I taught my little, private martial arts class this evening. It went a little long. One of my students was studying early for a college program he will take in less than a month, so he couldn't make it. It turned out to be a strange but funny night that was one of the best (most instructive) and most fun classes I can remember.

We train outdoors in the warmer weather, and I was warming up before class by kicking the heavy bag. The class started by my getting chased around the place by a swarm of wasps that had taken up residence in my heavy bag stand. My student showed up to see me fighting them off. He quickly joined in and was knocking them out of the air with his fighting stick. I was impressed with his accuracy. Once we had routed the ornery little buggers, class began in earnest.

There are different dynamics when one is teaching a class like this with different numbers of students. I have instructed larger numbers of students at one time years ago and, as was the case earlier tonight, a single student. I have to say that I much prefer the kind of intensive one-on-one or two encounters that I had tonight.

It allows me to concentrate solely on the weaknesses and strengths of the individual I'm training, and to better help them overcome the former and enhance the latter. I also get to participate on a more personally active level in sparring and exploring different techniques, which is something I enjoy a lot.

For the first have of the class, we concentrated on stick-fighting techniques. There are various ways of stick-fighting, and many different 'styles'. The three I have been trained in are all Filipino styles (originated in the Philippines) which very closely resemble each other, namely; Arnis de Mano, Eskrima (which means skirmish) and Kali. Usually a school will adopt a set number of "angles of attack" (typically twelve to twenty-one or so) out of which to learn and train. My experience was no different. I learned several different sets and adopted one of my own.

The twelve angles of attack that I initially teach students are designed to help them learn to strike or defend from any position, even on the ground. The man I taught tonight is my most advanced student. He is motivated and intense when he trains, but he also has a good sense of humor. I was in the middle the middle of training him to throw full-power strikes with proper follow-through, which depends heavily on solid footwork, when something strange happened.

I have an older, well-used heavy bag and I had him banging away on the bag. He had only thrown about twenty five strikes when his 1-1/8" diameter rattan stick simply snapped into three nearly equal pieces. His eyes were huge when it happened. I maintained my composure until he laughed, and then I just lost it. We had a good laugh. I told him that he could now brag officially about the power of his strikes, in that I had never seen anyone manage to break a rattan stick in two while hitting the heavy bag before. As a matter of fact, I have never seen one break like that at all.

All in all, it was a good night of training. I took a few minor shots with the padded fighting sticks, but I was able to convey some very important concepts to my student. All in all, a very satisfying night of training.