What's Your Story?

[HighKick]

I have been back and forth on posting these, but here goes. It has been a great ride, even with the 'bumps' along the way.

 

[Zealot Flame]

You need to chill out. You sound like someone I wouldn't even let inside my dojo, much less teach. May I suggest you take up the bamboo flute for a pastime? It has a soothing effect.

I don't believe life is fair. If someone is stronger than me then I'll desire to challenge them so I can improve.

 

[isshinryuronin]

I don't believe life is fair. If someone is stronger than me then I'll desire to challenge them so I can improve.

Some questions for you:

1. Do you challenge to improve, or to prove you're stronger?
2. What if they refuse your challenge?
3. Why challenge at all? Why not say, "Let's work out together and learn from each other."
4. Even if the challenge is accepted and you beat him, is it proper to learn at someone else's expense?

Perhaps NOT challenging every perceived threat to your self-image would be an improvement.

It's the little yapping dog that barks a challenge at every passerby. The wolf hound just quietly sits and watches, unconcerned.

 

[Simfers]

So, my story, eh? Well, thereby hangs a tale. A fairly long, almost assuredly uninteresting tale, but you asked, so hey, you reap what you sow.



It starts, as some things do, in 1997. I was 18, a gigantic nerd, and rather badly overweight. Even I, a massive couch potato, recognized that something had to be done. I’d tried some team sports and found them unpalatable (partly because I was abysmally bad at them). Being a child of the 1980s, I grew up with action movies and always preferred the hand-to-hand sequences to the big car chases and gunplay. The last fight scene in Lethal Weapon (between Mel Gibson and Gary Busey) was the coolest thing I’d ever seen for a long while. All that to say I’d toyed with the idea of starting a martial arts class for a while. First because of the exercise, second because martial arts are cool!



But on top of being a big fat nerd, I was also an idiot. See, I didn’t want to do Karate, because everybody did Karate. I didn’t want to do Judo, because everybody who didn’t do Karate did Judo. And I wasn’t like everybody else. I was SPECIAL! So, I was perusing the classes offered at the local college (because we were poor, you see, so community classes were the way to go) and stumbled on Aikibudo. Thinking to myself “hmmm… yes, this looks suitably obscure”, I resolved to start that.



…

…

…



Look, I’m not proud of it, okay? I DID mention I was an idiot. I’ve gotten better.



To this day I have no idea what Aikibudo entails (I assume, from the name, it’s similar to Aikido?), since I never took a class. My mother, bless her, noticed that class started at the precise moment that one of my school classes ended. No time to make it. Impossible. So, I looked again.



And I saw an ad for Tae kwon Do. My interest was piqued. After all, who’d ever heard of a KOREAN martial art (remember, IDIOT)? But what sealed the deal was that it was advertised as around 80% kicks. Hey, kicks are super cool! They’re awesome! Schedule fit, so there I went. I’ve written about my first day of training here before, so I won’t rehash that (this is already gonna be LONG). Stayed in TKD for 5 years, or thereabouts, in two different clubs (one in Chicoutimi, where I started and came back to every summer and on alternating weekends, and the other in Quebec City, where I’d moved to for Uni). I then left to go to Gatineau for work and resolved to continue my journey.



Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a single Kukkiwon TKD school in Gatineau (circa 2002). The only school I could find was affiliated with the Global TKD Federation, which I’d never heard of (and still haven’t outside of that school) and, crucially, unreachable for my car-less self. So, I waited and grew quite a bit fatter. Until I received an ad for a Yoseikan Karate/kickboxing school in my mailbox. Decided to give the kickboxing a shot, only to realize that it was cardio kickboxing. While I was quite proud of myself for being able to finish the workout, I wasn’t interested. Decided to give the Karate a shot and, hey, I had fun! So, I stuck around that for a good 5-6 years (details are fuzzy, I’m not good with dates) until it stopped being fun and my main training partner, who was also my ride (was still car-less) had to quit due to injuries. Funnily, we were both holding on to the classes because we were close to black belt, and we didn’t want to ruin it for the other. Once we realized that we were both not in it for the right reasons, we decided to finish up our current contract and stop.



I’d started watching MMA by that point and was fascinated by the ground game. So, I decided to start Jiu-Jitsu, starting in Can-Ryu in 2007 (yes, eagle-eyed reader, I started before quitting Karate). Stayed in there for 13 years, earning a second-degree black belt under Robert Ladouceur and a blue belt in BJJ under Fernando Zulick. Taught at that school for a good 7-8 years, too.



Then, of course, the pandemic happened and that had to stop. Then when I wanted to start again, my wife got her cancer diagnosis, and then when things were looking up and I wanted to start again, her mom got her own cancer diagnosis. And then things were okay, and I wanted to start again, and I found out that I had become quite unpopular with two of the three owners of the school (Robert, for the record, was the odd one out) and I was not welcome back.



So that sucked. Got me in quite a funk for a couple of weeks. I liked that school. Wouldn’t have stayed there for 13 years if I didn’t.



