https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFiHb5AKCNI
Maureen
and I trained with him in the spring of 1976, first an hour of stretching ,
then an hour or so of kicks, then the attempt to spar with him began, hopeless.
He was so good that is slow motion he could use his roundhouse kick to brush
you hair back. He would show you exactly what he was going to do to you, and
then go through your attempts to stop him.
This
was when he was one of the top non-contact fighters in the country. Several
years later he went into Professional full-contact karate. There he switched
and most of his KO’s came from his punches. Just logic behind the switch.
Maureen
had just joined the Salisbury program, having been involved with a woman’s
volleyball league. She went from white to yellow in one month. First as a Phys
Ed teacher she was fit. Her volley ball league was tougher contact than karate
(no kidding). She had been watching me a home practicing the entire time I was
in the program. She knew what I was doing and so when she joined she was
already ahead of the learning curve.
So
we went up to the tournament in York Pa close to my parents home. In kata she
won 3rd place in women’s white belt kata. We attended the evening
show for the tournament and the next day attended the Bill Wallace seminar. It
was the 2 of us, Reese Rigby had a few of his students there with him, a
handful of local York karateka, and 2 people from the host school. A very small
group for Bill.
But
he did not shirk, it was a 3 hour seminar. The first hour involved stretching,
impossible stretching (he told us his daily practice first involves 3 hours of
stretching. Then he explained his kicking only involved 4 kicks, all with the
front leg (as because of an earlier Judo injury he really could not use his
rear leg for kicks.) The next hour we threw front leg front kicks, front leg
round kicks, front leg side kicks and front leg hook kicks. Non stop kicks with
him shouting at us to do more like a drill instructor.
He
explained his unique chamber (his front leg against his chest allowing him to
throw multiple kicks (even hundreds of them) from that position, even chained
one to another and another…… You could not anticipate what kick was coming
next.
We
threw so many kicks our kicks kept dropping lower and lower as kept exhorting
more…more.
Finally
we had a chance to workout with him. What he could do was incredible. Even when
he told a very good black belt exactly what order his kicks would be coming,
that black belt could not stop them from coming. Bills kicks went through or
around his attempts to block them.
And
all the time Bill was very funny.
Thinking
back on that day it was an incredible time. But I did not attempt to do what he
did. For one thing his skill was unique because he worked out that chest
chamber to kick from. That actually depends on individual ability. If you do
not have that the rest does not happen. I have seen people use a modified
version of what Bill taught, modified because they could not develop that chamber. What they did worked in a fashion,
though it would never work against him.
What
I took away was what you could accomplish from continual practice was the
lesson, we all can learn from that.
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