EPTI've received very little formal training in the arts, so I don't consider myself very knowledgeable, but I will say, just getting together with friends and light sparring [nothing too hard, I'll get into that later] is soooooo much fun for some reason. We even bought protective gear and stuff, since it was just so much fun.
All through elementary school, I got in fights. I was that kid who did really well in school, but was constantly in and out of detention, and it didn't really make sense to the teachers. Literally, in third grade, I would get into at least one fight a week, and I started to really get a feel for dealing with schoolground brawls and stuff. I learned to attack the enemy's cup and defend my own cup for victory, since that was how most fights happened, or the first person to get tackled lost. It was nothing too serious, most of the time the brawls were out of someone not giving us a ball or something, but I grew up in a somewhat wealthy neighborhood [after moving to the states], so we were pretty well off. Either the fights occurred for fun, or for some really stupid reason, but either way, I loved it. It was so much fun, regardless of how much trouble I got in.
I was a pretty lanky kid, and I was ridiculously small compared to everyone else, of Anglo-Saxon descent, who were all much, much larger than me. I used my speed to my advantage, developing fast kicking speed [which was ridiculously slow by my current standards, but fast for third grade standards lol] to strike my opponent in the cup as quickly as possible, or I would elbow the gut. I was never really good at punching back then.
If they got in, however, I lost, and I kept getting taken down and just wailed on for a bit before the teacher came and sent me to detention. It had never occurred to me that I shouldn't try to beat people bigger and tougher than me at their own game, since I was kind of a dingus back then.
A friend of mine though, who trained Gracie Jiu-Jitsu (we live in Torrance, the PERFECT place to learn BJJ) taught me how to sprawl one day. So as long as I didn't get clinched [which I was decent at, since I kept my distance using my legs], I would force them to shoot and then I could sprawl.
I stopped fighting when I got to middle school though; I became really introverted and closed from the outside world, and turned to video games. I distinctly remember hitting a few people in the head really hard for something really stupid, but that hurt my hand more than it hurt their head lol. I still practiced my kicks though.
At this point, I still have no idea what I'm doing (not that I do now, but I have a somewhat better idea than back then), and come the end of 8th grade, I decided to start training again. Except I had no idea what to do in terms of strategy and stuff, so I just trained to be faster, stronger, and more flexible than everyone else [even though I didn't even fight]. I did a bit of fencing/sword fighting here with some friends who did that stuff, and I learned from what they taught me, since we didn't really have money to send me to a dojo or anything.
I started begging all of my friends who knew martial arts and stuff to teach me what they know, because I realized that speed was useless if I couldn't a.)deliver power, b.)figure out what I was going to do; how could I do something fast if I have no idea what I'm doing? So a friend of mine, three years my senior, when I was a high school freshman, was a senior in high school, agreed to take me under his wing for a bit.
He trained Kung Fu in Taiwan, and then moved here, and regularly got in a LOT of fights, and had a pretty good reputation around here for being able to handle himself. He taught me the fundamentals of whatever style it was he was teaching me (we didn't really talk that much about style, I just asked him how to fight and he showed me some moves), and it was through him that I started to get an idea of what I was doing, but not quite. He told me to do certain things or move my body in certain ways that I discovered I could generate/deliver/hold a lot more power than I had been before, and all this stuff really intrigued me.
It was through him that I was introduced to internal training, and how important the training of the internal and external were. He taught me the fundamentals of Qigong, and meditation, and a lot of Eastern philosophy. For an 18 year old, this guy seemed to be a lot wiser than most people his age.
My favorite memory was talking to some of the guys at my school about fighting, and I told them I trained internal Chinese martial arts, and they told me that all of that was bullshit, and that none of it worked, and that Muay Thai, Boxing, and BJJ were what would save your life in a streetfight. I was really confused, so I asked my friend and he said,
"Because we're just a bunch of dirty fighters who do things that most people think are wrong when we need to."
And that statement really struck me. I'd always fought for fun, and this was the first time I'd really thought about fighting in a real situation, in a situation where I'd have to defend myself or my life would be on the line or something, but no such thing had ever occurred to me. I mean granted I'd been using cupshots/headbutts my whole life, but he taught me things like eye gouges, finger jabs, throat strikes, hairpulling, fishhooking - how to use it and how to defend against it. We didn't really spar that much though, since I was so into the philosophy and the internal side that I forgot what I was training for altogether. So I was still pretty inexperienced, but now I was starting to know things.
So at this point I was starting to get a taste of the reality between self-defense and fighting for the shits and giggles, after the stories he'd tell me about nasty stuff happening to him. After my friend went to college really far away, he suggested that I go to an actual dojo. But as a high schooler with no job and a mom that was struggling to pay the bills, I didn't really have money to go to an instructor. In fact, I still haven't, and I'm hoping that will change when I get to grad school. But continuing on with my story...
