Guro Laurence Sandum Kali Seminar – June 2017

Robin French with Guro Laurence Sandum - June 2017

After what seemed like a long break since March, the start of June saw me attend Guro Laurence Sandum’s latest Kali seminar, at his academy in Witham.

As one of the most highly ranked Filipino Martial Arts instructors in the UK under Guro Dan Inosanto, and with his outstanding ability to recall and demonstrate exactly what he has been taught by his instructors, I am always confident in getting the purest of material from any of Guro Laurence’s seminars; this session definitely did not fail to disappoint!

The seminar started out with a warm up, by way of a refresher on the Inosanto-Lacoste 1-17 feeding series; initially with a single stick, and the how it translated to the staff.

Next up, Guro Laurence worked us through a number of disarm options from the Punyo Sombrada drill; a mixture of material that I had seen before, along with some that I hadn’t. We spoke about how these particular disarms didn’t require particularly complicated grips or set-ups, so would be good options for stick sparring.

For the next section of the seminar, Guro Laurence shifted focus to the eighth area of Inosanto-Lacoste Kali, working us through first some staff flow drills, and then on to some staff versus staff Abecedario variations.

The session rounded out with a re-cap of some of the material from March’s session; the Villabrille 12-count, Numerado drill. This time around, Guro Laurence showed some variations on how to deal with the incoming strikes.

I would like to say thank you to Guro Laurence for not only hosting the event but for continually traveling around the World, to train with the very best instructors and bringing it back for his students.