How did you get here? What path did you take?

[JR 137]

I have no idea how I’m going to follow you guys here, but here goes my relatively boring compared to you guys’ journey...

Growing up, I was a huge fan of the WWF and Kung Fu Theatre. Both were on back to back on Sunday mornings. The WWF was on a couple nights a week and I never missed a show for the longest time. I always wanted to take karate, but with three of us (me and my stepbrothers) my parents wouldn’t have been able to afford it. We got into wrestling when I was in 3rd grade and I stuck with it throughout high school. It wasn’t karate or WWF, but it was close enough I stopped watching the WWF around the start of middle school anyway.

A month or two after I graduated from high school, my girlfriend at the time’s mother made a great deal with a local karate teacher. She ran a daycare out of her house and got a bunch of kids and parents to sign up. For that, she, her kids got to go for dirt cheap. I watched my girlfriend train a few times and asked her mother to ask him if I can get in on the deal. I was paying $35 a month, where as everyone outside us was paying almost 3x that.

It was a Kyokushin offshoot. Bare knuckle sparring my first full class. It was Friday night and my teacher was testing for 4th dan that weekend. Needless to say he was fired up. I had this nice straight line of bruises on my sternum when I was getting changed in the locker room. My teacher saw it and said “I hope you didn’t take that personally. We train hard, but some nights we train a bit harder. You did great out there and I really hope you stick with it.” He was so sincere and honest. All I could think to myself was “I really suck at this. I need to keep coming.” Looking back, in my mind it was basically the most logical step after my wrestling career. Judo was on my radar, but I wanted to get away from the grind of grappling for a while.

9 months later, and I was the only one from the group of my girlfriend and her family still training.

I went away for undergrad 3 years later, but it was a little over an hour drive, so I made the drive to the dojo 2-3 nights a week most weeks. We had a boxing club on campus, run by a retired lower level pro fighter. Most of the students there were women looking for the workout and were non-contact. It wasn’t cardio boxing like the studios; it was actual boxing training. Drills, heavy bag, mitts, stuff like that. A few of the guys there also trained at his gym and competed. I went to the gym a bunch of times and sparred with those guys. I learned quite a bit about throwing a punch and footwork. It was different than my karate, but it wasn’t radically different. The coach worked with me a good amount even though I wasn’t competing. And because we were students at the college, we didn’t have to pay. We helped him clean up and stuff like that even though he never asked. I did that for 3 semesters until the other guys graduated and the coach stopped coming to the college.

We also had a MA club on campus. It was a bunch of MA students and some others without any previous experience. All student run, without any direct “adult supervision.” We has a few CMA people (Wing Chun and one other I don’t remember the name of), a few TKD guys, and one or 2 other karate style guys. I think Shotokan. The way it worked was we took turns teaching class. There was no hierarchy, and whoever ran class that night was in charge and showed us the etiquette of their school to start and end the night. So WC guy taught some basics and we’d do some drills, TKD guy another night, etc. The rule was no sparring, but those of us with experience bent that rule a bit. It was a great time and we had a great group of people.

The MA club and boxing club were both while I was still training at the dojo.

My senior year got a bit hectic, schedule-wise. I could only get to the dojo one night a week, twice on a good week. There was a semi-local Uechi Ryu school that had open mat night once a week, and it just so happened that that was a night I was free but didn’t have the time to go back and forth to my dojo. I went there for 2 semesters and loved it. It was so different from my karate experience. The people were great people, the head honcho was fantastic. They all knew I wasn’t a permanent student looking to advance in rank. I was just there to learn and train, and they were all very accommodating. Had I not been able to train at my dojo, I’d have definitely joined them full time.

Some time during my undergrad days, a guy opened up a Shotokan dojo in the city. I trained with him a few times for a semester. We were both 1st dan, but he was definitely far more experienced than I was. He was an uchi deshi (basically live-in student) at a Shotokan dojo in Japan. I can’t remember who he was under, but it was one of the big names. He had some judo experience too. We trained together, showing each other some stuff from our respective systems. He wasn’t around long; I went home for break between semesters, and he had closed up when I got back. Nice guy and a hell of a MAist.

Somehow the boxing club ended, then the MA club started the next semester. Then the MA club ended, and the Uechi Ryu stint started. Then the Uechi Ryu stint ended and the Shotokan guy started. No overlap, no down time. Odd how that worked out.

