The Last Masters

Kung Fu People
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• My First BJJ Match

  

  I participated in my first BJJ tournament yesterday. Master’s Heavyweight White Belt (195-208lbs with Gi) and I lost 6-3 in my first match. Here’s what I remember:

  We square off and he snatches my right lapel with his left arm and just holds it as hard as he can. He is not trying to do anything yet. In his face I see determination. I struggle a bit and try and dislodge him, but then I stop for a second and look at him just holding on straight-legged, and I almost laugh. I throw is arm over my head, loop out to the right, and instead of hot-kneeing around his back for a body lock, I just push his left arm in and get a chest to chest body lock. I then pick him up and throw him, fully expecting to land on him and smash away.

  But somehow he landed on me.

  There was a snap crackle and pop in my back and I cried out in shock. Ref stops it. EMS comes over and feels my ribs. I start tripping because my family has waited five hours to watch me get slammed and carted away on a stretcher inside of 30 seconds. I say, “I’m good let’s go!” they say cool and it’s on. He’s in mount, because that’s where he landed after my ill-executed hip throw.

  I sweep him. Now I’m in his guard. I’m confused but I know now that I’m at least his equal. I go for a collar choke in his guard, which amounts to nothing. I pass his guard somehow, I think via knee slice. Somehow that becomes me in half guard and him trying to kimura my right arm from beneath me. I can feel that the kimura will not work, despite his grunting, but I am not sure what to do.

  My coach yells from the sideline, piercing through the cacophony:

  “Sascha, free your arm! Pull your knee out! Mount him!”

  I free my arm. Pull my knee out. I get mount. And I’m promptly swept back and now he’s in my guard.

  There are 20 seconds left and I get his right arm to cross center line, I am thinking maybe arm bar maybe sweep gotta get my hips up what do I do I can still win this … TIME.

  Afterwards I want to go again. Immediately. I am ready to take on anyone and now, after hours of sitting there and waiting my turn and worrying whether or not I will tap to pressure or gas out or be a bitch in front of my people, Now, now I am ready, warjuice is flowing through me from top to bottom, but all I can do is step aside and let the rest of the men and women roll while I watch and begin the process of beating me up for getting beat up.

  Had I held that mount for a second longer. Had I slipped to the back instead of throwing him from the chest. Had I swept from guard at the last second. Had I taken his weak kimura and re-kimura-ed it myself …

  Those questions and many more in my head all night as the pain in my back moves around my body, to the armpit, and then to the chest, and then back again. When I bend down I groan. My face is burned from mat and cloth. I’m so ready for war and there is no one to fight. Everyone is kind and encouraging. Everyone says I fought well, despite having so little practice and this being my first time.

  But they’re not in my head at 5am seething and reconciling, dreaming. And then seething again. Back to reconciliation with the truth and then plans for the future. Burned away in a heartbeat by the vision of a sweep unswept. These beats in my head wonder what happened to the beast when the moment came.

  ****

  I was ready to quit BJJ sitting there waiting for my turn to come. The training is so hard on my body and I have to psyche myself up for Monday evenings facing the monsters at my gym, their kind words are stones after the second, third, and fourth time I tap to an impossible situation. It’s hard to tap me, I know that, but that means I push myself to the limits of my body and maybe that’s not really whats up. There is so much I can learn now.

  People told me matches are a blur. I know what that means now. I don’t know exactly how it will play out next time – and there will be a next time – but I am pretty sure I am more ready than I was 24 hours ago. If I faced the same man today, I would destroy him. But who knows what he learned. I’m curious to find out.

  All of these arts are reforging me. Piece by piece.

  My two boys – 5 & 6 – competed as well. The older boy won his first match and lost a very close match the second time. He won a silver. The little one lost a close match as well. The difference is their mental and spiritual state. I am introducing them to the rivers and the lakes at an age when it can sink into their bones and become an integral part of their identity. Their reaction to winning and losing and training and competing is within the parameters of the Way. Even if it doesn’t seem so apparent all the time, each experience is another layer of paint on the portrait of who they are. I don’t need to inspect the brushstrokes to see the beauty of all those layers, but I like to.

