Strange Quotes

I have been told I use strange quotes or sayings to help me illustrate my teachings so I have decided to explain myself. So sit down belt up and let’s take an amazing tour of my mind and the way it works! Over the many years of teaching I always joke around and make the classes light hearted but always get the point of my class over in very strange ways. This strange wording came to light when I was going to grade a group from York where one of my black belts teaches and as Julie started the warm up she shouted “find a plot of land” so they could do shadow work as part of their grading, when I pulled her about stealing my lines she said she uses it all of the time … what a cheek get your own lines. It just shows how much things stick in your head and eventually you use them as an everyday term. So here are a few of my quotes and their descriptions. Tips for Kickboxing Knee point/nee point- taking the Geordie term meaning there is no point in doing something but in this context it means you point your knee to where the foot should go before you throw it out to the intended target. Speaking of knees the’ get out of jail knee’ is used a lot meaning when you kick and place your foot down in front of you instead of retracting it use the get out of jail free knee to keep your partner busy while you get back to your fighting stance as quickly and safely as possible. So you knee at the partner then place your foot forward thus giving you your correct stance so you can continue in your battle. When the class starts I always tell you to start your warm up by ‘starting with your mouth and work down’ to stop the class from chatting and get on with it and after the warm up to ‘get a set of pads and someone to hit.’ I have found some of the most obvious things about kickboxing like keeping your hands up and remember to breath spring to mind during the class as sometimes people hold their breath so they go from a pinkish colour to red to blue to purple very quickly resulting in this little corker ‘breath whenever you feel like it, you have only done it since birth. When moving in to hit the pads you should ‘point your feet in the direction of travel ‘meaning you should always be facing the target and not pointing your feet to the side because you will lose power and be unable to escape. Kickboxing and boxing have a certain rhythm and if you get it right it sounds like ‘We will rock you ‘by the group Queen you know BAM, BAM, BAM we will we will rock you! (I can hear you doing it!) This rhythm helps keep the beat and forces you to keep the pace when you are doing a round of this on the pads, It’s a bit like the quote I use when boxing when the class looks a bit tired I but the Rocky theme on ‘No –one stops when Rocky is on’ because what inspires you fires you (not my quote but I like it). Self-defense and Ninjutsu I love Ninjutsu but being a Ninja you always got the piss took out of you but now I am not bothered what people say because most of my self-defense movements come from the art of Ninjutsu. When people start Ninjutsu they are ‘Too spikey’ meaning their movements are not fluid, In Ninjutsu I will always say try not to make it ‘too Martial Arty’ meaning flashy and showing off in the movement because in self-defense you need to be able to create ‘Plausible deniability’ in your movement and hide your movement so the next time I stand on your fingers when you put them on the floor I have created a ‘happy accident’. Ninjutsu when you see it seems a fancy art with big movements but I always treat it not as a ‘Re-enactment society’ because I need to teach you to get home safely. My job is to make the big movements smaller because we ‘only need the end bit’ to strike you and stop you in your tracks. I am teaching you to ‘Be a sniper rifle not a hand grenade’ mean pin point accuracy not going off in all directions. In the art I stress that it is ‘weight shifting not weight lifting’ meaning try to look at things in a different way rather than trying too hard to do it too hard. Sometimes people train with an injury, me included, so I always say you should train to be ‘constructive not destructive’ as in rehab you should train to make it feel better but not too hard so you make the injury worse , but I sometimes don’t take my own advice. Speaking of advice in self-defense I will always say ‘there is no such thing as overprotective’ meaning I will use anything and everything to defend the things and people I love even ‘throwing relatives I don’t like ‘ at people, to look after the people I love. When practicing striking in my head I have’ a little undertaker from a western movie comes running out to measure the body for the coffin and runs back in ‘ just before I hit someone and when I tell people that they may think I am strange but I have always found it useful , also with a bag workout I always say ‘Treat a bag like a person and a person like a bag’ meaning use the bag the same way as you would push move and target a person and the ‘good thing about bag training is that it always turns up it is never late and it never complains when you hit it.’ I have over the years also stole many quotes off films such as ‘the answers you seek do not lie on the floor’ from the film ‘The Last Dragon’ meaning you should look at the thing you are doing not at the floor or as Mr. Miyagi off the Karate Kid ‘Always look eye’ I am constantly using these and many other quotes but they only ever come out when I need them so for the past few weeks I have been noting them down as they occur and unfortunately this is my second attempt at writing this month’s blog due to me managing to lose my first draft due to very poor I.T skills so I am sitting with my ripped up pieces of paper piecing together from memory and paper retrieved from the bin , so it just goes to show how messed up my mind can be at times! Thank you for taking this guided tour of my strange mind and even stranger quotes until next time Play nicely with the other kids John Atkin