The Martial Arts

Everyone has a reason why they do something. From football to basketball or even jazz dancing to tap, we all have our reasons why we want to do something productive that charges our lives forever.

For me, it was the martial arts.

Here in this post, I will tell you why I started doing the martial arts and how it gave me a better look at life.

1) The previous thing I did was crap

I started being part of the New Brighton Police explorers during my freshman year of high school and quit near the end of my sophomore year.

Why you ask that I would forfeit a chance to be part of law enforcement? It's because they brought me up to the "Nationals" out at Breezy Point and they didn't have me participate. Plus, there was this one guy who was with the Explorers that I thought was my friend and he turned out to be a total asshole. Then of course, some of the other Explorers mocked my interest in the martial arts.

I could not take it anymore, so I quit the Explorers and begun learning what might have been Taekwondo at First Defense Martial Arts.

Yes, I could have done the martial arts sooner than when I did, but my sister had done years before, but it didn't work out for her and I did not want to have that same experience in the martial arts world.

2) Had lots of free time during the summer

During the spring, winter and fall periods of high school I of course was active in sports, but during the summer time the only thing I had was work and the occasional movie.

Many years before taking up the martial arts, my mom had me doing Summer sports programs like Softball, then in middle school Basketball and Kaleidoscope like programs. I pretty did summer school every summer until I began my first year of high. I wasn't a moron in my studies, my mom just didn't want me hanging around the house all day.

I grew out of such things and since I had nothing better to do, I took up the martial arts and it changed my life forever.

3) The martial arts is about honor, acceptance and commitment

When I found I couldn't enlist with the armed forces because of my "Asperger's", it screwed me up so badly, that I got mad at the wife of my first master during one session. I was having thoughts of ending my life even before that, so I thought I had nothing else to lose in life and that getting expelled from the school wouldn't make much of a difference.

I wasn't expelled.

The master and his wife were told why I behaved the way I did and they forgave me because it was nothing personal, I was just given a scar that still has never healed. I still had to apologize to the wife for way I behaved because I knew it was wrong for me to take out my feelings on others.

It was then I realized that the Martial Arts world was where I belonged.

The world of the martial arts doesn't care what you are born as, what faith you follow or where you even live.

It's about the respect you show towards your master, your fellow students, your school and what it represents, but most importantly yourself.

4) Some kids actually want to avoid juvenile hall

Sure, I was a rebellious teen. I hated authority after what I went through with the Police Explorers. My idiot educators demanded I be perfect and behave in a manner that made them happy. So doing something stupid and landing myself in Juvie would have likely happened.

Doing the martial arts prevented me from doing something stupid and it kept me on the straight and narrow. I learned the meaning of honor through the martial arts.

Bonus 1: The people who inspired me

The people that inspired me the most into doing the martial arts was Don "The Dragon" Wilson and Jean-Claude Van Damme.

I never saw Don Wilson's fights during his days as a kickboxer and his films had that cult film status, but I still thought that fighting techniques he used in those films made him cool.

I watched many of Van Damme's films, but it was the 1989 version of his film Kickboxer and the training sequences shown in that movie that motivated me the most.

Bonus 2: I would have been in the UFC?

Since I was inspired by Van Damme and Don Wilson to take up Kickboxing, I could have stayed the course and passed up First Defense Martial Arts for a school that had "real" kickboxing instead of the Cardio Kickboxing that they had at First Defense.

If I had done this, the world of Mixed Martial Arts would have likely found me and I probably would have gone up against Tito Ortiz or Chuck Liddell.

How different things would have been if I made that choice, I'll never know.