I didn't really do a lot of exercise my sophomore year until the end, where I got really into parkour, which transitioned into tricking, which transitioned back into Martial Arts. This time, my thirst to learn was even stronger than it was Freshman year, and I realized I didn't have a lot of sparring experience [since I kept asking my other friend, "what would you do in [this situation]?" and that led to "I could tell you how to stop it, or you could figure it out using the things I've already shown you"], so I decided to get some. I didn't really have a lot of time outside marching band though, so I would ask all of my friends in Marching Band if they wanted to practice or anything. And that was how Chris and I became best friends.
So at this point I had been taught some stuff, but it was kind of casual since most of the training sessions turned into discussions about internal training or philosophy [or internal training itself], but I lacked a lot of sparring experience, and I hadn't really brawled with anyone in a long time. My elementary school brawl experience was also very different than the way stuff happened for older kids for some reason. We started gathering up a few of the band geeks [here, for some reason, a lot of them are jocks too it's really weird] and started sparring before practice. The old strategies weren't really working anymore, since a lot of these people had boxing experience. I had to deal with more than just flailing haymakers and full on tackles; I had to deal with lightning-fast jabs from people who trained kickboxing, one of the guys was a TKD stylist who had kicks that seemingly came out of freaking nowhere, and another guy was just super aggressive [and played football] and was just a hell of a lot to deal with. We had a few karate guys too.
I discovered that, due to the lack of sparring experience, that I was not really able to effectively apply my moves. And if I did, I didn't actually do them since I didn't want to damage any of my friends too badly. All the moves I knew were survival gimmicks; there weren't really any bread-and-butter sort of moves [like the jab, cross, straight, hook, uppercut arsenal of a boxer, or 12 angles of attack in Kali, etc] that I had. So I decided to get one.
I still didn't really have money to go to an instructor, but I discovered this wonderful thing called the internet. So I started learning from the internet. My ego was super inflated at the time, so I thought that I could learn all this stuff over the internet, and I began surveying systems/styles I wanted to learn. As a young, lanky, 5'9 kid that weighed 121 lbs (175 cm, 55 kg), I realized that I would need something other than brawn and/or speed to win.
This was my junior year of high school, when I began taking Physics AP, so I started trying to incorporate elements of physics into my fighting, and I searched for a style that was popular among people with smaller builds [as I reasoned to myself, if a lot of weak people like it, it must mean that it's aligning with physics to create an advantage as opposed to muscling right?]
So I discovered Wing Chun, and there were a lot of different resources on the internet for Wing Chun, but I mainly learned watching Jin Young's channel [which was really informative, and basically explained everything really well; youtube.com/chinaboxer]. I practiced Siu Nim Tao every day, and did Chi Sau with Chris every single day, practiced lining up my structure, all that stuff. I really loved Chi Sau, it was super cool and fun.
I also started working out and stretching, except I didn't have a gym membership [remember, I couldn't afford a lot at this time], so I started doing a bunch of bodyweight exercises at school before band practice started. I would go hang upside down on the tree in the courtyard shirtless and do situps until I felt like I was going to fall off. I would take the pole thing that you use to open the windows in the classroom [that were really high up], tie it to chairs, but a bunch of books on those chairs [or get a kid to sit on it], and bench them. I would do squats with freshmen on my back. [The small ones, of course, I was really weak LOL the most I did was like 2 100lb freshmen]. I was almost in the splits. I started hitting myself all the time to toughen my body, and I'd punch that tree that I hung on when I wasn't sparring with the other guys/training with Chris.
Eventually, I found some other group that also loved doing this stuff, and the guy asked me to body, going full force. I agreed. I tried to bridge to him, and I did, but not only was my structure bad, I had a hard time relaxing, and he took me down with a single and submitted me quickly. The next round, we linked arms, and I pushed him over, and then I took a roundhouse to the ribs lol that really hurt. The third round he did a high-low and cut me in the abs when I wasn't flexing, and we had to stop after that lol. [I think you can tell at this point how inexperienced I was dealing with someone who knew what they were doing]
At this point, I got really, really sad that my Wing Chun wasn't working for me, and it really made me question everything that was I doing [how on Earth could it work for me? I learned from the internet and had no idea what I was doing! My structure was bad, my sensitivity was bad, my range control was bad, my timing was bad, my movement was bad, so how on Earth would it work? I didn't know that at the time though]. So I continued doing Chi Sau, but I decided that I would work on Western boxing and BJJ, and just use sensitivity for when arms linked.
I was hitting adolescence at this point, and for some reason, I was actually calmer when I was 14 than when I was 16. I got angry all the time, whenever someone said something to me, I'd rage really hard, and a lot of my friends would have to hold me back. I had bad anger management, a violent temper, and a really difficult time controlling my emotions. My friends frequently had to hold me back so that I didn't do anything too stupid. To show you guys of my douchebaggery, I was talking to Chris about leg kicks, and we were discussing different solutions to one [currently I use this thing Benny the Jet teaches where you kind of "ride the kick" to take the sting out of it], and how ridiculously annoying it was because all Chris ever did was leg kick me and I had no idea how to deal with it. This other kid was like, "leg kicks don't do anything," and, in response, I proceeded to roundhouse him in the side of the thigh, causing him to collapse. I was such a dick back then lol
So there was one serious confrontation that I'd gotten in my entire life, and it happened that year. I forgot what it was about, I just remember it being really dark, and it was the fucking scariest thing of my entire life. Good thing the guy was retarded and only did haymakers and that Chris and I practiced the shit out of 360 defense [borrowed from Krav Maga, at this point, we were "collectors of style," where we basically looked at everything and took what we liked, but we were still very rigid on style at this point, though at least we were crosstraining...sort of], as I stopped his right haymaker and landed an elbow to the side of his head and it stunned him. Then I kicked him in the nuts and fucking ran for it. I never heard from that guy/saw him ever again, thank goodness for that.
