Dublin's Aston quay one morning. What grabbed my attention was that it was not some muscle bound man in his prime on the cover doing some impossible elaborate high kick or smashing through wood or tiles with his head or fist. Instead it was a then sixty two year old man holding a boxing like fighting position. I found the article advertised on the cover inside the magazine, it read GEORGE CANNING The Legend Lives on. I read on; It was amazing to witness the informality of it all.
Due to my own young insecure self image I put off calling Professor Canning for nearly three years before I got in contact with him but I have never looked back.
What makes you a martial artist is the ability to think on your own initiative, to a act as an individual. As my teacher Professor Canning said in an article that he was interviewed for not so long ago, "Anybody can train, anybody can fight but not everybody can think"
Thinking is at the core of everything we do. Our body materializes our thoughts so what better way to express our thoughts than through natural movements that we feel suit our own biomechanics. The latter option is to contort ourselves into some animated awkward position created hundreds of years ago that will most likely promote injury and weakness throughout the body over time and have no practical use in a life or death situation.
Now don't get me wrong I believe that is the practitioner and not the martial art that works.
At the same time if you have to stand on one leg, pose like an ostrich and scream like a hyena in order to execute a movement it's officially ridiculous and now your going to get your behind kicked. You will have learned the hard way that the more complicated a movement is the longer the brain will take to retrieve it in a stressful situation. Keep it real, simple and effective.
I had competed in a few point sparring or stop start competitions as a teenager with limited successes along with being thrown into a ring with a seasoned 2nd Dan black belt after only training for six months. Although I had never experienced being hit repetitively more than once and the fear, the adrenaline that comes with a full contact fight or being attacked in a street situation . In the dojo we had plenty of grudge or revenge spars as I called them but nobody ever learned anything as we just kicked three shades of proverbial out of each other to no avail. If you busted up the other guy your ego soared if he busted you up your ego was bruised, until the next time you went training and so the cycle began again... It was like being stuck in a state of unlearning.
I was never confident that my Kung Fu could protect me because of this cycle. I remember being an assistant doorman at seventeen years of age, being chastised by the patrons for my youth. I remember being terrified that if something went down I would be killed by some drunk hooligan for sport.
I had been in the odd tussle in school as a teenager and few brief encounters on the street nothing worth mentioning except one occasion when I was nineteen years old..
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Pat Mc Parland 7th Dan teaching Fergal in the World Mugendo University |
this other young man as he went through the air then looking at him on the ground.. That was the first time I had ever struck anybody outside the dojo with the intent of doing harm and it is still the only time even now to this day nine years on.
A few weeks ago one of my teen students reported to me that the same happened to him at a junior disco.
He said he just remembers reacting to the situation automatically.
He didn't do block number x or technique y done to death until you hate the movement so much you want to hit the person who showed you it, he just reacted as an individual.
Mugendo Is more than a martial arts system. It's a system of thought that will lead you to your own way of living. Since 2006 I have travelled to Thailand, America, Australia, New Zealand and the Fijian islands and if possible trained in a martial art while I was there or have made an attempt to get under what makes other people who they are, what makes other cultures who they are.

Now twenty eight I know who I am and what I want. I attribute this clarity of vision and thought to my Mugendo training and my teacher and friend Professor George Canning and all of my dojo friends at the World Mugendo University.
Learn to be an individual, Learn to express yourself, be confident in the knowledge that the actions you take at any given time are the correct ones to accommodate any situation that befalls you.
Fergal Lawlor
March 23rd 2014
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