
explaining to me their hand release and it starts to make sense but I’ll cover
that in my next post.
Folks don’t make the mistake of missing the opportunity to
train with Datu Dieter, we have him for a seminar for two full days this
weekend and he showed me just the tip of the ice berg last night. We are going to have a blast.