Self Training a memory

 

 

When I began my Isshinryu studies back in 1974 two classes a week were never enough. I trained outside in my yard and inside in my living room all the time. Two young friends from the dojo lived nearby and often they dropped by to train too.

 

Then one day Lewis Sensei announced that the club needed someone to clean the club each week and they would not have to pay dues in return.  That seemed a real bargain to me, so I offered to keep the dojo cleaned. I received a key and from that time forward that is what I did on Sundays and of course used the club as a place to train before I cleaned it.

 

I had to have more and began to take non class day trips to train at other IKC dojo, Princess Annne, DelMar at the state line, Dover Deleware on a regulaf basis I visited all of them and trained with those schools.

 

When I had to move for work and then had to start training in Tang  Soo Do  Moo Duk Kwan, I continued to work for the next year on my Isshinryu. I remember working out on my in-laws driveway, outside my house on the sidewalk early mornings. When it became time to take my mandatory vacation from my Bank work I returned to Salisbury camping near there, then attended class in Salisbury and Dover. Always training, allowing me to retain my Isshinryu.

 

Right after that Charles Murray moved to Providence , outside Scranton, and I began training with him in Isshinryu. However I also continued to train in Tang Soo Do as I had another year on my contract there. With Charles the training was irregular, classes were started for the youth of his church and I assisted him then after those classes was my own training. If he wanted to train he would call me at midnight and I always went over. Even in blizzards we trained even if after that training I had to dig a foot of snow off my car.

 

Mornings at the crack of dawn I would run a mile or so, then a ½ hour a kata, take a bath then walk ½ an hour into the Bank. After work I would then train evenings with Charles or in Tang Soo Do.

 

Time passed to quickly and I became a shodan. Then even quicker Charles informed me he was going back into the Air Force for his career. Before he left he taught me Shi Shi No Kon No Dai outside in his backyard where a line of thunderstorms came up, he went back inside to pack while I remained outside in driving rain working on that form. Then that line of storm passed, he saw I was still outside so he came out and taught me some more, only to have another line of storms come in, then he would go inside back to packing. I remained outside in the rain, working on the form. That repeated itself and finally I had the entire form.

 

He wished me well, I gave him my fondest hope for his life, then sadly went home.

 

Of course I worked and worked to keep the form.

No longer having an instructor I made adjustments to my training. This began in 1979.

1.        I began a youth Isshinryu program at the Scranton Boys Club.

2.        I started competing regionally at karate tournaments

a.        To push myself

b.        To compete continually against some of the best individuals in the country forcing me to improve in the process.

c.        I made regional friends among the competitors and that often provided me other schools to visit and train with.

3.        I continued my early morning running and training

4.        I began to visit those school of the instructors I met, training , learning, pushing myself  further.

5.        Then when we took vacation they became further training locations

a.        As when we traveled to the Grand Canyon of Pa. to camp, we hiked down to the canyon, in the campground I practiced outside continually working to find new things about my art.

 

The time came after another 5 years had passed that again I had to move for work. This began in 1985.

1.        I began another program for youth at the Derry Boys and Girls Club.

2.        That work meant I had less time for additional travel, so I focused more on the Youth Program.

  3.        I started an adult program at the Derry Boys and Girls Club after the youth classes. As it turned out I was teaching youth 2 days a week, then adults also on one of those days and on Saturday mornings.

4.        I continued to practice outside in my yard for personal development.

5.        Each year I would travel to Conferences around the country and at each of them would work out early mornings in the parking lot of those locations.

6.        I made trips to train in Salisbury (and often Dover too) as frequently as possible. At times driving 6 hours to train for 2 hours and then driving 6 hours back.

7.        I participated in annual Summer camps of mixed styles.

8.        I began teaching a Yang T’ai Chi group on Sunday mornings on my driveway. That continued for about 14 years.

9.        I continued to seek our new opportunities to train many places.

 

 

Then in 2011 things changed, I could no longer participate at the pace I had been doing.

 

So I cut back. The instructors I trained took over the youth program, I just supervised.

I focused on the adult program.

 

But as things progressed I could do less and less.

 

I continued to work on my new diminished abilities. After decades of work on my own t’ai chi, I was dimished and could not really do it. It took me a year but I worked out a way to do it as much as possible.

 

My ability to do kata was also diminished, but in a different way I continued to work on what I had.

 

Through all of that I would go outside to train as much as I was able.

 

Then in 2016 we moved to Arizona,   where I only have myself to work out with. I would go outside and continue to work on my t’ai chi and my karate. Limited as I was I could not stop what I have been doing for a long time.

 

Back in the 6 years when I was competing, I never had a camera to be filmed doing my kata. In fact for more than a decade I never was able to film my self.

 

Years later in Derry my program was able to buy a camera for the Boys and Girls Club. I used it mostly to film my students, not to find perfect performances, no matter how well they did. Rather to be able to analyze what they were doing more fully and their best performances ( at any level) to use a points showing where they would move through at that stage of development and to focus on where they would move forward from that stage.

 

I was able to film many of the clinics my friends gave my students, to preserve what was shared.

 

A few times I did film myself to save something for my students to eventually use, or to record where I was at that time.

 

But all of it rested on the fact I never stopped training whenever I could.

 

Training wet, training dry, training cold and in the snow and ice, training when hot.

Whatever the weather, whenever the weather,  would train and then train and then train.