Until we took our dog (his name is Baloney, yes really, picture available upon request) to the groomer and he made a beeline for this other door in the same complex, Experience MMA and Fitness, run by Danny Fung, 2nd degree black belt in BJJ under Alliance. Just sat there wagging his tail. Took it as a sign. They offered to recognize my blue belt, but I decided to start over as a white belt because I’d spent 3 years on the couch and also, y’know, different associations, different standards, and I didn’t want to be put in a position where I felt I had to defend my belt. I’m now a four-stripe white belt after about a year and a half. Still learning. Still having fun.



Tournaments? A couple when I was younger in TKD, but I have neither the time nor the inclination now. Never had a taste for it anyway. Competed because it was expected, and I didn’t have the self-confidence to say no.



Friends? Several, though I’ve lost touch with a great many of them. I’ve never been good at making friends, but I think I’ve made a couple at Experience now.



Rivals? I’ve usually had a couple of friendly rivalries in the schools. We made each other better, always with respect. I’m reliably told the sparring match between myself and my buddy Phil for our black belts in Can-Ryu was epic. That man is my brother, though I’ve lost touch with him as well.



Enemies? Too strong a word. This is still just a hobby, something I do for fun. Nothing that serious. There are a few people I didn’t get on with, and a rare few I’m not on speaking terms with, but I have no ill will towards them.



Well, that’s my tale. Told you it was gonna be long. Thank you for reading.

 

[ap Oweyn]

Love it. Keep it up, brother.

Thanks Buka!

These days, I'm mostly interested in FMA as a cultural phenomenon. As you can tell from my picture, I'm about as Filipino as Hugh Grant. But all the same, I mostly enjoy teaching for the Filipino student groups at the college where I work. Few things cooler than seeing someone recognize something new and awesome about their own culture.

 

[Hanshi]

Started thinking and believe I may have posted something like this before. Can't be sure so here goes a bit of my experience. I first started learning from a friend who was taking karate lessons himself. This was about 1962 as I recall. Then another school & a couple of instructors before a friend and I found a college class. We did judo along with it and I eventually got my black belt in Tang Soo Do.

Started at a tkd school at that point and was later awarded a nidan in tkd. I had up to then studied martial arts, under a few excellent instructors. But as sometimes happens I suddenly got access to an entire cadre of great instructors and managed to work hard enough to get black belts in judo and juijutsu and hapkido. After quite a few years of study I was awarded a 6th dan in aikido.

I got into boxing and found I had a knack for it. I loved boxing because I was able to actually hit as hard as I wished. I had started my own dojo and was able, with the help of a couple of black belts, to teach a couple of different arts each evening. In my own estimation I think I was a competent martial artist at least. I probably received more than my share of honors and awards, and this leading up to 8th dan grandmaster.

For several years I've been 100% disabled from autoimmune disease. It's been a long time since I've been able to train even a little bit. One never knows what the future holds so don't give up. Train hard and don't think about black belt; do the work and a black belt will be yours. Also do not pose, cop an attitude and/or try to present yourself as a tough guy who wants to take everyone on. If you are a truly good martial artist others will know it and tell you. A true martial artist has nothing to prove.

 

[Zealot Flame]

Some questions for you:

1. Do you challenge to improve, or to prove you're stronger?
2. What if they refuse your challenge?
3. Why challenge at all? Why not say, "Let's work out together and learn from each other."
4. Even if the challenge is accepted and you beat him, is it proper to learn at someone else's expense?

Perhaps NOT challenging every perceived threat to your self-image would be an improvement.

It's the little yapping dog that barks a challenge at every passerby. The wolf hound just quietly sits and watches, unconcerned.

You’re the one taking it too far. I just see someone stronger at my institute and ask to train with them, and afterwards spar. I don’t try to hurt them beyond what is basic training. If someone doesn’t want to spar with me I don’t force them lmao

 

[Zealot Flame]

Some questions for you:

1. Do you challenge to improve, or to prove you're stronger?
2. What if they refuse your challenge?
3. Why challenge at all? Why not say, "Let's work out together and learn from each other."
4. Even if the challenge is accepted and you beat him, is it proper to learn at someone else's expense?

Perhaps NOT challenging every perceived threat to your self-image would be an improvement.

It's the little yapping dog that barks a challenge at every passerby. The wolf hound just quietly sits and watches, unconcerned.

And btw you’re breaking the rules by flaming me for what exactly? Thinking I’m some a hole who wants to fight everyone?

 

[Wing Woo Gar]

I share the same story as you have.

When I was 5 in my 1st grade, everybody in my class were all 6 years old. I was the youngest one in my class. Ther were a HUGE Mongolian girl who loved to beat me up daily. Every day I came home with bruises on my body. My father asked me why I didn't fight back. I said that HUGE Mongolian girl was twice about my size. When she mounted me on the ground, I couldn't move. One day when she mounted on top of me, I bite her. She cried and let me go. I then realized that "biting" worked great in ground fight. That girl later on became the women swimming champion in Taiwan. Since that day, I decided that I would never let any girl to mount me again. I started to train MA.

I spent most of my young life trying to get girls to mount me.