Training with Guro Krishna Godhania - short review

[tomek]

Last week I got a pleasure to visit England, combining short vacation with training under one of my teachers and friends - Pangulong Guro Krishna Godhania.
He is already well known teacher and His background and lineage can be easily found at www.krishnagodhania.com
I know Him through Sayoc Kali community (we both lead Sayoc training groups in our countries) but this time I had chance to learn more from His vast knowledge and expierience.
One of the systems Guro Krishna trained during His travels to Philippines is Kalis Ilustrisimo. It was great (and sometimes painfull...) expierience to compare traditional version He teaches with techniques I know from Ray Floro's lineage.
After discussing and training KI Guro showed me another great but not so well-known system - Warrior's Escrima. A lot of time was dedicated to analyse system's structure and combine some of its training methods with Kalis Ilustrisimo's principles. Surprising they match each other very well.
Most of training time was dedicated to free and semi-free sparring with most often used weapons: sticks, knife, espada y daga and sibat. It was really great expierience and most valuable practice for me.
Last day I got a bonus: Guro showed me very rare stick techniques from Master Atong Garcia. Reverse grip used in this system is a little bit different to Ilustrisimo's yet pretty effective in close range.
A lot of good training (intense and fun) and great time visiting famous Middland's sights - all of this thanks to Guro Krishna.
If visiting England for vacation or other reason don't forget to find time to train with Him.

[Gillin]

Hey Tomek,
I second that! I met Guro Krishna at Sama-Sama. I was very Impressed with his skill,and him personally.
He combines Boxing and Bladework very well.I ordered his Instructional Video set That I also thought was excellent.Looking forward to more Training time with him when he is back in the States.
Gumagalang,
Shawn

[two sword]

Hi Tomek,

I also got a chance to see Guro Krishna move during Sama Sama.

Some of of the high level instructors started do blade simulator (bolo) exchanges on the side during Sama Sama... a little fun with some big names.

Guro Krishna's blade exchanges were very impressive.

His knowledge and experience are aquired from many many years of serious training and teaching.

You are lucky to have put in some training time with him.

[Airyu]

Hello Tomek,

I'm glad you enjoyed all the training with Guro Krishna!! He is a fantastic FMA practitioner, and teacher!! I can't wait to see you all in Sweden in October!

Train Hard it is the Way!

Guro Steve L.

https://www.Bujinkandojo.net

[riverstyx65]

Just back from 2 days of training with Guro Krishna Godhania and gotta say it was a blast! The training is old school in that it’s one to one tuition on a host of areas in the arts from single stick, double stick, stick and dagger, knife defence and staff. Guro Krishna’s teaching style is very relaxed but structured in such a way as to ensure that the material being trained is covered in depth in an easy to assimilate matter. An example of this would be the division of “drills” into co ordination, flow and combat groups. This allows a student when exposed to a new drill to be able to place that drill in one of the above categories. I was introduced to this concept via the medium of double stick, an area which has always given me problems (I’d give my right arm to be ambidextrous). We started with the most common siniwali co ordination drills, and then introduced different variations that brought the drill “alive”. Next Guro Krishna taught a flow drill called “pakgang” again once the basic drill was learnt he gave me the different variations to underpin the basic principle of the drill. The last section was the sparring / combat application, my favourite. Here the co ordination and flow attributes from the previous drills were used in a number of combative scenarios. This progression was followed when dealing with single stick and single dagger. Although I’m biased as I’m a student of Guro Krishna’s I would recommend training with him to anyone interested in deepening their knowledge in FMA and there’s also the fact that he’s a genuinely nice guy.

All the best,
John


P.S.
I don’t wanna sound to “advertisementy” but Guro Krishna has a series of instructional tapes and DVDs on the FMA that are well worth a look. Not only do you get the core drills and in depth explanations on single stick, single dagger, double stick and Pangamut each tape has clips from the Philippines demonstrating their respective arts, some cool stuff a happening.