  And then I can stand back and see the picture for what it is, like a 19th century impressionist rendering of a Venetian river scene, tiny squares up close, each applied meticulously, but one blended memory from afar, transportative, transformative, real.

   

   

  December 5, 2016 • Kung Fu People • Views: 6025

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• Maintenance and Challenge

  

  I pulled my left butt muscle a couple months ago getting out of bed. It was a sudden rising movement that caused the muscle to seize up, but the problem had been there for some time, dormant and festering, and all it took was a bit of stimulation to bring the issue to the fore. The day before, I had hauled stone around for eight hours, digging up turf and shoveling other things around. Later in the evening I did two classes, Bjj and Muay Thai. Went to a friends house and chilled, was sore, went to bed.

  Bam. Next morning I felt pain like I have never felt before. Shooting waves of pain from my left hip down to my toe, through my butt and hamstrings. I knew I had done something to the sciatica nerve, but I was in too much pain to think straight. I took a handful of ibuprofen and in a flash of brilliance called and set up an immediate appointment with an acupuncturist across town. Went in, let Dr. Chen know I speak and understand Chinese and have had acupuncture treatment before, and then stripped and lay down on his bed. He dropped about two dozen needles into me and I felt immediate relief. And I mean immediate. One minute I was struggling to breathe through the pain, the next I was jabbering excitedly about the absence thereof. It was amazing.

  Dr. Chen told me the muscles and nerves in my left leg are atrophied and basically refuse to fire correctly. When I strained them, through work and training, I put myself into a position to really hurt myself. The muscles and tendons around the nerve tightened and spasmed, the nerve was pinched, and now the transmission of qi through the nerve to my muscles is not weak like before, but disrupted badly.

  I felt numbness in my leg, down to my toes, and I saw my left calf muscle disappear before my very eyes. Now, two months later, I can barely stand on my tip toes with my left foot, and pivoting for a roundhouse kick is physically, and mentally, taxing.

  As I went about researching and talking with others about how to rehab, and how difficult it is mentally to deal with an injury that doesn’t really hurt anymore, but nevertheless greatly inhibits my progress, I learned how critical healing is to the martial arts. This is a topic I have written about before: Breaking and Healing in the Martial Arts, but never with as much personal experience.

  ****

  My recent dedication to training as exposed some of my bad habits. Habits I had hoped would melt way with each kick and pound shed, but that hasn’t been the case. As I demand more from my body, so my body demands more from me. I have sat on my ass for many, many, many hours. In front of the computer playing video games, surfing the web, occasionally writing something. I have spent as many hours shying away from stretching and instead praying my “dynamic stretches” would eventually pull and push my stiff muscles into the fluid sacks of potential to kinetic they should be.

  So now, at the cusp of 40, I realize how much I have to do to really get in shape. The first thing is of course to understand what is wrong and how to treat it. For me, a sitting lifestyle has led to weak and stiff hips and ass, which in turn lead to stiff and grinding hamstrings and a stiff and sore back. The way to redemption lies in stretching, water, yoga, daily dedication to movement and activation. It doesn’t sound hard, but …. I hate stretching right now. I hate running too, but that’s a post for a different time.

  For now, I think it’s a good thing that I realize the balance in martial arts and how important it is to maintain both yin and yang.

  ***

  And as a sidenote, feeling the imbalance in my journey through the martial arts, between healing and training, maintenance and challenge, has opened my eyes to more abstract balances. Between the scholar and the warrior, the poet and the mercenary, the man of culture and the man of action. I was reminded of this not only through my physical struggles, but also through the writings of Xenophon, a Greek soldier and historian who fought in Persia many centuries ago. His writings, in turn, led me to many other poets of that era, who sat by the campfire and composed lines after a long march, before another day on the march or, better yet, a meeting in the field.

  August 25, 2016 • Kung Fu People, Modern Kung Fu • Views: 4267

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• The Knight-errant We Need

  

  Chinese folklore has really only one type of hero, the wuxia martial artist, who is usually unaffiliated with any of the established antagonists and is therefore free to represent the ideal, rather than the fleeting interest. The Chinese knight-errant shows up homeless and wandering, from undistinguished birth, skilled enough to ward off most of the normal challenges to their person and with the wit and righteousness to ward off the rest.

