[William Baird]

Let me post this small novel in the correct media form this time. Shifu Ray pointed out I  posted in Facebook open to everyone.

 

My Martial Arts experience started around 1965 when I was about 12 attending a YMCA seminar on Jujitsu. After the seminar, I talked my Dad into allowing me to learn more and signed up for some classes with an old man named Mr. Allen who had his much younger protégé teach classes. I remember learning how to apply the Japanese wrist lock/throw, Hip Throws and even a simple close up gun defense. In Jr. High and High school I joined the wrestling team competing at 119 lb weight class and became caption of the team my senior year. This provided me with some grappling experience. I decided not to continue in college feeling I need to focus on my education instead.

When I graduated from College I moved from Akron, Ohio to the California and decided I need to learn more about how to defend myself against someone using there fists since wrestling was not very effective in this situation I took up Kenpo Karate first learning Tracy brothers variant. Then when the studio was sold off to another owner I learned Ed Parker’s version, he brought Kenpo to America and sponsored a yearly Martial Arts tournament in Pasadena where Bruce Lee was discovered by Hollywood for the Green Hornet TV show. Ed was know as Hollywood’s Martial Arts instructor and train stars such as Elvis Presley.

I even studied some traditional Kung Fu call Wing Lam while studying Kenpo. When I moved to Oregon I continued my studies learning still another variant of Kenpo requiring me to earn my brown belt status 3 times for each Kenpo variant. Kenpo was ok and you could see some of Bruce Lees influence that was picked up by Ed Parker who was friends with Bruce. Kenpo had a belt system requiring learning new basics, 20 to 40 self-defense techniques against various attacks, and forms for each of the belt levels. It was a very structured system to learn Martial Arts but had too many things to remember making it difficult to act spontaneously. After about a 5 year break from Martial Arts I found another system that caught my eye. Sheng Hun Kung Fu which was a system comprised of 7 animal styles: Bear, Mantis, Crane, Cobra, Mongoose, Tiger and Dragon.

This is where I met Dan Evans who is now currently studying Wing Chun at Lightning Hand Academy. We were workout partners and earned our first two black belts in Bear, (basics of all 7 animals) and Mantis at about the same time. This style was also influenced by Tracy’s Kenpo since our shifu once studied this system so it also followed the same learning system including many street techniques, basics and forms for each belt. Fun to learn but difficult to remember and execute all the material as I grew older. So in all, I have over 30 years of serious Martial Arts experience but have forgotten most of it. After retiring I decided I would like to continue with Martial Arts but with a style that would work for someone my age. Always wanted to learn Wing Chun and find it is perfect style for me. It also does not require extreme athleticism to execute effectively and there are far fewer basics and forms to learn. Rather then learning 100s of street techniques and trying to remember in real time which one to apply it focus on playfully working with the basics to spontaneously respond in a self-defense situations. I also like the idea of moving quicker by learning to relax your muscles so they are not working against you and learning to use your structure to apply power.

 

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