Wax On, Wax Off

Gichin Funakoshi said, ~You may train for along time, but if you merely move your hands and feelt and jump and dwon like a puppet, learning karate is not very different from learning to dance. You will never have reached the heart of the matter; you will have failed to gras the essence of karate.~ When it comes to learning marital arts there is a lot of time, patience, and discipline that is involved in a graceful but deadly artform. Whether its Kung Fu, Tae Kwon Do, Judo, Tai Chi, Aikido, Ninjitsu, Ju Jistu, Kick Boxing, Capoeria, etc. Whatever style it may be it should be taken serioulsy and not use what you were taught for personal vendetas or to start fights.

For the most part, every guy growing up learned martial arts the fun and old fashioned way, which was by way of osmosis through old classic dubbed kungu movies. Movies that when you came out the movie theater you started immitating the movies, jumping off the furniture, kicking/chopping whoever is near you like your own brother, and making sounds/noises like every guy's favorite martial arts legend Bruce Lee. As a guy, my favorite movie of his is Enter The Dragon with Game Of Death a close second. Undeniably, he was, is, and will always be THE MAN that every guy idolized and wanted to be as kid including myself.

Without a doubt, there won't be any other guy like him as his style, mannerisms, and phylosophy were both unique, as well as, one of a kind. For those that preceeded him have their own styles that make each of them unique to where hypthetical battles would be thought up to see who people think would win. Such names that would always be thrown into the proverbial hat are Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Marc Dacascos, and of course the legend himself Bruce Lee. A dream battle between these respected men that have been debated on can oftentimes turn into arguments as to who can kick whose butt. My personal opinion, my pick is Jet Li because he has the speed and quickness to kick butt within a blink of an eye.

Personally speaking, my brother and I took Tae Kwon Do for several months but I had to quit due to hyperextending my left knee, which hasn't been quite right since. On the upside, I can tell what the weather will be like by feeling my knee and to be perfectly honest it can be either wrong, right, or somewhere in the middle. Even though I quit, my brother didn't as he won several trophies in tournaments and made all the way to red belt before he decided to venture into something more challenging such as Kung Fu. Let me tell you something, as adults my brother and I have never gotten into a physical fight, but if we did I would get my head knocked off.

On Thanksgiving Day, Pat Morita died leaving behind many fans who grew up watching him, like myself. Even though he didn't teach martial arts off screen he was considered a true sensei on screen. He was and still is the quintessential television icon who will be best remembered as Mr. Miyagi the teacher/mentor to Ralph Machio's character Daniel-san in the 3 of 4 Karate Kid movies. It was the character of Mr. Miyagi that kids back in the day, me included, learned the crane kick and karate moves by doing a simple task like painting the fence. In the end, for me anyways, it all started with 4 words that became a classic catch phrase and those for words are wax on, wax off.