Better Martial Arts Movements

Happy New Year!
And happy work out…
every day for the next 365 days.
You deserve it.

Here’s something I realized,
which helped me,
hope it helps you.

I was reading a forum the other day,
it was some offbeat subject
on some martial arts forum,
and this guy did a rant on old movie musicals.
We’re talking people like Fred Astair, Gene Kelly, and so on.

This fellow said something like,
“These old black and white movies are gay!
How could anybody watch a guy and a girl,
dance for five minutes!
And there’s even movies where two guys are dancing!
how gay!”

How interesting.
Art is gay.
And he was holding himself up as a martial artist.
Maybe he was too much martial?
And not enough artist?

To be sure, dancing is not martial arts,
there is not much in the way of fist and defense.
But dancing is motion,
and martial arts have motion,
so the two have common ground.
Further,
I have seen many martial artists who were good,
but could have been better,
had they a bit of the poise and grace.

And,
here’s an interesting tidbit,
before I discovered martial arts,
when I was going to high school,
and then college,
I used to be a thespian.
That’s right,
an actor.
And I was in all the plays and musicals
that my schools had to offer.
Loved it.
Good looking girls there, too.
But,
good looking girls aside
(can’t believe I said that!)
one time I was in the play
West Side Story.
I was one of the Sharks.
And we were choreographing the big rumble
between the Sharks and Jets,
and I picked out the biggest guy I could,
and I went to him with an idea.
I hit you,
you hit me,
then I hit and you duck,
and you pick me up and throw me over your shoulder.
Man,
it was great!
We rehearsed it,
went to the director and showed her what we had.
She loved it!
So the night of the play
the rumble started.
I swung and he acted like I had hit him,
then he swung,
and hit me.
Bingo…right on the jaw,
and I was out like a light.
In front of 500 people,
The audience didn’t realize what had happened,
but the director did,
and my partner did,
and somehow,
I don’t know how,
I managed to come to enough to stagger off stage.
But I was knocked out.
So much for dancing being non-violent.

Anyway,
the big hint I wanted to give you has to do with this.
During the holidays they sometimes play old movies on TV.
Find the ones with Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly,
look for some other names,
check out how the masters move.

There was a fellow name of Baryshnikov,
considered the best in the world at ballet,
and he said his favorite dancer was Fred Astaire,
wished he could move like him.

Fred would do things like dance with a standing lamp.
He would roll that thing around,
tilt it and catch it
until you thought the standing lamp was alive!
There is never a hesitation,
never a hint of a stall,
it is actually one of the ONLY examples
of perfection in motion
on this planet.

Now if only a standing lamp was a martial arts weapon, eh?
We’d all be practicing the Fred Astaire Kata.

And,
not to leave out the gals,
Fred had a partner name of Ginger Rogers,
and one time some reporter asked her
if it was difficult to dance with Fred.
She replied,
“Heck, I did everything he did,
backwards,
and in high heels.”

Now that is perfection of motion.

So drive safe tonight,
or just stay home and do your imbibing,
and check out some of these masters of motion
and see if you can pick up anything about balance,
grace and poise,
or anything else
that will help make your kata perfect.

Happy New Year
and have 365 great work outs!
Al

Last day of the Two for One Special!
Read about it here!

https://alcase.wordpress.com/2014/12/22/special-martial-arts-xmas-present/