  In many Chinese tales, the hero ends up being used by the corrupt authorities, or dies a hero’s death when a tactical retreat might have been wiser. The goal is never to actually fix the realm, however, but to remind the realm of what is good and worthy in life, what there is to be strived for, what it takes to get there, and how the journey  “there” is the only true thing in life. No one ever wonders what becomes of the knight-errant’s soul when it slips away from a body sacrificed for an ideal, it is known that those souls ascend and fly free into the hearts of all who hear the tale told.

  The true knight is art made human.

  In Hong Kong the book fair is wuxia themed, and this article here gives a little insight into why, and how rebellion works in an oppressive, fearful nation like the ones we face today.

  Funny how, in the end, they raise up Wei Xiaobao as the conciliatory hero for today’s world.

   

  July 28, 2016 • Kung Fu People • Views: 4540

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• Thai Boxing vs. Kung fu

  Here is an essay from January of this year which I never finished, but addresses some of my thoughts on my own martial arts journey:

  I took up Thai Boxing about a month ago and I am starting to finally understand how people become addicted to the martial arts. For me, this has always been a question I couldn’t really answer without cutting myself down.

  See, when I studied kung fu, I did it for weeks at a time, with months and years in between. There were times, like those three weeks out in Hanyuan working on a story, when I felt the passion of what I thought at the time could be an addiction, something that could become the dedication I had seen, heard about, longed for within myself. But it passed, and I returned to my old life. Dreaming of being a martial artist in the late morning and doing a lot more reading and writing than kicking and stretching.

  There were a few incidents that threw my weakness and my lack of dedication to the martial arts back into my face:

  There was the time I was out with Tenzin and Tian Hua in Tian Hua’s hometown of Pengzhou. For me, the story of Tian Hua and his town was paramount: the slow decay of Tian Hua’s former school, the dusty bored streets of his town, his obvious undimmed passion for kung fu and fighting and the art that made him a man. The tragedy of Tan Hua was more important to me than whatever it was he wanted me to display, in order to prove myself a member of the club. Something about my demeanor, about the way I carried myself, the questions I asked, the things that seemed important to me … something abut how I stacked up to Tenzin, a mountainous physical presence, made Tian Hua lash out late that night. Drunk off baijiu, he kicked me a bunch of times, screaming out at me, “You’re no kung fu man!” which in Chinese, 你不是功夫人！feels so much stronger. There is a categorization that takes place and I was on the wrong side. I never spoke to Tian Hua again after that night. Tenz would remind me of that night every so often , perhaps to rub it in. Shifu laughed when I told him what had happened, “Tian Hua is a hothead, always has been. Forget about it.”

  Another time, I sat at the table with Shifu, Shiye and Lao Wu and we talked about Lao Wu’s garlic business and how I might be able to help. Talk drifted to martial arts. Lao Wu was a boxer and clearly remembered how to fight and carry himself like a fighter. When Shifu mentioned I studied kung fu, Lao Wu looked at me skeptically. “But he can’t possibly learn kungfu,” he said. Again, the Chinese version seems so much more powerful: 他没有悟性 ie he is unable to learn. Shifu said, “I will determine whether he can or cannot learn.” I never saw or spoke to Lao Wu again either, but it stayed with me.

  Shifu always said I was tripping when I brought up the fact that I didn’t belong. He got a little gruff and said, “You’re my student. You belong.” Other times he would say, “Your pen is your kung fu.”

  A few moments that stuck with me shouldn’t define ten years of interaction with Chinese martial arts, but they did. I remembered those moments most of all, and forgot any others that may have presented a different relationship. I didn’t train enough, wasn’t really into it, and basically wanted to cut out the hard body stuff and horse stance suffering and get right to the “enlightenment” part of kungfu. I wrote a little bit about this idea very recently for Fightland in an essay called, “Why Kungfu Masters Refuse to Teach.” In the essay I try to pick apart the traditionalist stand-point a bit, and show how their way of thinking helps lead to a perceived decline in the traditional Chinese martial arts. For me I was always so much more interested in the lore of it all, despite my fantasies of being the baddest man in the world.

