Bringing a friend along

The days of rest did me good, the shoulder has not been bothering me as much since, though it's sort of moved and still aches almost continuously.

It was good to get back on Wednesday and pass on the new and not-so-new knowledges gained from the iaido seminar. Some things were dismissed with an "that's the Ishido-sensei way, we do things a bit differently" which, to be honest, is quite all right, but others are changes we do need to implement on the way we do Seitei Gata. I also appreciated being able to go through the kata slowly and in my own time, to better understand the changes. I may not appreciate the ZNKR kata but, oh well, I need to perform them.

Joining the Kali Sikaran training on Thursday was a delight. It's quite satisfying that the majority of the little club are female - if only because it makes people look surprised when you say it. Why should that be strange, really?
Anyway. There were five of us, plus our trainer, and we focused on Panantukan and some cadeña de maño, chaining hands. I need to learn not to stop breathing just because I am punching things, though! I was pleasantly tired afterwards.

I was of half a mind to go to either Kuntao or another club's iaido training on Friday but decided against it - I needed the rest away from people. Saturday, though, I managed to lure with me a friend to Open Training, and we had lots of fun! She wants to start training martial arts and was rather tempted to go for some kind of FMA (Filippino Martial Art), partially because of the very practical part with knife-defense. She was brave to just jump in when I asked her to join, and have a go, with sticks, softsticks and knives, and damn, did she take to it! It was great to see! The learning curve is usually quite quick in the beginning, but knowing that and seeing it in action are two different things. It was so gratifying, such a great experience, to see how quickly my friend took to it, and how fun we had together!

The trainer, Theo, is good at emphasising that you need to practice with intent behind your attack, so both of us got a few bruises, but he also found us a pair of leg-protectors to put on our right arms - all the slapping with and without knife on the right arm hurt quite enough with it on, so I don't like to think what it'd have been like without!

And, I managed to win a small sparring match against him - though it was part luck on my part, more than skill, I think. Still, good to get a few hits in on the trainer as a change!

I was going to go on a run today, but I am still a little worried about my left knee. It's fairly annoying that it's started acting up again... perhaps I need to do more koryu iaido?

How do you do when a friend starts expressing an interest in training, whether it be your martial art or preferred way of training, or something else entirely? Have you ever brought someone along and how did it go?