#kuntao

[jeetkuneflow]

Training in the Red Room. 🕷 🔻

[soetjihati]

A beautiful video of my teammates in performance: enjoy!

[kuntaosilat]

Kuntaosilat knife drill

[jeetkuneflow]

(Personal details redacted 😛) I reached advanced level in our JKD/IGS & Muay Thai program a few days ago. That’s one rank shy of apprentice instructor. 😁

[jeetkuneflow]

Fireman’s carry from freestyle wrestling. 🧑‍🚒

[jeetkuneflow]

Larry Hartsell (front left) and my teacher (front right)

Hartsell was one of Bruce Lee’s original students, a black belt under Ed Parker, an army veteran — and a pioneer in Shoot Wrestling, Catch, Judo, and Jiu Jitsu.

In this photo, Hartsell demonstrates knife work he learned from Guros Dan Inosanto and Edgar Sulite.

[jeetkuneflow]

Learned some new freestyle wrestling takedowns tonight: head and arm throw to a potential straight-arm lock. 🤼‍♂️

[jeetkuneflow]

This past weekend was a whirlwind.

On Saturday, I attended an all-day Silat Suffian Bela Diri seminar with Maul Mornie. Guru Maul is *insane.* He moves the way only someone raised in an art can. Silat is part of him — so ingrained in his nervous system that it’s like breathing.

Before he started teaching his system publicly 10 years ago, it was only taught within his village — passed from parent to child. It’s incredibly well preserved as a result. True to the source. If you ever get the chance to train with Guru Maul, don’t pass it up.

On Sunday, I tested for my purple belt in Filipino Kuntao — one of the primary arts in my personal expression of JKD.

To pass the test, I had to defend myself from:

The jab/cross combination (with eight variations)

Front and rear bear hugs

Rear chokes

Front chokes

Chokes from mount

Front headlock

Side headlock

Hair pulling

Knife attacks (with a live blade)

Club attacks

Baseball bat attacks

And perform a ton of takedowns — all against resisting opponents. I’m *covered* in bruises.

The purple belt means I have Kuntao. The next two belts — brown and black — concentrate on refining the concepts and techniques we learn as white, yellow, and purple belts.

As I prepare for brown, I’ll learn various sensitivity drills, train various scenarios, and — the thing I’m most excited about — learn the staff and machete fighting methods of Kuntao. I’m extremely excited to have reached this milestone.