Superior Fighters

Some time ago I studied Shotokan Karate and then later mixed it with taekwon do. I was a lot younger when I started and had the energy and the time to invest everything I had and was into the martial arts.

For my first few years it was pounded into me that I wasn't very good and wasn't likely to become a champion. I was going to have to work hard, take my lumps, and get little recognition. For some reason I believed this--probably because in its essence it was true. But as the years went past, most of the truly gifted students lost interest and dropped out. I was moving up in rank, up in the brown belt zone in Shotokan.

At brown belt level, we started wokring on "ki," and I was taught how to take a blow to the stomach. This was back in the 70's in Philadelphia, so none of us had heard of qiqong or the Chinese applications of chi. We only knew the Japanese methodology of teaching it.

Furious stomach development was required. Daily I did sit ups with my legs straight out like pistons, six inches off the ground, and slowly raised my shoulders up to a half sit up position. I did sixty of these at a time, usually twice a day. I'd hang off a chin-up bar by my hands and lift my legs straight out, parallel to the ground below, and hold the position until my legs trembled. Then I would slowly lower them and do it again. While I practiced situps in class, my sensei walked across my stomach, first just stepping once on me and passing over. Then he would step with both feet on me, then stand on my stomach and look down at me and talk to me. Sometimes we would sing together.

Simultaneous to this, I practiced ki breathing. This type of breathing relies on the stomach/diaphragm to draw in the breath. It also requires a certain mental conditioning. We practiced fluid motion, getting the sense of how energy passed through our muscles as we lightly punched. We also practiced hard motion, locking all muscles at the last instance and then instantly relaxing.

I was taught the proper attitude for being hit. When a punch comes that cannot be deflected, it is better to meet it as though your stomach were punching back: not to flinch but to expel the breath 90 percent and tighten the stomach muscles (which automatically raises ki or energy flow to the stomach). At contact the ki explodes out in a shout as it meets the force from the punch.

We tested our spirit every single night that we trained. Fearlessly, each one of us could take blows to the stomach. Even I, the least of my brethren, could take a full strength punch from a high school football player in the stomach, as long as I knew it was coming. It would sometimes throw me back, but it could never "shatter my ki," as my sensei described the collapse from a punch. The best of our students could unflinchingly take a blow anywhere except full in the face or the groin.

We also learned to move the ki through throwing a punch. I could break a one-inch pine board with a one-inch punch. Another favorite thing to do was to rest my hand on top of the board as it was held for breaking, swing back my palm, and swing it forward as I moved ki from my stomach to the heel of my hand. This gesture that looked like a half hearted push would break the board. In my subjective recollection, it took only a week or two to learn these feats, but as I review old journals and training schedules, I see it was actually months of training--months in which I did not miss many lessons and practiced daily on my own

Yet still, I truly thought of myself as the least of my brethren. For one thing, they were all faster than I. For another, as men, they fit the design for what stances and kicks should look like. I was daily foot swept over, knocked down, scolded for wasted motion. My sensei accepted me, and I loved him, and I knew I was welcome in his school. But it was never hidden from me by any of the ranking students that I had many limitations.

Then I went to college and shortly started my taekwon do studies. Initially, my wider hips and lower center of gravity also told against me. But as I moved up through the ranks, my superior abdominal development assisted in my kicks. I am not fast, but I discovered that strong abs increase kicking speed--once you learn to lift with the abs.

My taekwon do teachers at first did not notice me much, but as I ascended past first degree black belt, I realized that I was at last gaining their respect. On occasion, I have been asked to teach adult classes--the first woman in the school to do so. I won a few medals in competition, but I don't like hitting people, so I stopped competing. My ability to take a blow has diminished a lot since the days of furious, consistent ab development when I was in Shotokan. I do still have good abs, but I have learned in taekwon do to keep an opponent on the perigee of my personal space, rather than coming in close to trap and hit as we did in Shotokan. All the same, we do practice the necessary attitude of taking blows, and there are sessions when I take hits on the stomach. But I'm not as good at it as I was as a teenager.

It has been a custom in our taekwon do schools in Greenville SC to visit each other to get in extra sparring. I used to visit around when I was in competition. The young guys love to do it, and there's a friendly rivalry among our schools. One day on a Saturday after class, a group of us black belts were standing around talking and it was suggested that we take an extra hour to train. We sometimes do this, and I really enjoy the comaraderie as much as anything else. We were interrupted by a very young woman who came up to the front door beaming with enthusiasm. She had dark eyes and dark hair, a face years younger than thirty, I thought. She was, she told us, a WTF competitor from one of the other schools, and she had heard that sometimes we black belts trained on our own. Could she, she asked, spar with one of our women?

Well, I was the only woman there. I was a little nervous--for her sake. This girl was shorter than I by about four inches and probably about twenty pounds lighter. I realized she would likely be faster than I, but there was a freshness and youth to her that worried me. I hate sparring kids because I hate hurting people. At the same time, there is a very small girl at one of our sister schools who is so much faster than I that I swear she just runs up one side of me and down the other when we spar. I outweigh her by about forty pounds (at least) and am a foot taller than she. But she fights with me just fine. I suggested to the new girl that she demonstrate some of her technique for us.

She did, and there was no doubt that she had been influenced by the current style for females in the martial arts. She was extremely stretched and limber (much more so than I). But she also threw some classical taekwon do techniques--not the less piercing sport style kicks, but the real things--side kick with the hip all the way over, round kick with the piercing ball of the foot used for striking instead of the instep, and a really spectacular double jump kick that had me beat all the way around. I can't throw them at all.

The problem, I think, is that we don't wear any of the sport padding in my school. I didn't realize that this kid had never sparred without it. And she didn't realize how hard we fight without pads.