I graduated, went back home, and continued to train at my dojo for another year. I was planning on going to grad school locally but wanted to intern for a year before I went. I was getting ready to test for 2nd dan when I was offered a graduate assistantship at Niagara University, which was almost 5 hours away. I had to report there in the middle of August, and my test was scheduled for the first weekend in October. I put training and testing on hold until I got back. At least that was my plan.

I met my future wife, graduated, found a job in Westchester County, NY (2.5 hours away from the dojo), started my career, got married, worked horrendous hours that left no time to train, got my second master’s while my wife was pregnant, had our first daughter, moved back to my hometown, started a new career, and had our second daughter. When things calmed down, I started looking to train again. It had been almost 15 years. And I not a single day went by that I didn’t miss karate. I wanted to return to my dojo, but my former teacher closed that dojo to focus on his other dojo. The other dojo was his part time place close to his home, which is a good 45 minute drive from my house. The combination of his schedule and me having two young kids meant it wasn’t realistic to train there.

I looked for a new dojo. I kept my mind open to any style, and figured something completely new would be a good thing. I researched pretty much everything in the area and visited a bunch of different places. In the end, the best place for me by far was the dojo I joined. It immediately felt like home. The teacher, students, schedule, and just everything aligned. And it was very close to what I did previously. My current teacher and former teacher were both students under the same people for a long time. There were some splits in the organization, so it wasn’t exactly the same, but it was 90% the same. I started as a while belt again and am going through the ranks. It’s been about 4.5 years now and I love everything about it.

 

[JP3]

It’s been about 4.5 years now and I love everything about it.

That sort of jumps off the page from your post, if ya know what I mean. Good stuff!

 

[Martial D]

Honestly? For me it started with 80s martial arts movies. Van Damme, Segal, Billy Blanks, Jeff speakman, all the old Chinese dub Kung Fu flicks..all of it. As a little tyker, I wanted to do that. I wanted to BE that. We didn't have a ton of money, so my mom would never put me in karate lessons despite my constant asking.

When I was 13 I moved in with my dad..new town. Tiny community on an island. He tought me how to box a bit, but that wasn't cool like Kung Fu, or karate!

This is when I built my first setup for training. It was an outdoor thing in a wooded area in my cousins back yard. We had an improvised heavy bag and a couple improvised wall bags; both made of burlap potato sacks and whatever we could find to fill them. We had this little tree we kicked ala van dammes kickboxer, we sparred, etc

We had no idea what we were doing.

One night a few of us were out, I would have been nearly 14 at that point..just messing around in the downtown area which completely shut down at 6pm aside from the one pub. It would have been about 9 pm I guess. Anyway, we noticed the lights on at the agricultural hall(a big building generally only used for town events), and thought to go check it out.

What we saw when we looked in was...KUNG FU!

There was a guy in his late thirties I recognised but didn't know doing Chum Kui Opposite a group of 4 or 5 older folks also doing it. I fell in love instantly. Here was actual Kung Fu , getting taught, right in front of me!

Anyway when he was done, I guess that was the end of his class, he came to the threshold of the wide open double doors where we were watching from and introduced himself as Bruce Devereu, and explained what he was doing as 'wing chun' .

The rest is easy to predict. I trained with him for years.

When I turned 20 I moved off to the city. I wanted to continue training with a Wing Chun sifu but it just didn't exist. So, I found something else to train in.

I settled on a place called the world kickboxing acedemy, which was close. It was a mid to large size Muay Thai place that also offered BJJ and Arnis. I could pick two of the three, and though I'd already been doing Arnis with Bruce, I went with BJJ and MT. This was before the term MMA became commonplace. This is also where I learned the difference between practical martial arts and not so practical ones.

You know those videos where pure WC guys get handled by trained fighters and seem absolutely shocked their stuff didn't work as advertised? Ya, that was me. Only nobody had camera phones yet, so the moment never became immortalized on film.

From that point it's been a lifelong quest to refine what I do to be as effective as possible, training here there and everywhere with whoever I could.

 

[JP3]

You know those videos where pure WC guys get handled by trained fighters and seem absolutely shocked their stuff didn't work as advertised? Ya, that was me. Only nobody had camera phones yet, so the moment never became immortalized on film

Yup, I had a similar come-uppance when I first started muay thai. Glad that didn't get caught and uploaded to youtube.com... I'm sure my face was all sorts of screwed up, grimacing, trying to figure out why I was getting hit so much, even with all my fancy square blocks and whatnot. Idiot. I'm pretty sure that everyone who's come up against that type of thing goes through it... though i suppose there are folks who never really get exposed to it, due to chance or deliberate avoidance.

Good stuff. Good MA flick movie star list, too.