Sunday, 23 March 2014

A brief History of Mugendo and Me

In 2003 I  bought a back issue of Fighters magazine in Easons while waiting on a bus on
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.
Fergal Lawlor receiving his 4th Dan black belt certificate from Professor George Canning 10th Dan
Founder of Mugendo.
also pictured, Pat Mc Parland 7th Dan, blue t-shirt
John Kennedy 3rd Dan Navy Hoody
  His students trained in shoes, dressed for the street and the training changed every time you went into his dojo!  Professor George Canning had "served his time" being traditional about martial arts now it was time to be progressive about it.  He got rid of forms/katas and anything that slowed down the learning curve of the student. This was accelerated learning in the martial arts I thought; but martial arts learning was slow and mysterious and you had to spent all of your life training the one form to understand the movement, didn't you?  I had just started training in Lau Gar Kung Fu a few months before I had picked up the article I was now reading. Up until now my young mind had been filled with cult like misconceptions of what martial arts was.  I could not comprehend the fact that no uniforms, no forms,  and no bare feet could be a part of a martial arts system.  Prof. Canning spoke of healing arts which he was trained in, about bringing the best out in people and about training his students to be bodyguards in his own security organisation.  I was very taken with this man before I even met him but unfortunately I did not have the confidence to step outside of my own comfort zone which was my Kung Fu.  What if it was not everything that was promised? what if I embarrassed myself and had to go crawling back to my old sensei to train.
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..

Pat Mc Parland 7th Dan teaching Fergal in the World Mugendo University
I had been training with Professor Canning barely three months learning to hold my hands up to protect my head and how to jab with power without jumping around the place as I was used to.  I was walking out of a local night club with my one Saturday night when one of my friends got attacked by somebody who took a disliking to him.  I managed to clear my friend from danger and put the attacker on his back in a few seconds. I was told later by my friend that I had parried the attackers punch or punches almost automatically and struck him with a closed fist jab that stunned him and a cross that sent him through the air!. All I remember is looking at the soles of the shoes of


 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.
I learned this; no two people are the same why try change that? why try and make people conform to  one idealistic way when it certainly wont work for all involved.  Maybe the few it does work for are just very good clones of their instructor and just want to please and or gain favour with their teacher, who knows?

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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