I started at 14 (1968), but skipped a couple years. A bit later, I was watching Bruce Lee and Tv’s Kung Fu (David Caridine was a trained dancer, but the show had a lot of technical advisors to make it more authentic). I was buying books on Wing Chun, Hung Gar, Tai Kuan Do and a few other things. I spent a lot of effort to get info about JKD. I also met a guy practicing Tai Chi and started following along with him when he did his 108 move set, which was late, every night in a gazebo downtown. Nobody was around. I was just piecing things together anyway I could. When I went back to my instructor, I must’ve been about 19. I had developed enough, so when I showed up at his school, his students couldn’t get inside on me to use what they were best at. I was fast, but was only good at outside fighting and knew nothing about inside fighting. I was able to keep people from getting inside on me because of my speed and mostly straight-line offense.
After a while as I started getting better at defense and starting getting some skill, he started telling me, “it’s 3/4s mental and 1/4 physical.” Admittedly I was a bit perplexed about this, but he told me over and over. Shortly after that, and after teaching us some breathing exercises, he would put a couple of us into our stance with our arms out while we practiced a specific breathing exercise. Then he started beating us with double-sticks and open-hand, only hard enough to leave a little bruising and some welts, but not a lot. He knew how to do this. He spent a lot of time with me on this, and it didn’t take very long before it became more like a massage that did no damage to me at all. I enjoyed it and the process I’d gone through.
Here’s how I define the mental process I went through during the beatings.
When somebody hits you, you’re offended. This causes you to resist and dwell on the idea, and the energy inflicted on you. As a result, you hold on to it and it actually does more damage to you. The whole thing is bouncing around in your mind because you didn’t let go of the offence. At some point in this exercise, you start to relax and except the blows as not offensive, and it goes right through you, doing nothing. You don’t dwell on it. It doesn’t stick in your mind, and does little or nothing to you.
It also worked. I’ve been hit a few times in fights and even sucker-punched twice. It does nothing to me, but I move faster, more seriously.
I have to put a disclaimer here. There are not absolutes. There are people out there that can break what they hit. Whether you felt it or not, you’d know it. I haven’t been hit much in fights, more glancing blows if at all. And the good news is, for the most part my instructor hit me harder a couple of times, than anybody has in a real fight.
After a while as I started getting better at defense and starting getting some skill, he started telling me, “it’s 3/4s mental and 1/4 physical.” Admittedly I was a bit perplexed about this, but he told me over and over. Shortly after that, and after teaching us some breathing exercises, he would put a couple of us into our stance with our arms out while we practiced a specific breathing exercise. Then he started beating us with double-sticks and open-hand, only hard enough to leave a little bruising and some welts, but not a lot. He knew how to do this. He spent a lot of time with me on this, and it didn’t take very long before it became more like a massage that did no damage to me at all. I enjoyed it and the process I’d gone through.
Here’s how I define the mental process I went through during the beatings.
When somebody hits you, you’re offended. This causes you to resist and dwell on the idea, and the energy inflicted on you. As a result, you hold on to it and it actually does more damage to you. The whole thing is bouncing around in your mind because you didn’t let go of the offence. At some point in this exercise, you start to relax and except the blows as not offensive, and it goes right through you, doing nothing. You don’t dwell on it. It doesn’t stick in your mind, and does little or nothing to you.
It also worked. I’ve been hit a few times in fights and even sucker-punched twice. It does nothing to me, but I move faster, more seriously.
I have to put a disclaimer here. There are not absolutes. There are people out there that can break what they hit. Whether you felt it or not, you’d know it. I haven’t been hit much in fights, more glancing blows if at all. And the good news is, for the most part my instructor hit me harder a couple of times, than anybody has in a real fight.
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