i'm looking for a martial art to learn.
not a problem in a city like Los Angeles. with the size of its Asian population, you figure it'd be relatively expeditious to find martial arts schools--and it is. there's one on every block in places like Monterey Park, Alhambra, Little Tokyo, etc. anywhere there's a sizable Asian population. you can't go down a street and not see one. they even offer martial arts classes via municipal government public service courses.
issuesone issue is trying to find legitimate ones of quality. there's a lot of charlatans out there--fakers and genuine experts who thrive on the naivete and gullibility of earnest and sincere neophytes looking for instruction. it's easy money. and they all seem to claim some form of grand lineage (it seems to be really important, even though it doesn't mean a bean to me), and they all seem to claim to offer potential students great mystical secrets or mysterious, magical powers to defeat opponents and vanquish enemies everywhere. it's all marketing of dubious ethics.
caveat emptor.
another issue is finding the appropriate martial art for what you might want. even cursory research on the internet will reveal a legion of martial arts styles, all of which claim to be superior to each other and pose legends of their grandmaster defeating another style's grandmaster. which is entirely unsurprising and entirely unhelpful.
honestly, i didn't have a clue between one style and another.
all the claims and stories and legends being posed by schools, instructors, and proponents of individual styles passed right over me. they might as well have been speaking ancient Urdu for all the information they were giving me. for that matter, there was no way for me as an English-only Westerner in Los Angeles, California to verify any of the information being spun out to the public for consumption.
finding paths to followlike i said in an earlier post: choosing a martial art proved to be a bit of a conundrum. it's one of those things that in order to acquire more knowledge you have to ask the right questions, but in order to ask the right questions you need to have a pre-existing base of knowledge. catch-22. essentially, a student has to make a good decision about the quality and legitimacy of an instructor as well as the appropriateness of a martial arts style without having the necessary information needed to make a good decision. so what happens if you have no knowledge and no information? what questions do you pose then to make the right decisions?
i started by first looking on campus at USC.
campus offers several advantages: martial arts courses on campus are usually cheap. courtesy of their location and proximity to my classes and my office, they're also convenient.
only thing was, USC only had a limited selection of martial arts to offer: mizhong law horn (sp?) kung fu, ninjutsu, tae kwon do, and aikido. that's it. the aikido instruction i felt was less than stellar. ditto the ninjutsu. tae kwon do just involved too much physical beating for my athletics-worked body. the kung fu class turned out to be a disappointment, with the instructor saying that he "[did] not teach combat, only fitness" (in which case, isn't that contrary to the entire meaning of the term "martial art"?). more than that, just like tae kwon do, he had his classes spend the bulk of their time on hard physical conditioning, which is the last thing i needed given the beating my body is taking on my athletic training schedule for triathlon--i'm getting plenty of physical conditioning already; what i need is technique and concepts and rational and philosophy.
truth be told, i was a little hesitant to try a "hard" martial art that relied on physical qualities such as speed and strength (as opposed to a "soft" martial art that utilizes other qualities). this is because 1) i can already feel my body changing, and it is losing whatever speed and strength it used to have, and i wanted to learn a martial art that i could use effectively into my old age, and 2) i am already getting plenty of physical stress from triathlon training, and the last thing i need is more physical stress from a hard style martial art.
this pretty much knocked out most kung fu, tae kwon do, karate, muy thai, etc.
of the remaining, "softer" styles, i felt a certain affinity for aikido, which i feel has a certain elegance and philosophical connection to Zen buddhism, for which i have always had felt some affinity. but the only reputable aikido-zen school i knew of was rather expensive and beyond my budget.
apart from aikido, i figured tai chi held out some promise since it was tied to Chinese conceptions of chi and chi-kung medicine, and so could was a good candidate to fulfill my interest in improving my body's physical recuperative abilities, as well as work on my flexibility and coordination. i also knew that chi-king (or qi-gong) supposedly helped improve the body's energy output, which sounded pretty good for athletic performance. and i also knew that certain forms of tai chi had very good combat applications.
further research on the internet also seemed to indicate that there were other "soft" styles with the same benefits as tai chi--health-wise and combat-wise. i found styles with names like ba gua (or pa kua), hsing-i (or xingyi), pi qua (or pi kua), baji, etc. and it seemed that many instructors (at least in the LA area) seemed to teach combinations of each style together, rather than just one alone. this was somewhat promising, as it increased my options and potential of finding something that fit my needs and my schedule.
but this raised the question as to which school and instructor?
surveying potential pathshaving no one to consult or in a position to offer advice, i was kind of stuck. there was what research i was doing on the internet--but the internet is a notoriously unreliable source of information. i wasn't even sure of the information i had gathered.
i ended up just turning to what i knew: basic logic and basic research.
i decided i'd begin by just searching for a good variety of "soft" style schools on the internet that 1) seemed highly recommended, and 2) were in my area.
from there, i figured i'd pick the ones that offered the most available information on-line that matched my interests and schedule.
next, i planned on visiting and observing a class at each school to try and gauge their quality. i planned on evaluating each place on 1) the level of personal instruction, 2) the instructor's experience and skill level, 3) the instructor's and senior student's ability to teach and communicate, 4) the extent to which i could ask questions and get answers, 5) the quality of the students (as in quality of character and personality...which i thought might reflect on the character and personality of the teacher), and 6) the comfort level i felt in the school environment.
of course, the final factor would be tuition, which was a major issue given my student budget.
