The marathon thread for the" Lone WC practitioner" prompted this.
How is it you came to WC?
I'll start.
I began CMA in 1981. I knew nothing of MA before this, it was all the same, I guess it was fate that I began in CMA.
My original art was a " Southern Shaolin hybrid", not a pure traditional art, but I learned about fighting and it gave me a tremendous appetite for all things kung fu. I read everything about CMA I could get my hands on, and WC is something I kept coming back to.
There was no traditional WC school in my city back in the '80's. There was a JKDish form of WC, that had been here since the '60's, and I went and checked them out a time or two. They were good fighters to be sure, and the teacher was a good guy who made me feel welcome, but I wanted a pure WC school, not another hybrid.
So I kept plugging away at my "shaolin", until luck would have it that I had a pretty severe hip injury that forced my hand.
I went on a major quest looking for a WC school, I searched yellow pages for cities in a 100 mile radius at the local library ( Al Gore had yet to invent the internet at this time) but found nothing.
A fellow student told me about a co worker of his, who studied WC from a chinese teacher out of his garage in a neiboring city. Before I could get info from him, his coworker moved away, but gave my buddy a hand drawn map to this guy's house.
I got hold of the map and went to this city numerous times looking for this man's house but never found it.
Meanwhile, my hip injury was getting worse as I continued my training, until one night I decided I had enough. My hip screamed at me as sharp pain shot through my hip while training a weapons set in my back yard. Disgusted, I hurled the weapons out into the woods behind my house, as if throwing a discus, and went in and iced my hip.
It was that night. as I sat in bed with an ice pack on my hip, looking half heartidly through an old kung fu magazine, that I ran across an ad for WT schools in the US. I had owned this magazine for months but had never noticed this ad before.
The very next day I contacted the nearest instructor, who was 6 hours away, and made arrangements to bring him to my house. I got a few of my training partners together to share the cost and it began. He would come here on a monthly basis, or we would travel to him, literally flying across the country at times, or driving anywhere from 6 -12 hours one way at times, just to train.
16 years later, thousands of dollars later, thousands of miles traveled later, here I am, much richer for the experience.
BTW, I quit shaolin the very day I got a taste of WT, and my hip injury went away after some time....... the weapons are still in the woods as far as I know.
How is it you came to WC?
I'll start.
I began CMA in 1981. I knew nothing of MA before this, it was all the same, I guess it was fate that I began in CMA.
My original art was a " Southern Shaolin hybrid", not a pure traditional art, but I learned about fighting and it gave me a tremendous appetite for all things kung fu. I read everything about CMA I could get my hands on, and WC is something I kept coming back to.
There was no traditional WC school in my city back in the '80's. There was a JKDish form of WC, that had been here since the '60's, and I went and checked them out a time or two. They were good fighters to be sure, and the teacher was a good guy who made me feel welcome, but I wanted a pure WC school, not another hybrid.
So I kept plugging away at my "shaolin", until luck would have it that I had a pretty severe hip injury that forced my hand.
I went on a major quest looking for a WC school, I searched yellow pages for cities in a 100 mile radius at the local library ( Al Gore had yet to invent the internet at this time) but found nothing.
A fellow student told me about a co worker of his, who studied WC from a chinese teacher out of his garage in a neiboring city. Before I could get info from him, his coworker moved away, but gave my buddy a hand drawn map to this guy's house.
I got hold of the map and went to this city numerous times looking for this man's house but never found it.
Meanwhile, my hip injury was getting worse as I continued my training, until one night I decided I had enough. My hip screamed at me as sharp pain shot through my hip while training a weapons set in my back yard. Disgusted, I hurled the weapons out into the woods behind my house, as if throwing a discus, and went in and iced my hip.
It was that night. as I sat in bed with an ice pack on my hip, looking half heartidly through an old kung fu magazine, that I ran across an ad for WT schools in the US. I had owned this magazine for months but had never noticed this ad before.
The very next day I contacted the nearest instructor, who was 6 hours away, and made arrangements to bring him to my house. I got a few of my training partners together to share the cost and it began. He would come here on a monthly basis, or we would travel to him, literally flying across the country at times, or driving anywhere from 6 -12 hours one way at times, just to train.
16 years later, thousands of dollars later, thousands of miles traveled later, here I am, much richer for the experience.
BTW, I quit shaolin the very day I got a taste of WT, and my hip injury went away after some time....... the weapons are still in the woods as far as I know.
