the rum soaked fist: internal martial arts forum

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vwvy6WuXU4Y



Many years ago, one of my first teachers, who was a very decent marital artist but unfortunately has passed on, was doing bagua training in his yard similar to what is in the clip.

As he was training he noticed that an elderly lady had stopped her car and was watching him from the road for about 2 or 3 minutes and then drove on - his head was shaven and he wore a decent martial arts top and pants - 10 minutes later the she drove by again and sat there for a good 5 minutes watching him.

20 minutes later - flashing lights and sirens ablaze, the police pulled up and got out of the car, cautiously approaching him.

They ask him to stop, which he did and then they proceeded to move forward.

They asked him, "Exactly what are you doing?" He replied that he was training bagua - they then responded by asking are you okay, are you mentally and emotionally stable? - he then explained that he ran a martial arts school and was training in a system called bagua.

Imagine seeing this from a distance and never hearing of bagua training or for that matter, any martial art:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pZlHmlNAx0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pZlHmlNAx0

The officers laughed and said, "Yeah some lady drove by twice and called us to report that some guy, dressed up in crazy outfit kept walking in a circle around a tree for a good 20 minutes or more, and kept changing his arm's positions in a very weird manner. She said she had to report it because that guy seemed to be mentally unstable and just might need help."

They all had a good laugh and then the police left and the teacher continued his training, circling the tree and changing postures.

Imagine someone seeing this from a distance and never having any exposure to martial arts training

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pZlHmlNAx0

My friend in Portland was called a crackhead for circle walking recently.

Love the bricklayer
Brings back good memories

from a "normie" pov, it probably looks totally crazy.

love this brick idea. bet it seems even cooler if you can see it through your inner child's eyes. a childhood friend and I thought we were Tarzan. we'd go in the woods, balance on logs, try to lightly push each other off, etc. wonder what we would've thought about the walking on bricks or posts. imagine it would've seemed so cool. on a tangent, the "qi hugging" is also better around plants.

One of my teachers who also practiced White Crane taught the plum blossom set on Bessar Bricks firstly layer down then stood on their ends due to the fact he taught in a hall and couldn’t install the poles
My first Kali teacher taught at the YMCA and used the gymnastic beam for Sinawali two man training

it happened to me with tai chi, but a security reason..

Was practicing across from my home away from home in a parking area. unfortunately that parking area was for a holiday residence belonging to the president of Cyprus at the time. He wasn't there with his family but there must have been someone around the place..

Before i know it I'm surrounded by police and a few of them plain clothes asking what I'm doing. I tried explaining, but I think they had never heard of it, so I ended up trying to compare it to Karate i think or something like that. I had to go and get my passport from the house to prove i was staying there.

Kind of funny really, but I guess it was night time and moving slo mo like a stoned zoned out zombie, might have had something to do with it ?

I have almost never practised in public in the decades that I have trained; too many of my martial friends and students had similar stories about being reported to the police for "suspicious activities". Just recently in my home city, the press got on the backs of the police here for having responded to a complaint about an elderly lady doing taiji sword in a park that is in the heart of the Vietnamese/Chinese part of the city. She couldn't speak much English and one of the cops was a little shitty to her as she tried to explain what she was doing.

I would imagine that that kind of stuff rarely happens in parks in Asian countries; but it's always been common enough here to keep me practising indoors with few exceptions... especially anything involving even the crappiest of replica weapons or interactive training.