Path to Kungfu - About me
My name is Joshua (Jay) and welcome to my blog. I made this blog to tell you about my journey and findings on my path to kungfu (gongfu).
When it all started:
When I was just a little kid I grew up in the city Tilburg which is located in the Netherlands. Growing up I always watched kungfu movies and martial arts films of those times, this was in the early 90's. Me and my friends would imitate movements of those films and engage into light sparring sessions using those moves, it was truly a fun time for all of us. Sometimes we would go to far and we would be bruised or hurt by imitating those moves.We also trained stretching our limbs because we saw Jeancluad van Damme do those things. My mom wanted to sign me up for classes in Taikwondo but I didn't want to go there, the main reason was because I knew some kids in those classes and I could already beat them in these so called little street fights, it where fights for fun and no aggression was intended. I always wanted to become stronger and more flexible, the main reason was because I grew up with Clump feet, bronchitis and asthma. (I also wanted to become a ninja, hahahaha).
Wing Chun
We where about twelve years old and my friends and I heard about this real kungfu school. So we attended some free classes, we found out it was wingchun. The first few lessons where real eye openers because the teacher didn't care about if we where big or small. We would spar against the grown ups with those wingchun gloves. The first few lessons we would begin to cry and shed some tears because of all those hits to our faces, each one us! And we thought we where tough! After a couple of lessons we naturally began to get some more reflexes and began to avoid those punches. I knocked one of these male grownups back when I applied an uppercut that Ryu and Ken are famous for in the game Streetfighter (ducking and then from a low stance giving an uppercut to the chin). The Male practitioner asked if I trained Muaythai, I replied with: no it's a move from Streetfighter the game on my Sega system. The teacher saw that, as well as how my friends countered wingchun in sparring. Each of us had a different approach, we didn't want to cry and go home helpless against wingchun anymore. The wingchun training really started from then, I can't remember how long I trained there but it was about a year, I soon got bored as I felt that it had nothing else to offer (I wanted more kicking and dynamics.)
Shaolin Kempo
At the age of fourteen I started Shaolin Kempo with my redhead friend Nick from middle-school. From the first lessons I knew this was what I wanted to do. After a few years I stopped practicing because I wanted to pursue Break-dancing in which I excelled rapidly and became the champion below 18 years of my hometown. I switched schools and met my friend Ziggy who still is my friend. He soon found out I knew more about kungfu and engaged in light sparring. The gap between skills was so much that I could keep my eyes closed and still win. He asked me where I learned those skills and we began to train at the shaolin kempo school again. Together we excelled so fast that we got the brown belt within 2 years. Usually there are 2 graduation periods per year in which you can excel to the next phase, there are 6 phases before the brown belt. So you can say we went faster then most of the students. Because of some incidents within the school we agreed to not train there anymore. These incidents where human errors of decency and ego. We both are somewhat spiritual and don't condone these non-loving actions, love is the source of tremendous power. Our Teachers became Sifu's with the 5th Dan in 2015. I still respect them as I learned most of my abilities during the time I trained there.
Fighting and Expanding Knowledge
I know I can fight and fight very well actually. I've sparred with various people from all ranges of sports and arts. So if you would ask me how can one can learn to fight well? You will have to train basic fighting principles and train your natural survival instinct. In other words, you will have to train your body, and you will have to train your mind's intent. I will discuss these things in other posts. Right know i'm on the journey to perfect my movement and body mechanics by studying and training Chen Taiji.
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