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“Don't think. FEEL. It's like a finger pointing at the moon.
Do not concentrate on the finger or you will miss all of the heavenly glory!” – Bruce Lee
I am once again running Krav Maga classes. I currently have two students both of whom are security professionals; one works in a casino, the other at an airport. Being a former doorman I find that I have a lot in common when discussing ways to restrain and remove someone off the premises with my students. It reminds me of the days on the doors when we would practice restraining and removing each other from the club. A lot of people’s reasons for getting into reality based martial arts, myself included, are to be able to apply martial arts skills to security work and I am lucky to have had experience of a real-life approach to defence situations.
This week I have been on TVNZ breakfast as well as interviewed on national radio with regards to an incident last year whilst working as an IT analyst at Rotorua Hospital where I was fired for taking one blank DVD to record some martial arts footage which I was using to facilitate the training of the hospital security staff in self defence. I am glad that the case has generated national attention as I think it sets a scary precedence where employers can fire someone for taking a low value item like stationery.
I have always found it amusing how many Polynesians would walk around Rotorua wearing a shirt that is unbuttoned at the bottom. Like Mexicans in East L.A so they could quickly draw a handgun without ripping the shirt open. It is unlikely that these ‘Mexicans’ have ever fired a handgun and most definitely never experienced US style racial profiling where you could get stopped and searched for a concealed weapon simply for looking like a Hispanic gang member. I find myself laughing when I recall how quickly the officer patting me down left once he discovered he was dealing with a foreign national.
Korean terminology flows naturally off my tongue after hearing the same words for years from a Korean master. My school’s Taekwondo programme is pretty much based on that of my master. A lot of care went into breaking the art down into easy to learn hand-techniques, one-step sparring, basic forms and kicking exercises making it a winning school formula. From the syllabus down to the design of our school brochures I have used much of my master’s style and methods in running my school.
Watching my students go over their patterns in my Taekwondo class one would give me a tentative glance another would let out a cursory ‘err... ’ as they would perform the exercise. I advised my students that martial arts are not a team sport, to never worry about what anybody else thinks but focus purely on the execution of their flow. Glancing at a judge in a patterns competition is almost always an indication of uncertainty; likewise when facing an adversary in sparring the winner is the one who focuses on his own attacking strategy and dictates the pace of the bout. Martial arts are one of those activities which are all about you, where the focus of the training is on enhancement of the self.
This week one of my Maori friends came to visit and was playing on my computer when we got into a heated conversation about which civilization invented the Special Forces. My friend told me that way before the white man even conceived the use of Special Forces his people used key warriors tasked with eliminating enemy chiefs and messengers. These men would attack using a flexible and independent command infrastructure. There were also Maori berserker units, matataki-a-whiro, who would carry out suicide missions with no regard for their own personal safety.