  I think my fantasies may have leaked out into the space around me, been picked up by real kungfu men, and been scoffed at as the mewling of the softcore scholar. I’m not too sure anymore, but the feeling of not belonging remained.

  *****

  Then I joined the Cellar gym and began training Muay Thai, a bit of kickboxing, some boxing. The difference in how I approach training at the cellar versus training kungfu with my master in China is dramatic. I go almost every day to train at least one, usually two hours. I always come home feeling like I’ve made progress. I can see my progress actually, each time I throw a jab-cross, switch kick into Thai pads, or go a little bit longer with the jump rope before faltering.

  I rarely had this feeling when I was training kungfu in China. We never hit pads, rarely did partner work, and I don’t remember ever putting on gloves for any reason. In the kungfu world, it was me versus my shadow, versus the wood, versus the world-blotting sand bag hanging by a thread over the very center of the earth. I remember pain, a lot of awkward movements, and failure.

  At Shifu’s, there were maybe a handful of students, all of very different strengths, doing the same exercise each and every time. We did the forms, stood in the stances, hit the iron circle and perhaps the wooden dummy. It was hot and sweaty and painful. I rarely saw any progress … the bruises would fade and get covered by other bruises. My kicks might improve slightly, maybe I was able to touch my toes. I do remember coming back from a few weeks at Shifu’s place and a friend told me, “Dude, you look fantastic.” And I took the compliment and forgot about training.

  When I was in my 20s in China, with the opportunity to train with Shifu, I chose weed, wine, and women instead. So when I did train, it was never with devotion. I didn’t take the training home with me and repeat or try and get better. So whenever I went to Shifu’s, it felt like I was starting all over again, year after year.

  There are other factors here at play besides the training methods, I am sure of that as well. I am older now, and hopefully bit wiser. Age has shown me not only the encroaching limits of my physical form, but also the critical need for me to get healthy and in shape before it’s too late. These days, I dream constantly about hitting pads and kicks. I am anxious about my training and a day or two without a trip to the gym and I feel compelled to set aside everything in order to get my ass back in there.

  At the Cellar we have pads and gloves, shin guards and systematic training. Work the punches then the kicks, then go to clinching. Hit the bag, hit each other—lightly—back to the pads. I feel like this regimen will create a new me every 3-6 months. I am starting to get addicted. I am starting to feel that pull that all of the martial artists seem to talk about.

  I can’t help wondering if Shifu had had pads to hit and had run his training sessions a  bit more like the cellar does, perhaps I would have been more willing to train. Maybe I wouldn’t have to take this final lunge into the martial world this late in life and hope that I am not too late. The clear answer is, No. Back then I was too stupid to know what I had with Shifu, and today I am less stupid.

  Regardless, I have found a place to train and a discipline I am falling in love with. So looking into my past and trying to rationalize not training when I could have is just a mental exercise. It doesn’t really matter. Not anymore.

  July 18, 2016 • Kung Fu People • Views: 4104

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• Articles on Shaolin

  I read Meir Shahar’s book cover to cover. Every ten to fifteen pages I stopped to write an essay for Fightland outlining what I thought Shahar was saying. In some instances, I summarized his findings outright. I believe Fightland’s audience may not have had a chance to read a real in depth history of the Shaolin Temple, and maybe didn’t know they cared until they did read one.

  I for one had my mind blown. There is so much in Shahar’s book that led to other threads within the martial arts phenomenon. The essays I wrote for Fightland were something of an exercise in reading comprehension for me, and also helped to clarify a few areas of my own research I felt had clouded up in the past few months. As has happened many times in the last two years, my ideas changed, morphed, seemed insignificant, took on new meaning, were amplified and enhanced, and eventually crystallized into a new edifice from which to work forward from.

  Now I am slogging through “Thrown,” a solid book so far, but not as fascinating to me as Shahar’s book. Yet.

  Here are the essays for Fightland:

  Wild Monks: Origins of the Shaolin Martial Arts

  From Staff to Fist: Origins of Shaolin Martial Arts

  Kungfu and the Cult of Immortality

  Kung Fu and the China Dream

   

  May 26, 2015 • Kung Fu History, Kung Fu Lore, Kung Fu People, Kung Fu Places • Views: 5201

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