Fit2FightUK at the Pershore River Festival
- Jon Purton
- Jul 24, 2018
- 3 min read
A fine day for a festival, walking through the delightful market town of Pershore with my heavy bag on my shoulder. Myself and Millie, who was keen to make a good impression with her grading coming up, were greeted by a fairground of exciting looking stands and attractions. Unfortunately as my otherwise wonderful girlfriend had thrown away my only program we needed to frantically search for a helpful face. We were pointed past the youth centre, down to the riverbank and though a hole in the fence into a secondary field and my heart sank noticing our plot was empty... Not a sign of the table I was expecting and the 4 other companies in this area had full gazebos and vans with very impressive set ups.
Some quick improvisation was needed as we grabbed the nearest picnic table and thought "This will do fine!"
Our novice looking stand was complete and it looked much better than I expected and the picnic table actually turned out to be perfect for people who wanted to sit and chat to us in more detail about what we were doing! "Go us"
The aim of attebding this event was to advertise Fit2FightUK: Holistic Self Defence in Evesham at the De Montfort School - our Thursday evening sessions.
Immediately I was greeted by Marc, he was hyped for the event explaining what he was dong and straight away we found some synergy in our motivations and even before we had a discussion with a visitor the event was worthwhile.
The stall next to us Stronger Active was full of expectations as well, Craig introduced himself and immediately grabbed my attention when he told me he knew what Keysi was! Turns out he was a black belt in multiple disciplines and was very impressed with our ethos.
At 11.30 - An hour before I was expecting we ran the first free 45 minute seminar, attending was 2 keen faces, Craig and another student from the local Karate school who had visited the stand.
We discussed why self defence is the greatest life skill you can ever develop and our definition of self defence "The ability to take actions that keep you safe". We had some great discussions about the emotional side of self defence, especially discussions around the law and answering to the police and how an understanding of all stages of the fight, you vs you, you vs the system and you vs the bad guy, can all effect your performance in a violent encounter.
The Rest of the day went off without a hitch a very welcome appearance from Sensei Andy Privett my Ju Jutsu instructor, from the excellent TJK Cheltenham(www.tjkcheltenham.co.uk) it was the first time I had shown him and his Wife FitFightUK and was very excited to do so.
The second seminar at 3.30pm was my favourite of the day, we had two ladies whom it would be safe to assume were over 50 enter the hall wide eyed and nervous about what new challenge awaited them. We discussed the same as before with some excellent answers showing they were very familiar with the concept of making safe choices. I was especially impressed with the way they carried out the physical, steps, Non violent postures, Cage to entry and escape round the back from the grab.
They understood and said that the technique was simple, easy to understand and could see how it would work in the real world. We discussed the same technique around a mugging and someone trying to grab your bag. I could not have been more pleased with the seminar and afterwards we discussed how they would try and get their grandsons and daughters to come along.
Overall I think we made the most of the position we had, the event didn't offer up a huge amount of footfall but the conversations we had were good ones. I would do the event again as long as the weather was once again nice and hot.
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