based on the resources i found on the internet, i generated a list of schools:
i went ahead and visited each of the schools. but for various reasons found them lacking. a lot of it was a lack of comfort. two of the places were in Barnes Park in Monterey Park, California, which turned out to be one of the most crowded, noisy, distracting, and chaotic places i've ever seen. to my mind, a dubious place to learn anything requiring concentration and focus. one had the featured grandmaster on its website actually back in China, with the school being run by one of his senior students. other schools were entirely in Mandarin Chinese, with non-Mandarin students having to rely on their Chinese colleagues for translation. a couple of schools seemed to focus on teaching for things that looked good on cinema, with their instruction focused on teachers and students with resumes and personal websites targeting the city's talent agencies. people were friendly, but that was about it.
and the tuition was high enough to make me seriously question my finances.
all in all, not very promising.
choosing a pathi did find one place that i found somewhat intriguing, but with a website that was rather cheesy:
the school, to its credit, did seem to offer an impressive array of styles and technique. and the 2 instructors listed certainly seemed qualified if their bios were to be believed. and the class locations and times certainly fit my schedule.
but there were some disconcerting items i found with the website. first, it was rather slow to download. second, it was rather simplistic, banal, and amateurish in its layout. third, i found that all of the training information and contact information on it was outdated and no longer valid. in brief, it was not professional.
lovely.
it did not inspire confidence.
i skipped checking this school out several times. i would come back to the website, and check things out, but then just get disappointed and leave.
but after getting a growing sense of frustration with the other schools i had visited, i decided to exercise a few more ounces of diligence and see if i couldn't at least see what this instructor and school were really like. i figured it wouldn't hurt, and i needed to stick my rule of diligence and my plan of evaluation, just to know--if nothing else--that whenever i made my decision i could at least feel i had made my best decision and at least feel comfortable and have no regrets about what i had chosen to do.
i dug around the site and started calling all the numbers and contacts that it had. i finally tracked one down that worked, and it was to a person named Art Schonfeld, who turned out to be a lawyer and a senior student of the instructor. Art answered the phone with a tone that could be described as groggy, but he was patient and deliberate in offering information and answering my questions, and was upfront and honest about the training schedule and school--which apparently now was meeting in a park at an elementary school in Monterey Park.
with a certain level of reserved cynicism and aloofness, i decided to go ahead and make one last visit to observe the class. i figured that if this one wasn't any good, then i wouldn't have lost anything but time, and that i could still go back and start with one of the other schools i'd visited.
turns out that was probably one of the best and most fortuitous things that i could have possibly done.
the class was held in a quiet park. empty. open. with little to no traffic. with plenty of space and peace to focus and concentrate. very comfortable.
the class was relatively small--maybe 10-15 students at any time. and there were plenty of senior students, which to me was good, since it meant that there would be more people available to answer questions...and they were all willing to answer questions. the quality was high--and by this i mean they all seemed to be well-educated, well-behaved, and well-intentioned. more than this, they were all long-time students. all of this spoke volumes to me about the instructor and the quality of his instruction.
the instructor himself turned out to be a refreshing surprise. no pompousness, no sense of self importance, no sense of arrogance. just upfront, down-to-earth, and humble, with only the self-confidence you would expect of someone who is comfortable in his subject matter and comfortable in communicating it to others.
in addition, the instructor was very clear in his instruction, and covered complicated and expansive material in a way that was easy to follow but still comprehensive. better yet, he covered the spectrum of things that i found of personal interest: technique, and the concepts, rationale, and philosophy behind the technique. moreover, he was patient, attentive, and willing to explain answers in detail. and to top it off, he spoke English.
i found myself thoroughly enjoying the class. and more than that, i was getting what i wanted: a quiet Saturday morning in a place of peace and calm, where i could focus on 1) learning things to defend myself, 2) learning things that would help my training, and 3) learning things that wouldn't further beat up my training-exhausted body. more than that, it was intellectually stimulating.
the instructor actually met with me personally for a few moments, and was frank about his class. he told me simply "this isn't like other schools. i don't teach things to impress people. i teach combat." which is fine with me. that's what i want. that actually made me happy.
i made it a point to withold judgement. and decided to take a week to think things over.
well, i took that week, and decided i'd pretty much found what i'd been looking for, and decided to come back to that course, regardless of the cheesy website and outdated contact information. that course, as bad as the website was, is pretty much everything all the other schools were not.
and it turns out the instructor is about as good as the website claimed him to be. i found his name recommended highly on numerous websites, message boards, and even Kung Fu magazine. and he seems to have a pretty broad connection with a wide array of Wudang practitioners around the world. his name's Jason Tsou (at least, that's his English name...i suspect he has a Chinese name), and he seems like a good person to know.
it also helps that he's about the most affordable instructor i found outside of campus. all the others were charging exhorbitant fees that really made my student budget take a gulp and a grasp onto my wallet. Sifu Jason (and that's what i'll call him) offered a pretty reasonable rate, which is a great comfort to my student income.
i'm pretty happy with the school, the students, the class setting, the quality of instruction, and the instructor. i think i'm going to give this a try.
and hopefully i'll learn something about self-defense. and hopefully i'll learn something that improve athletic performance. and hopefully i'll learn something that will make me a whole lot better than i was before.
all in all, i think things turned out pretty well. and i'm comfortable in the decision i've made.
not bad, given how clueless i was (and still am) about martial arts.
and that's pretty much how i got started.
my teacher was Art, who is a lawyer and a long-time student of the Sifu Jason Tsou. Art is a senior student, and one of the several in the group who is studying for what he termed "Sifu Certification." Art told me he's been studying with Jason since the 1970s, which would make it around 20-25 years (?) he's been studying, and from what he told me he's been concentrating on Tai Chi Chuan (Chen and Yang) as well as Bagua. he may have studied other styles, but i don't know.
