Sensei Heyman (right of center), myself (center) and senior students after my last night at Renshinkan.
It is said that amazing things are found in unlikely places. Last winter I found this saying to ring true; offering one of the most inspiring
and formational experiences of my journey as a martial artist.
In January 2011, I moved from my
home town in Massachusetts to the heartland of central Florida for an
internship in avian ecology and conservation at a local biological research station. The town in which the research station was technically situated
was actually an unincorporated community consisting of an intersection and a
church, while the nearest neighboring town, Lake Placid, boasted the unimpressive title of “The Caladium Capital of the World”. During the three hour
drive from the nearest airport in Fort Meyers, I saw a flat and endless
landscape of cattle ranches and orange plantations with little else in between. In less than a day, I had traded droves of angry Boston drivers in SUV’s and hybrids for tractor
trailers and the occasional ’92 Ford pickup. Radio stations were restricted
mainly to pop, country, and
musica de banda, and the most popular phrases in
conversation were “Yes, sir” and “Ya’ll”. Starting my work at the station, I
was more than a little dismayed at my lack of prospects for martial arts
training, especially after receiving my
shodan in Aikido just a few
weeks before.
It was my
shodan test,
actually, which had delayed my arrival to the job by a few days, and struck up
a conversation with one of my employers about martial arts. He explained that
he had trained for a few years in Shotokan Karate, and since moving to the Lake
Placid area had taken up Shorinji-Ryu Karate at a local school. Unsatisfied
with my personal training regimen (despite my first read-through of
The Bartitsu Compendium) I quickly made up my mind to visit my supervisor’s school
and get some formal training during my stay in the South.
After plenty of waffling with
regard to the timing of my visit, I finally managed to attend a class in early
March. At around 5pm that evening, I borrowed a truck from my lab and drove
into downtown Lake Placid for my first class. The dojo was a large garage
marked by a sign which spelled out RENSHINKAN KARATE in neat red letters. I
made my way into the roofed alley beside the building and to the side entrance
door, which was covered in fliers, news bulletins, and points of dojo etiquette
for students and parents. Removing my shoes, I placed them on a neatly
organized shelf outside, and opened the door to a rush of high-pitched kiai.
Inside, at least twenty youths aged
7 to 16 stood in kiba dachi (or horse stance), one fist extended in a
punch, the other chambered at the hip behind them. As the group continued their kata in
unison, I searched the room for a familiar face, and soon found my supervisor
warming up in a crisp white gi at the corner of the room. Bowing reflexively as
I stepped onto the padded floor, I shuffled awkwardly around the edge of the
mat to avoid interrupting class and greeted my supervisor who directed me
toward a nearby bathroom which would serve me as a changing room.
Passing by once more, I watched the
kids class finishing their kata and returning to heiko dachi (the
natural stance assumed when students are “at attention”) under the supervision
of a senior student; a tall, lanky fellow in his late teens with a spotless
white gi and black obi. He offered me a broad and friendly smile, which
I returned with a nod, already impressed with the discipline of the younger
students. In the bathroom, I changed into a pair of ragged running shorts and a
faded black t-shirt—the only workout clothes I had brought with me to
Florida—and listened to the sounds from the mat outside.
I was immediately struck by the
loud and commanding voice of one who could only have been sensei Alex Heyman, the
head of the school. “Mate!” he bellowed in Japanese with the slightest
hint of a Southern accent, signaling the end of a practice drill. I hurried
outside to meet him, and caught sight of a powerfully built man a bout my own
height but with twice my physical presence. He stood before the class with a
quiet, relaxed poise which, in concert with his broad shoulders and mane of frizzy
brown hair, evoked the image of an old lion. His well-worn dogi and tattered
belt spoke volumes of his commitment to the martial arts, while the lines
etched in his sun-browned features made it clear no portion of his seriousness
had waned in the intervening years.
“Discipline isn’t about doing what
you want to do,” sensei Heyman was explaining as he stalked back and forth in
front of the line of sweating students before the end of class, offering what
was to be one of many words of wisdom I would hear after a hard night’s work at
the dojo. “It’s about doing what you need to do.” He raised his voice
for emphasis here, his face alive with earnest intensity. “This is budo!
I want you all to think about that tonight, alright?”
“Hai, sensei!” the students replied
almost immediately. I was again impressed by the seriousness and discipline of
the students at this school, though that made what came next all the more
impressive. “Good!” Exclaimed sensei Heyman, displaying dazzling white teeth in
a joyful smile; the seriousness had faded in a moment, replaced with a magnetic combination of encouraging positivity and indomitable cheer. “Then let’s finish up class. Smile! It’s Monday!” A few
students giggled, and there were smiles all around. Standing straight, sensei
turned toward the shomen.
