What a cracking weekend that was!
The Battle Camp is over and everyone involved had a really fantastic time.
The instruction was excellent throughout. Peter McClay worked everyone through both the developmental line & combative lines of grappling & counter grappling, assisted by Michael Johnston. Peters material could have done with a couple of weeks rather than a couple of sessions! Michael Johnston did some excellent drills & protocols on fighting your way up off the floor, dealing with the nasties that people will do to you if they knock you over, & then flowed into some CKMI basics. Michael Tatu Tkd Turner did a brilliant session on pressure testing.
Over the last 30 odd years that I've been teaching I've seen a lot of different instructors using a variety of suits as well as methods for adrenal stress testing and Michaels presentation and methodology was by far the best I've encountered. Logical, eloquent, concise, & enjoyable in its presentation, it was challenging to the perfect level in its execution.
Poor bloke did 28 fights back to back, which says a lot for his fitness, conditioning, & tenacity.
Joe Faulkner did a great presentation on 'bush medicine' teaching how to stich someone or yourself up in a worst case scenario and giving some excellent pointers on emergency first aid that you REALLY hope you never need.
Joe is a 3rd year medical student training to be a Doctor and it was brilliant of him to volunteer to do that for us.
Me; I kicked things off with footwork & movement drills, did some combatives off those, worked a session on espada y daga, a session on combative baton, & finished with a session on inverted front grip knife.
John Mcilvaney did a fantastic job with the BBQ, Keeping everyone fed at lunch & teatime.
After training we had a lot of Whisky, beer, wine, & rum, & a lot of laughs around a roaring fire. On the Friday night with a beautiful clear sky and on Saturday night under tarps with biblical rain lashing down.
Crawford and Elaine Easthope were amazing hosts & I sincerely cannot thank them enough for making such an effort, letting us train and stay there.
Thanks also goes to Crawford for getting me to pick up a guitar for the first time in over 10 years, lol.
It was nice to play a couple of tunes with you.