For a third year, the Deep Water Martial Arts Convention and Tournament is being hosted in Creston, bringing dozens of students and masters to town.
Running Friday to Sunday this weekend at the Creston and District Community Complex and open to the public, Deep Water offers a chance for education in a wide range of martial arts-related areas.
“The idea is that martial arts is a lifestyle rather than kicking and punching people — I feel that people get too caught up in the kicking and punching,” said Neil Ripski, Red Jade Martial Arts founder and Kootenay Chin Woo Martial Arts Association board member, both of which sponsor the convention.
About a dozen karate, jiu jitsu, tai chi, ninja and Chinese medicine masters will attend the convention, along with about 70 students from schools in Nelson, and Lethbridge, Red Deer and Edmonton, Alta.
Workshops include Chinese medicine — discussions of basic Chinese meridian theory (Friday) and Chinese medicine in everyday life (Sunday) — swords, ninjitsu and more. An opening ceremony followed by a tournament is the event’s official kickoff at 9 a.m. Saturday; all of the events take place at the rec centre, except for an evening tea with the masters, which runs Saturday at the Snoring Sasquatch.
One of the discussions Ripski will lead deals with drunken boxing; the Creston Valley resident is one of only a few teachers in the world. Last year, he spent a week teaching in Israel, and he recently visited Rome to teach at Heaven Fight Arena, where he was visited by students from Israel, Switzerland, Britain and Italy.
It was an intense week, with Ripski cramming as much as he could into five eight-hour days.
“I just pushed it on them to see how much they could handle,” he said. “It was like going to your grandma’s house and she keeps telling you to eat.”
As with his previous teaching trip, Ripski made sure he had time to see the sights, visiting the Vatican (where he accidentally followed the wrong group and nearly ended up at the papal residence before police caught up with him) and filming martial arts videos in the Coliseum and Roman Forum (where police chased him out while filming after sunset).
In Rome, Ripski stayed near a church that was the last architectural work of Michelangelo, and was amazed to see fountains in the city that were still served by ancient aqueducts.
“You can’t go five minutes without seeing one that’s been trickling water for two thousand years,” he said.
He even had the opportunity to use his martial arts training when a man came up to him, shook his hand and whispered in his ear — the man’s hand was already in Ripski’s backpack as he did so. Rispki defended himself by twisting the man’s wrist.
“It’s a move that I never use and thought was stupid when I learned it,” he said with a laugh.
For more information on the Deep Water convention, visit www.deepwatercon.com.
