Martial Arts school owners rate Henry as the ‘Go To' kids instructor. These 3 Must-Haves will make you follow suit.
.IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:
How Henry Calantog got to work with Kyoshi Fred DePalma & MA1st
The essence of ‘Patience is a virtue’ when teaching kids classes
Helpful strategies on how to keep kids entertained and motivated during martial arts classes
The three general ways on how martial arts students learn
How to achieve the right balance of being serious and using humor
And more
Download the PDF transcription
*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here.
TRANSCRIPTION
GEORGE: Hi this is George Fourie and welcome to another Martial Arts Media business podcast, episode number 43. Today, I have a guest with me that I met at The Main Event in Sydney. I was fortunate enough to be able to share some presentation at The Main Event, which is hosted, Ma1st and I was able to, it was my first presentation, it was good to get to a live event and meet Kyoshi Fred DePalma, who also introduced me to Henry Calantog and I was told by a lot of some of my customers and a lot of people that I engage with, mentioned that Henry is top notch and he has been helping them with instructors, helping them instruct their kids classes and everybody mentioned they've learned a lot from Henry. So of course, I wanted to take the opportunity to get Henry on the show. So welcome Henry!
HENRY: Hello George, thank you very much for having me on.
GEORGE: Awesome. So, we've got lots to talk about, but we're going to start of course, right at the beginning. So who is Henry Calantog?
HENRY: My martial arts background well, actually let’s go through the personal background. I am the first, I'm Filipino. You wouldn't know that, because I'm over 6 feet tall, if you're familiar with any Filipinos, obviously, that's extremely tall. I was the tallest kid in the village, that's what we would make the joke with. But I am the first generation of my family that was born in the US, so my parents of course emigrated from the Philippines – Cavite, if you're familiar where that little fisherman village is, migrated here, and I was born here and pretty much, we brought the rest of the family over.
Did martial arts off and on when I was a younger child, I tried to do eskrima kali because of a friend of a friend of my father knew how to do it, so we tried to train it in the backyard. Had a really bad experience with it, just because it’s a very old school instructor and my first class was putting my hand on the table while he was hitting my hand with a rattan stick. So, at the age 8 years old, I didn't find that very entertaining, so I didn't want to come back.
I enrolled into a Taekwondo class; I just remember getting the pajamas. I did a Taekwondo class at the YMCA; I didn't like that either, because I thought it was boring. We sat around too much and didn't do anything. It wasn’t until I was raised in Reno Nevada – if you know where that is. And due to a job transfer, my mom moved to Arizona. We lived in Chandler Arizona, which is a couple of miles from where I'm a direct student of Kyoshi Fred DePalma. And then, I’ve been a student of his for 20+ years and that's where we found his school in 1994.
And so, it pretty much started from there. And the biggest draw for me was that classes were fun, that it wasn't just my first two experiences, my hand, was getting beat by a stick and my second experience, we sat around and we just watched everybody do things, we didn't do anything. I think as a kid, I'm probably exaggerating – I probably kicked the pad five times in a two hour class and I just thought it was really awesome, with Kyoshi DePalma's and my other instructors, who was his head instructor, Jeff Wahlberg, was his head instructor at that school, because I was his student directly under him, they just made classes really fun and engaging for a young tween kid, you know?
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