Just how long have you been a martial arts geek?

[shawnsegler]

73 or 74 The day after I first saw enter the dragon.

[fuga]

what is that? dog fu? usually it's done towards the tree

[cerebus]

Heh, heh. I started in '78. For me it was the old "Deadly Hands of Kung Fu" comic/ magazine and the Count Dante ads...

[klonk]

For me the journey started when I checked out this book from the bookmobile, sometime in the nineteen-sixties:



The idea that fighting had logic in it was new and flabbergasting. I have been trying to figure it all out ever since.

[cerebus]

Dayum! You got Nakae's Jiu Jitsu Complete from a bookmobile? Sweet! That's a great old text.

[klonk]

It is one of only a few martial arts books that passes the Klonk test. You can reasonably expect to learn to do what it says from the text, the illustrations and partner practice. It's not a whole lot of jiu jitsu, in fact it's a basic bag of tricks, but a few schooolyard bullies got handed some surprises on account of that book.

I think Nakae understood kuzushi better than anyone who wrote about it since.

And, yeah, I was lucky to happen upon it. For a while what was going on was that, as soon as I had to return the book, my buddy would check it out again, and back and forth until we had worked out the moves.

[Felipe Bidó]

My father got me into a Karate school at 8. And since I was a fan of 'Judo Boy' (Anime, of course), I loved it. But I left training at 10, and started training again at 14

[Areios]

well i got in to it in the age of 3. In to shotokan karate. But it was at 87.

[shawnsegler]

btw...just as an aside...does anyone else have problems with this kind of thing?

SC governor admits affair, secret Argentina trip

I see SC and I always think Shuai Chiao. I've been ruined by our acronyms.

[klonk]

Not me, Shawn. I follow politics. This guy can't fight his way out of a paper bag. Putin is another matter. People have been talking about Sanford for president; I don't know if this latest flap is gonna derail that or not.

[bigphatwong]

Since '93, after seeing "Dragon: the Bruce Lee Story". I went out and bought my first MA book, "Zen in the Martial Arts" by Joel Hyams. After that I was hooked.

Getting my ass kicked a lot in school that year helped too.

[I-mon]

one of my buddies when i was 4's dad's was a judo black belt so me and my little friends started doing judo when we were 5. that year we watched "kickboxer" and "karate kid" at birthday parties. one of the crew had been to america and come back with knowledge of the ninja turtles, years before they came out (in NZ), so we all got into the ninja thing. another friend somehow got a comic of the TV series "kung fu", and would walk around school at play time saying "waaa!" and kicking other little dudes in the nuts.

[Snow]

I started late--around 1996. No influence from the 60s and 70s stuff. Heavy influence from 80s and 90s...Jackie, Sammo, Yuan Biao, Jet, Donnie, etc. So, yeah, dorky. I wasn't the 7-year-old wanting to be Bruce Lee. I was the 27-year-old wanting to be Yuan Biao.

[Bär]

I was the 7 year old wanting to be Quai Chang Caine/Bruce Lee. Started Judo at the Y in 1980.

[everything]

loved the HK movies and still enjoy them, but my dad, who was into taiji and other MA, would always say something about that's all fake that kinda ruined the fantasy for me. instead, i thought pro wrestling was the REALS for a while. Tony Atlas and Andre the Giant were probably my favorites. my brother and friends and i did countless hours of fake wrestling because of that for a couple of years.