Back in Amsterdam, I’ve been training under Ron den Boer sensei in his Fudoshin Ryu dojo for about two years now. Fudoshin Ryu is a mixed martial art which includes Toide, Ju-no Kempo and Koryu Jujutsu. It’s very “real life” oriented, with as much (or maybe even more) focus on fighting spirit as on the techniques involved. Once a week we are busting our asses trying to get everything just right, although even after two years it’s very hard to master all the moves involved (at least for me ).

This Wednesday we had a special training by guest sensei Raphael, one of Ron sensei’s friends and training buddies for about 20 years now. We weren’t allowed to wear our training Gi, instead we were told to dress in normal (yet old ) clothes for this training.

Training in normal clothes really changes the game a lot somehow. If you enter a dojo in your Gi, your mind automatically goes into some kind of dojo mode, which induces a very relaxed approach to everything that’s thrown at you. Punches seem less scary, as do grabs and pretty much everything you do. When you train in normal clothes, however, it is much harder to reach that state, because you feel “normal.” This fact alone really intensifies all aspects of the training.

Anyway, back to the training at hand, we spent the whole time practicing what my sensei calls “chaos fighting.” Chaos fighting starts out with the premise that you don’t know what your opponent will do to you, but you still have to be able react appropriately. In short this comes down to keeping your opponent close and in contact, such that you can feel rather then see what he/she is trying to do to you.

Naturally, this is very hard to do in reality and takes years of practice to perfect it up to the point where Raphael and Ron sensei are. When they execute their moves, you really can’t keep up and don’t really feel their moves. What you do feel however, is a relentless rain of hits on your head, throat, stomach, wherever, until you can’t do anything else but curl up in a corner and weep a little… Well ok, not actually weeping, but you get my point.

I brought my camera for this training, and Ron sensei made some pictures of us training…

[Show as slideshow]

And a short video of me and others trying our best at “feeling the opponents moves.”

A short while later, one of my training buddies punched my contact lens right out of my eye, so it seemed like a good moment to rest a little bit and create a movie of my own. I started with shooting Dick (yes, that’s a Dutch name, get your head out of the gutter!) and Vincent. Luckily, while I was shooting, our two first Dan students, Hidde and Leon, really went at it, so you can see a bit how it’s supposed to be done.

Needless to say, this training was very intense and pretty much everybody was totally shot by the end of our session. My entire upper body aches like hell, but man was it worth it!

Thanks a million for this very special training Raphael sensei!