The four or five men found a stop watch and stood around watching with interest as we bowed to each other. She came in with that beautiful limber look of hers, throwing an ineffective sport kick: a typical opener if this had been a tournament. I deflected it with an open hand blow, spinning off my hip and ball of my foot as I did so, sending her into a spin. I cracked two punches to her kidneys but made no contact because I think those blows are illegal in competition.

To my amazement, she said, "You were wide open, you know." One of the men chuckled.

"Come on," I told her. In the ring, you fight. The only way to correct somebody is to defeat them.

She came in instead of letting me take the offensive. There was no doubt her technique was good, and I let her chase me around the impromptu ring for about half a minute, which is quite a long time in a sparring match. Shew threw everything at me, and I could see that she must be great in competition, just not experienced in military/classical style free sparring, which is what we do at my school.

"Why don't you fight back?" she asked, gasping.

"I don't want to hurt you," I told her, and one of the men warned her, "She's a hard hitter, young lady."

"I'm a black belt," the girl replied right to me. "I take twenty punches per class." Of course, I had no idea that she meant that she held a punching board against her stomach and took them. I instantly figured her experience was identical to my experience.

I was too out of breath to say anything, so I just nodded. She plunged in. It was time to give the kid the fight she wanted. I crunched my abs really hard, jumped and turned as she came in, and hit her dead square in the stomach with a jump back kick, piercing through her tournament conditioned arms like they weren't there. Nobody can block a jump kick as it comes in.

Her arms flew out, and I swear her feet left the ground. She landed at the feet of the men. For a second they thought she was just going to get up and continue. Then we saw that she couldn't get her breath. She had no concept whatsoever of taking a blow. I didn't realize it until then. I ran to her.

We all knelt by her. The black belt men in my taekwon do school are church going men old enough to be my fathers. None of them wanted her to be hurt, but none of them blamed me for misreading her ability to take a blow. We lifted her head. My heart was in my throat as I realized I had hurt this open spirited, gentle little girl who would blithely call herself a black belt and as yet had no concept of what it means.

We lifted her head and helped her draw her knees up.

"Good heavens, are you all right?" I asked her. "I thought you said you could take a punch!" In spite of my concern, I was a little angry with her. She had jibed me in the ring in a superior way and yet collapsed the minute I did anything.

Her eyes filled up with tears. "You didn't fight right!" she exclaimed at me, gasping..

I started at this. It had hurt me to hurt her, but I adhere to the code of the hwarang and have vowed to live honorably. "I fought well," I said, very sternly.

"Maybe you thought so, but that's not the way to fight!" she exclaimed, gasping and hunching up her knees. "You're not supposed to hurt people!"

"In our school, that doesn't hurt people," I told her. I was stung by her words, and her injustice rankled. She had asked me for the fight, in my own school, and had given me every assurance that she could handle it.

"That's enough," the senior black belt told us. He looked at me with firmness and decision. "It's not polite to look at her while she's hurt. Go to the office and let us help her."

That is a rule of courtesy in the martial arts. You don't look at the person you've wounded because it disgraces him or her. I went into the office. I wanted to explain so much to this kid that I didn't understand her reference points. In my training, I was taught never to speak when sparring except for the requisite, "Are you all right?" Saying anything else is considered jibing. It's rude. And we hit hard. In both of my schools, hitting hard is considered a prerequisite to good sparring.

I heard her crying out on the floor, and it's a sound that has never gone out of my mind for very long. I'd really hurt her. But I heard her say to one of the men, "She doesn't fight right for taekwon do." No doubt to her this was true. Of course, the fact is, in any martial art , any time a fighter gets hit, it's his own fault. That's what I was taught, but it's no comfort when you hurt somebody--especially somebody that you like right away, and somebody who--you realize--actually has more innate talent than you do. And especially when that person is about ten years younger than you are. Just because the kid had thought we were peers, I should have realized that I had way more experience than she did.

Mike came in after they'd gotten her put back together and out the door. I surprised him by crying as soon as he looked at me. "I didn't mean to hurt her!" I exclaimed. "It's the only way I know how to do taekwon do!"

All of the other men were too scared to come into the office. Nothing frightens black belt men more than a woman crying. Anyway, that's how it is in my school. Only Mike was brave enough to face it.

"I know you didn't mean to hurt her," he said to me very gravely. "But it was too much for her. She's very young."

"But she's good, and she said she could take a punch."

"She thought she could until she met you," he told me. "It's too much for her to be knocked down by one kick. You have to let her heart get big enough to handle it. That may take time."

"Why does it take time?" I asked him. "I've been knocked down for the past fifteen years in the martial arts. I was taught that you don't blame the person who knocks you down--not if you asked for the fight!"

"No, you don't," he said. "But, you're very able in the martial arts, very experienced. And from the first day, you just picked yourself up, followed the rules, and worked hard. You're very resilient, very brave, and very good at martial arts. People knock you down, and you just get right up again."

Well, in one isntant I had just found out three things I had never known about myself. I honestly thought everybody took blows like I took them, and that everybody strives to react the way I was taught to react.

"Are there any other sterling qualities that I have that you'd like to tell me?" I asked him. "Before I knock some other kid off her feet and make her cry? Why did you let me think I was just ordinary all these years?"

"'Cause your technique is just ordinary," he said. "But you've done a lot with it." He rested his big, ham-like hand on top of my head. I am six feet tall, but Mike is six foot four. "She'll come back," he said. "Pray for her heart to be made big. Pray for the wisdom for yourself not to hit so hard next time."

I do. I pray for both. I pray for her a lot, and I pray for her to find the bigness of heart to be knocked down and then stand up again with dignity. He said that she would be back, that we would make friends. But the days have gone by, and I have not yet seen her.

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