Father VS son

If you are a father who closely teaches your child martial arts, I'm sure that you have received similar questions or comments like "can you still keep up with your child", "who is better between the two of you", I'm sure your child can beat you shitless"... I've been getting lots of these. My son often get these questions and comments too from his friends and even sometimes from his other senseis from another martial arts.




The truth is, my son has never beaten me (yet...) on full contact controlled sparring using FMA or CQC but has given me lots of painful sleepless nights :) We never had sports-like martial arts sparring since I'm not very useful on defense based martial arts so I'm sure that he will put me down if I'm only limited to certain targets and rules (no hair pulling, no finger locking, no biting, no neck cranking, no throat clamping, no face scraping, no eye poking or gouging, no hits to the vitals, and no weapons... etc.). My son wants my techniques so he goes with my rules which doesn't have much rules really... no ipon, no points for hits, tap means surrender but we try our best to keep it gentle so that we don't damage each other. In reality, both me and my son knows that he can beat me anytime if we will fight for real. Though  I may have more skills and experience, he is my advance student and has been trained using offensive FMA-CQC and will never fight head-on. He'll catch me when I'm sleeping or when I least expect it. He is faster, have more endurance and better eye sight than me, and I have been trying to pass him all the techniques that I know, plus he is also studying other martial arts and combining them all together will surely put me down. I'm getting old, slow and fat and I am sure that I only have a few more years to teach him all my BS... then I will become his student, hahaha... To be honest, there have been several times when I was pinned down and couldn't do anything especially during grappling (finger locks). There also have been countless times that I nearly passed out during his choke hold. I also noticed that sometimes when we are doing a demonstration sparring that he puts himself in the position to actually lose... Sometimes I even get surprised during demonstrations when I show very basic throwing techniques and he starts flipping and flying in the air like a stuntman from Hollywood. I don't know where he learned how to fake-fall like a pro but it really looks cool. He should teach that to me sometime :) My son follows a very strict code that his seniors or senseis will always be his senseis. He'll role with the punches while stealing techniques and even if I get too old, but he will always make me win :)

Since I am teaching my son traditional FMA and CQC, I often get punched, kicked, thrown, grappled, chocked, and neck cranked. I also often get hit with his sticks, usually on my hands, elbows, and head. The hits are partly controlled but they still hurt. The hardest part was when my son was still a beginner when his control sucks. The most painful stage was when he was near advance when he knows the techniques, have lots of power and speed but still can't properly control the amount of force that he was giving. Now he is in advance, teaching has been a lot easier and more enjoyable for me. I can teach him in slow motion and not get myself hurt in the process. I believe that beginners should start learning it on a slightly high pace and then to full speed and once their bodies learn the movements or techniques, then that is the time to go slow or even by only using demonstrations or by explaining, the student will know instantly how to effectively execute the new technique without teaching him "again" all the basics, stances, moves and execution because his body remembers the moves by instinct. Even if his style of execution doesn't look exactly like mine as long as it looks similar and looks effective then that is fine by me. Even if he miss on the first hit but as long as he combine it with a devastating follow up, that is fine too :)

Here are some of my "happy" photos when I got injured...
1st and 2nd photos are when my son gave me a good finger lock where I broke my thumb :)
3rd photo is my left leg after seeing a chiropractor. I got it during the time when I was teaching my son leg twisting/grappling. Both my knees got damaged but my left knee got water and I had to crawl the stairs for 2 weeks.
These are just some of my happy moments but there had been many, like having difficulties breathing from receiving several palm hits, both shoulders feeling like frozen shoulders for months... It is good that I go to a very good chiropractor who is also a high martial arts practitioner and knows where I took the beating and easily adjusts or repairs the damages.
Though we had a rough time during our early days of training, I find it very rewarding to see my child learning something. Doing martial arts together made us very close to each other and are like best of friends but as a father, I still get angry and scold my child when he did something wrong (not doing his school homework, not cleaning his room, normal boys stuffs...) but maybe because of his MA training and MA values, he follows seniority so we never end up fighting. He knows how to accept his mistakes and tries to fix the problem... but boys will always be boys and they NEVER clean their room properly (sigh...)
We hope that you and your kids too are having fun training martial arts :)