“And I come back to you now, at the turn of the tide.” – Magneto in Wizard Costume
My last post on this site was exactly four months ago, titled “Time Traveling”. In that time, while I have not literally been time traveling I did take the summer to reexamine the school, my training and to revisit the foundations of Lakas Filipino Martial Arts. As always, my teaching and training is charged by my instructors and my students and last night’s class finally gave me the incentive to start writing again.
Earlier this year I was on a mission to produce content for Filipino Martial Art enthusiasts like myself. In my sometimes fruitless search online to find quality articles, discussions or even sources of inspiration/motivation for my own development I tried to create a website that I myself would like to read.
“I’m ouroboros. I’ve written myself into my screenplay.” – Charlie Kaufman, in “Adaptation”
This summer I had the tremendous privilege of training with and learning from the best. For almost all of June I had the opportunity to help in preparation for Sayoc Sama Sama in Los Angeles. In July I got to train with Guro Dan Inosanto at Guro Pat Tray’s Trident Martial Arts in Virginia. And in August we hosted Guro Leo Manalo for the Maryland Atienza Kali Training Group session. And during all that time I transitioned and changed jobs. Tuhon Tom Kier once talked about training using the imagery of swim lanes in a pool. Sometimes you stay in one lane to focus on a particular skill set. Other times you move to another lane to emphasize another component. It is the ebb and flow; the tides of our evolution.
But last night I was reminded why I wanted to share this art in the first place. I talked to the class about the name “Lakas”. We put our drills into different contexts. And I was reminded of the tremendous debt I have to my instructors, my brothers and sisters in Kali and to my students. This website was created not just to promote the Filipino Martial Arts, but to serve as a source of information and passion. In the spirit of this effort I also felt it was appropriate to have our first guest contributor, Justin Dohrmann of Impact Martial Arts. He is a great writer and dedicated student of Guro Ervin’s.
So expect to see more posts again, and be sure to follow LakasFMA on both Twitter and Instagram.
Thank you,
Guro Joe Marana
LAKAS FILIPINO MARTIAL ARTS 