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New England Warrior Camp 2009: My humble report By nitflegal - 10-06-2009 05:08 PM

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Well, since people seem to have liked my previous Warrior Camp and Seminar reports, I figured I'd write one up for this event as well!

For those of you who are unfamiliar with NEWC, it is a three day training event held at a Boyscout Camp in central Mass that gathers instructors from all over New England to beat the cra. . . um, train us in an outdoor setting. :boing2: Shidoshi Ken Savage has been putting this huge endeavor together for 12 years now and it's a heck of an event, rain or shine.

Friday
So, I checked in at 4ish with my sleeping bag, training tools, and bags of Smart Food. Got settled in my cabin, dropped my stuff off, and reported to the covered pavillion (think large wooden platform with low walls, a roof, and very hard wooden floors. . . LOL)
5 PM, training in Shinden Fudo Ryu dakentaijutsu with Shidoshi Ken Savage. We spent a lot of time going over the unique punching of the school as well as how to redirect/block the punch and control the attacker as we came back in. For those who were watching carefully, Ken was demonstrating the walking methods from the school as well. As always, Ken spent a lot of time breaking the concepts down and explaining why you moved in a certain way, how it would disrupt your opponent and so forth. Lots of background info on the SFR that you don't get in books or on youtube. A lot of fun, energy was high, and nobody smashed into each other too badly! Then a break until the opening at the fire circle
8 PM Fire circle. Yes, I was the dipstick who forgot to turn off my camera flash, I admit it. We were introduced to the instructors and got a background on what led Ken to put together the camp. Then off to a large field in the forest for training.
~9-11 PM Training with Shidoshi Mark Davis. Since we were training in a field, in a forest, by only moonlight, we spent a fair amount of time going over how to disrupt ones shape and movement to mess with the opponent. Here we got to see one of Shidoshi Davis's real strengths, which is how to use psychology in a fight to lead the attacker where you want them. he can really break it down so the application makes sense, which is enormously helpful. Plus he just moves so bloody easily where the uke just looks screwed from the get-go. Total control of the uke and he can actually explain both mechanically and psychologically how it works. Again, great training.
Then, crawl into bed and hope it wouldn't rain.

Saturday
Must work on my weather control better, as it was raining. However, that's kind of the point to work with the elements, so off to Gyo training with Ken Savage
7:30 AM. Whee, excercise time. I like that the PT-style training is designed to mimic the taijutsu so you are training while you exercise. Drop squats were great fun and we did Sanshin at warp 20 or so. :lool: It was good training and got the body moving for the rest of the day.
9 AM Breakfast. I'll fill this in at the end. Suffice to say it was hot and plentiful and stoked the furnace.
10:30 2 hours of further training with Shidoshi Mark Davis. A bunch of work on how to capture the energy of your opponent and use it. Jutai- and dakentaijutsu and it was very good. Not much to add, you had to be there.
1 PM, Lunch
2:30 Breakout sessions. I selected Shidoshi Paul Etherington. I had an absolute blast, even though I seriously sucked at what we were doing! However, I walked away with a much better understanding of two concepts I've been struggling with; the second being how to counter a throw by letting the opponent actually win. It finally clicked that I was still trying to counter to early before the opponent thought I'd missed my chance. I thought he was very patient and yet got his points across quickly. Really well done and I learned a lot and have a lot to bring home to my dojo and work on. The concepts should have a much wider application than just the techniques and even schools we worked on. Hope he's back next year.
5 Pm Dinner
6 PM Tameshigiri with Shidoshi Matt Venier. What can I say, after studying Toyama and Yagyu ryu I love me my swords. I had huge fun, my cuts were pretty decent and Matt Venier makes outstanding functional swords. We got to use his and I'd put his up for balance and liveliness with anything you're going to get out of Bugei etc. Easily. You can tell he uses them as much as makes them and I will have one some day. Everyone seemed to have fun and when people were struggling he swept right in and worked them through it. The atmosphere was respectful but fun.
8 PM, lecture on budo at the fire circle and prep for the night exercise.
9 -12 PM Night exercises. Okay, this is why you come to Warrior Camp. How about two+ hours of exercises on silently creeping, using the two C's and 7 S's of remaning undetected, and large scale exercises with instructors who had 10+ years with soke and Hayes and the senior Japanese instructors back when it was Ninpo taijutsu. It was very well put together and obviously involved a lot of effort from the volunteer instructors. I've done these exercises outside in groups of 2-3 or in the dojo, but groups of 20 in the woods after a rainfall? Completely different. the best part was the instructors made time to analyze what worked, what didn't how to use shadow, etc. I honestly think I learned more application in those 3 hours than I have in God knows how many hours of dojo work. If you want to learn this stuff, you should have been here. Simple as that.

I'll finish Sunday's write-up later this evening.

Matt


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