Seeing Mat making himself a mini-dojo in his basement, I was reminded of this video I saw the other day. The video is of a young gentleman from Quebec City named Jean-François Robitaille, his website can be found at www.jeffrobitaille.net. He's from our group of school although he trains at the Quebec City one, maybe 25-30 minutes away from me.
He has won numerous big competition and he's very impressive, very acrobatic. In fact, he won the title of world champion in synchro/team forms with a kid who studies at my school, Mathieu Mercier, who's just as impressive. I call him a kid because well, I still see him as a kid ;) but he's a grown man... Mathieu has given class to Andrew a few times in the past, and he's the main teacher of acrobatics and creative/open forms at our school. You can see them both in this picture. Mathieu is the one on his knee and Jeff is the one standing behind him. You can see a video of one of their performances here. Warning, this movie is a good size one (10mb or about) and this is not your usual traditional karate. It's got more acrobatics in it, lots more crazy jumping kicks. You've been warned ;)
Well, and what is the connection between these guys and our dojo, the place where Andrew and I train? Well, there's another video from Jeff's website, a osrt of compilation of Jeff working on his jumps and such. That was shot at the Lévis dojo, that's where we train :) You can find the video here (same warning about size of the video applies to this one). Every scene shown where Jeff is making his crazy spinning jump kicks from in a room with mirrors are from our dojo. The scene where he appears on a stage comes from a show at Paris Bercy, where he took part in a three country demonstration with Daniel Sterling, an American and a Frenchman whom I don't know.
I wanted to share with you all what it looks like at our dojo. The blue mat you see there was put in last Summer. It's about two inches thick like your usual blue mat but the finish is more like a carpet and it stays there all the time, meaning you can make throws, sweeps and takedowns without worrying about your landing, or at least it minimizes the effect that a hard floor could have on you...
FM
disclaimer: all videos and pictures shown in this post are the property of www.jeffrobitaille.net.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
I don't know the if there is an actual application to some of those flips (this coming from somebody that loves capoeira) but it sure does look cool. Those guys are great to be doing that synchronized though, and that is for sure. Make sure to give them both a big OSU! from me.
Nice flips indeed.
That dojo seems nice. :)
I appreciate those forms. And I do respect a lot what those guys are performing. REALLY IMPRESSIVE!!!
I have to see the quebec open next year, I'm missing on some interesting stuff!
Sure, it might not be the "traditionnal" art and not applicable. Still, they have great skills!
Kudos to these guys!
thanks for your comment on the dojo, it is a nice place to train in.
You know, I was planning on sending you a reminder about the Quebec Open when it comes around next Spring but was kind of unsure how you'd view some of the stuff that is presented there. It's actually quite varied, with some people presenting more traditional stuff and even some more pure Chinese martial arts, like some Wushu. The Saturday night show is four hour long, or at least it was this year, and that include a good mix of fighting, forms and demonstrations. Seeing the weapon forms is always nice, especially that there seemed to be a real attraction for the katana (sword)this year still with the bo being always very present.
And yes, these kids do have mad skills. :)
Later, Steve.
Post a Comment