Lapunti Arnis de Abanico Seminar – May 2012

Robin French with Guro Simon Wells - May 2012

Saturday 12th May 2012 saw the return of Guro Simon Wells to Laurence Sandum’s Black Belt Martial Arts Academy in Chelmsford. Guro Simon, who usually focuses on Muay Thai, instead focused on another area of his expertise, a style of Filipino Martial Arts known as Lapunti Arnis de Abanico.

Guro Simon began the session with some stick assisted stretching and mobility exercises for the wrists, before stroking the basic feeding angles.

Focus then shifted to the Lapunti Street Fighting Combinations. Guro Simon started off working seminar attendees through the first two four count follow ups, before meticulouly working each of the first eight of the street fighting combinations themselves.

Seminar particpiants already familiar with Inosanto-Lacoste Kali noted the similarity between this series of drills and the 3rd Stage Abecedario drills.

For the last hour of the seminar, Guro Simon worked through some Lapunti knife defence, emphasising the need for the techniques to be workable against an aggressive and strong attacker.

As ever with Guro Simon’s seminars, I really enjoyed this extremely informative yet laid back session. I am really looking forward to Guro Simon’s return to the academy at the end of July to give a Muay Thai seminar.

Thanks to Guro Simon and his assistant Nick for travelling to the academy and to Guro Laurence Sandum for continuing to bring the best in their fields so close to home.