Growing Is Half The Battle

Over all of the years of my self-defense/martial arts training I've had times where I trained alone, times where I trained in formal classes with instructors, times where I've fought at school, in jail, and on the street to defend my life and to defend others. I always wanted to feel like I was part of an academy, a tribe of warriors, like minded and fighting for the same reasons. For a time this dream was realized as I organized a weekly gathering for fighters of all backgrounds to share their skills and to teach seminars. We had a collective of folks representing Ninjitsu, Krav Maga, MMA, Jeet Kune Do, military hand-to-hand combatives, and more.

Each week different people would show up with a curriculum based on their personal path of training. We were all opened minded and excited to learn and share. We had meager means but we scrounged together a variety of rag tag training gear and equipment and had the time of our lives, growing together in the garden of an underground music venue house. We even used cardboard for sheet mulching as our mats. One of the most fun days was after I had scavenged for a collection of tennis balls. Once I set my mind to look for them, they started to appear everywhere out there in the city. By the time I had 10 or 15, I proposed that we have a training drill where we have the equivalent of a snowball fight with the tennis balls. They were the perfect balance of firm and soft to be able to deliver maximum force but be confident they'd not be injurious. It got very intense as we had to find cover and concealment, acquire targets, develop better aim, etc. It was a great warm up and put all of our skills to use.

Sometimes it feels that in absence of a very long standing established academy, the older you get the harder it is to gather friends for collectives like this. Life just gets in the way. But thanks to websites like MeetUp, you can always find niche groups of folks willing to share in the wildest ideas.