After that little "confrontation," I seriously thought about fighting, what it was I was training, and what it was I was doing. I decided, after that, that unless I ever had to, I would never go looking for a fight ever again. Ever. It was honestly the scariest, most terrifying, most horrible thing I've ever been in [with the exception to almost drowning], and as much as I love fighting, I never want to be in a situation like that ever again. I was stupidly lucky that that guy didn't really know what he was doing, and that he left his left hand down so my elbow could land. What if he had stuffed it? What would've happened to me?
Eventually I decided to stop neglecting school as much as I was and study more. This was junior year, and I decided to start studying for the SAT and all that stuff, and Calc BC and Physics were proving to be a bit much. Also, I decided that I had become the biggest dick ever, and after band season ended, I basically went to only training my body and video games. That turned into only playing video games eventually.
Then, for some reason, Chris and I started to train again after we graduated high school, and this was where I read the book that changed my life - The Tao of Jeet Kune Do, by Bruce Lee. I now had a framework, a fundamental set of goals and strategies with which to base my fighting around. That summer, we mainly trained boxing, all these random joint locks we learned from books at the library/Barnes and Noble, a bit of grappling, and we'd work out together. It was a pretty fun summer.
Bruce Lee's book changed my life, however. I started trying all this stuff out on Chris and it was working pretty well for me. Chris had a hard time dealing with stop-hits; and it was this summer that I developed the one thing that I'm actually good at - timing. I could sense when he was going to strike, and I could hit on the beat pretty well, and I would catch him a half beat slower also. I still have trouble doing half-beat faster, mainly because I'm scared and not sure if he's actually wanting to hit me yet, but this whole timing thing was really starting to make sense to me.
The biggest influence Bruce had over me though was the importance of the self, as opposed to staying within the rigid confines of a style. Granted, I had no particular style that I was any decent at [unless you count Wing Chun, but I don't really want to consider myself one since I've never had formal training, more on this later], but I was really starting to get in the notion of playing to my own strengths, and covering up my weaknesses/strengthening them, as opposed to doing what someone told me was "right." I realized that a move that worked for Chris wouldn't necessarily work for me since he had 2-3 inches of reach on everyone else. Chris was also stronger than me, so he could use angles and muscle his way through, but I had to rely on using solid body structure and better maneuvering to win.
I was still stuck in the whole idea that "as long as I know this little trick/secret, I'll win" sort of mentality. The fundamentals of my technique were pretty bad, though I was starting to develop a really solid body structure at this time, but I wasn't able to effectively apply it.
Then I went to college, where I was glued to my chair for a year and became really sad/antisocial. And then I got dumped.
Coming out of my first year of high school, I needed something that I loved to do to stay happy, since I was getting really depressed. So I started fighting again. I gathered Chris, J-rod, and some of the other homies and we all started training together again. It was really fun, especially after we got helmets and shin guards and stuff, so spar with each other. I loved it.
It was also that summer that I realized how sub-par my technique was. I found openings, I exploited timing windows, and I played mind games with my opponent - but all this didn't count for anything if I couldn't attack with a solid structure, if I couldn't maneuver myself into the right position, if I couldn't deliver power into my opponent, if I couldn't be in the right place, and especially if I was there at the wrong time. So you mind game your opponent and have a better strategy. But does it count for anything if you're not making SCV's and have half his army, even though you attacked at a good timing?
Eventually, school started, but now it's summer again, and I realized that I really need some solid fundamentals, so I did a lot of research, and am trying a lot of things out, and I'm working on the basics of my game - range control, good structure, and good movement. I'm super excited to have fun with my sparring buddies again, and I can't wait for later on when I get to go train under an instructor, once I start making money.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/utGIrtk.jpg)
. Anyway yeah try out that half-beat before timing with the wing chun straight blast, it's super fun. Practice in the mirror a bit first, make it feel like you can't see the extension coming. You want to come directly towards their vision so that your fist hides the extension. Step in, tuck chin, extend shoulder, other hand guards face, and just yolo straight into their punch. You'll always connect first if you time it right and I've yet to be countered because it's just so damn fast. It's basically a straight with the lead hand (I'm orthodox but I keep my right leg/hand in front for kicks and strong jabs) that's faster than a jab, but you have to commit to it. The only real way around it is to duck it and shoot, but sprawling from that position is easy and there's no way that someone has the reflexes for that the first time they see it. It really, really hits hard, though.
