Fit2FightUK @ Keysi Central Conference

Jon Purton
Jul 18, 2017
3 min read

A very unsurprising venue for the 2017 Keysi Central Justo Diegez (founder and creator of Keysi Fighting Method) Seminar a Strip bar in the centre of Solihull, dark, dingy and sticky - you could smell the debauchery fresh in the air from the night before! Amazingly this is not the first time I've been to a Strip Club to train Keysi! Dean William leader of the Midlands pack, a true gent and avid follower of the Keysi art welcomed us (Myself, Adam and Cristina) with open arms. Myself Jamie and Leon attended the Keysi Seminar last year in a sports hall, this had very different and more real feel to it this is what I got into Keysi for the unapologetic realism of it.

Justo started us off in the traditional way with body mechanics and shadow moving around being aware of your surroundings. The aim of the drill was to fight off imaginary opponents without giving your back to any of your training partners, If you did and were touched on the back, it was push ups.

The initial training was a simple combination which involved hand strikes with knees in the usual Keysi style of pushing your opponent backwards. I remember specifically the hardest thing about this drill was not crashing into the large ornamental mirror just behind us.

We then ran the drill and many other combinations in 3s, myself and Adam were partnered with some great guys from Milton Keynes who were Keysi pros who made us work extremely hard, moving from one combination to the next.

Adam really reminded me of myself when I met Justo for the first time. He was a full on fan of all his work studying all his videos, KFM and his films. He was delighted when he realised that me and Justo still had a great relationship he really made me feel welcome and is always available for a conversation after a hard session. All to happy for us to have several picture with him.

Cristina also tells me she had a fantastic time, it was great for her to see quite a few other girls around with the gang and even offer some advice to a new recruit that she was training with.

Justo himself even came up and told her that her movements were excellent. I couldn't help feeling extremely pleased as Cristina has only ever been trained by myself so with the founder of the movement telling her that she was a cut above really made me proud and a it was a great endorsement for what we are doing.

A quick note from me, I really feel that Keysi is a fantastic art, it is not bogged down by old fashioned dogma, it's born in and has come from the streets and it really shows.

The training is raw and brutal, you will get hurt, you will have bruises you will get a bump and a bang. This made me realise that it's essential as if you don't train at this level you will never know what you're doing actually works and it gives you a toughness and a resilience to blows and knocks. Combine them with the Motto of Nunca Te Rindas or Never Give Up in English, it gives the practitioner a fantastic attitude to face challenges in and outside of training.

In Fit2FightUK my training in Keysi is used to answer questions around Multiple opponent scenarios, body mechanics and techniques for when the practitioner is ambushed.

It must be noted though that the training offered in Keysi is only physical, the problem I had was because of the nature of the movements and it's destructive potential, I was always worried about using my skills as I was never prepared what was legal and what wasn't.

We need to know about all aspects of self defence both physical and non physical and allways make sure that we are on the right side of the law when we are defending oursleves.