Intro

Hello all! I'm 20, male, from edmonton, AB. Trained 2 years boxing, 1 yr. arnis, couple classes here and there muay thai, plenty of research in JKD and street fighting, and grew up training with my dad, founder of Ketto Ryu Ju-Jitsu. I plan to be a career martial artist, just started taking formal classes for Ketto Ryu, get to open a school upon completion of the curriculum. I currently teach private classes and seminars for Basic self defence. First belt test tomorrow, first seminar held on this saturday.
Anyways, wish me luck on my test, and at my first seminar. This site is incredible, been viewing for a while and just opened an account. E-mail is guysmiley49@hotmail.com if any edmonton area users are interested in the seminar/weekend sparring/exchanging knowledge.

What's arnis?

Are you on some sort of martial arts teacher training placement?;-)

Welcome to the site anyway.

SL, you confuse me. :-p

in what way??

Dunno...see...i'm confused now! :-p

Arnis=Phillippino stick and knife fighting
Basically the same as Kali
And, in a way, yes. As long as I offer classes in Ketto Ryu and carry on my father's teachings, I kinda get a free ride. It's my dream to do nothing but train/teach, so the deal is a way for me to bypass the "hard work" of building up a student base and getting my name out there. My instructor was taught by my father for 18 years, and he has 3 locations in the city. He wants to concentrate more on 2 of them, so he wants someone to take over the third. I just got lucky in the fact that none of his current students want to do it for a living (and carrying my last name probabally helped quite a bit too;-))
I'm rather excited that my dream is coming true, but I have alot to learn and alot of time to do it. Money never was a big concern for me, so as long as I've got a place to live and food to eat I'm perfectly content to spend my days doing nothing but martial arts.

haha no probs Robsco!

What about when the women come along and the kids???

2 steps ahead of you...:-)
Woman works and gives me 100% support in my dream/way of life
and (not really a positive thing at all), she cannot produce eggs. I'd be blessed if we had a kid, and if I do get lucky and have one, well, I'll simply have to take on more private lessons;-)
anyways, for now I'm perfectly happy and just trying to learn as much as I can. The test went well, in case anyone forgot:-p

how did you get on whats the grading structure?

I've been wondering about that too. As you've been training with your dad for years can you double grade through the lower belts?

or one big grade ??

No...
I want to start from ground zero and make sure that there is nothing I've missed. Most of it comes naturally but there are some concepts that were lost along the way, so I'm trying to approach it like I know nothing so I make sure I know everything.
Please explain what you mean by "grading structure". I think your asking what is required to go up in belt level, in which case your given techniques at random, and the instructor watches for key points (proper application, flow, positioning, etc)

Well i reckon your training idea is good, to start back at the beginning, if only more people practiced the basics.

That's what I'm going to love about teaching for a living, usually people concentrate on advanced concepts or take up another art, whereas everyday I'll get to review the basics as well as the advanced stuff.

i mean like for example you have to know say 11 techniques for yellow 26 for orange etc...

Definitely the basics are the fundamentals!!!

Okay. For example there are 21 techniques on white belt. Sensei will ask for 10-12 at random, plus a demonstration of basic strikes, rolls, breakfalls and footwork. Other belts are done in the same manner, but sensei will also ask for random techniques from lower levels, and so forth. This way nobody can rush through the levels without understanding the concepts and "hardwiring" the techniques. Hope this answers your questions.

But could you throw in some of your stick/knife techniques to pick up extra points as it were?

My sensei attended my seminar, so I'm sure I got brownie points for showing what I know.
We try to keep things very open and creative, to not limit our training to the curriculum. Any new ideas or suggestions arealways accepted and put to review...
For example, I've never done gun defences, but when a student asked "What if they've got a gun?" it was easy enough for my instructor to give me random scenarios and find effective defences on the spot. Many concepts that apply to unarmed defence or defence vs. non-firearms apply in the same manner, only minor adjustments are needed.
Showing what I know is a great way to prove that I actually know what I'm talking about, so I basically got to show my instructor that it's not all talk and theories. It will definately help out in going through the curriculum, if that's what your asking:-D

hmm gun defences.... what would you do if they had a gun? I know what id do ;-)

A: Not piss people off enough to want to shoot me.
B: Hope that if I do they are stupid enough to get in range for me to control it