26/05/2026
Many of you won’t know this, but in 1994 (and into 1995), David Tomney travelled around the world for a whole 12 months. This was before he was ‘grappling Dave’ as we know him, he was ‘kicking Dave’ back then. During those 12 months part of the trip took him to Thailand and he trained in some of the Thai boxing gyms out there. He has said, on a number of occasions, that they were hard sessions but also incredibly hot. One of the things he observed that during a session that might last 2 hours, the local Thai fighters found a way to conserve energy. They trained hard but they didn’t train like maniacs when the weather was at its hottest. Perhaps something to learn from there.
About the same time that Dave was in Thailand, I was in the Philippines, for the World Stick--fighting Championships. As you can imagine, it was hot. This was August after all. The Filipino approach was similar to the Thais. Conserve energy. We had a training session with Grandmaster Ondo Carbunay of the Lapunti system. This consisted of training on the beach under the baking sun. As they say, the sun is different in the tropics. None of us suffered,
Except one.
Glynn Daniels partook in some sunbathing. This alabaster white Englishman turned a shade of red that Captain Scarlet would be proud of. Even when we warned him (we could see him changing colour), Glynn lay there a bit longer. As a result, he didn’t have the best of tournaments in 1994. His time would come later.
It is experiences like these that will determine the pace of the classes under this latest British heatwave. There might be some higher tempo training, but it will come later in the class. There will be lots of technical training and that fits in perfectly for those seeking your next grade.
But what I have found every year, is that some people just like to be uncommon amongst uncommon people and I’m sure we’ll see that this week as well.
See you in class.
Andy