“Shomen-ni, rei!” he called to the group, and who bowed to
the front of the dojo. He called again, and turned, exchanging bows with the students. Next, they bowed to the
senior students of the class, and finally to the parents and observers at the
rear of the dojo. Each time, the students, urged on by sensei’s infectious
energy and enthusiasm ("Come on, like you mean it!"), yelled out “Arigato
gozaimashita!” as loudly as they could. After a rush of applause, the class
was over and the students dispersed with their parents, leaving myself and
several other adult students to continue stretching on the mat.
I was promptly introduced to sensei
Heyman—who insisted that I call him sensei Alex—and was immediately disarmed by
his easy smile and intense curiosity about my past training. He chatted
excitedly with me for some time, occasionally demonstrating techniques we were
discussing and having me do the same, all the while grinning delightedly at our
exchange. The type of arm-flexing, "sizing up", and other egotistical exchanges occasionally unavoidable in the meeting of two martial artists were notably absent, yet the void left behind was filled by inescapable, sincere excitement of a passionate martial artist.
My first class was indicative of
the rest of my experience at sensei Alex’s dojo; a thrilling combination of
modern techniques and ideas with traditional attitude and discipline. The class
began with extensive calisthenics followed by deep stretching and conditioning
exercises. By the time warm-ups were finished, nearly twenty-five minutes had
passed and I was already thoroughly winded.
My fellow students ranged from
their mid teens to their fifties, and showed a unique combination of the
discipline and intensity of traditional karateka with the kind, unassuming, and
laid-back attitude of good old Southern hospitality. As the class moved on to
padwork, I found myself shuffling down the mat throwing kicks higher and faster
than I had known I could, spurred on by sensei Heyman’s roaring encouragement. When sensei moved on to another pair of students—he paid
impressive amounts of personal attention regardless of the size of the class—my
partner turned to me, shaking his hand with the focus mitt still attached, and
flashed a broad smile. “Whoo-ee!” he cried leaning in to whisper in an accent
that was almost Texan. “Now son, this ain’t your first rodeo, is it?” “No, sir.”
I gasped as I struggled to catch my breath, chuckling despite myself. Before I knew it, we were off again, and I had neither the time nor the energy to realize I was grinning all the while. The class
finished with a handful of beautiful forms which I struggled to follow and the
same spirited bowing and applause. Again, there were smiles all around once
formalities had been carefully observed.
Driving home through the orange
groves that night, I rolled down the truck's windows and inhaled the intoxicating sweetness of the orange blossoms, still sweating as profusely as when I had left the mat twenty minutes before. Given the time to reflect on my night, I realized that a central motif of my experience—and that
which impressed and pleased me the most—was the smooth and natural combination
of attitudes from disparate cultures and disciplines. Sensei Heyman’s school
was the best of both worlds, where modern sports medicine alternated with the
traditional techniques of karate’s cultural heritage, where budoka
discipline blended with the friendly and down-to-earth attitude of rural
America. Before and after class, my fellow students included a preacher, a
diner chef, a tractor salesman, and a handful of high school students, but on
the mat I was surrounded by karateka; humble, disciplined, and effective.
Testing was brutally traditional,
including repeated executions of forms (we would have to stop and start all
over if out of unison, or if someone made a mistake) with meticulous attention
to detail, and endurance tests which culminated in throwing over 1,000
consecutive punches at full speed, a feat I hardly knew I could tackle. Yet the
weekend after, ranks were awarded (along with hugs and hearty handshakes) at an
all-dojo barbecue in front of a lake in town. Again, sensei Heyman’s dojo
combined the rigor and reality of real martial arts training with a more “country”
attitude of community and hospitality. A rank certificate for 9th kyu (the lowest attainable rank in the discipline) now hangs proudly on my wall beside my blackbelt certificate in Aikido.
The school owes much of its great
attitude to sensei Heyman himself, who is a constant and unmistakable presence
on the mat, shouting out encouragement and advice alike in a booming voice. I
was repeatedly impressed by his attention to detail and ability to pick up on
the slightest errors of form or even attitude in practice. If ever my mind
wandered after a long day of working in the field, sensei Alex would catch on
immediately and startle me back into my training with an energetic shout.
During every aspect of training, from stretching to sparring to pad work, he
openly challenged students to perform beyond their perceived limits, but
remained positive, patient, and supportive throughout.
One of my favorite elements of
sensei Heyman’s teaching style was his use of training "wheels", which were
periods of several weeks in which classes focused on a particular aspect of
karate training. For my first few weeks, the class focused heavily on
flexibility, devoting the majority of class toward intense partner stretching
exercises and isometric conditioning. In the month I spent in this intensive
stretching regimen, I found myself able to throw kicks higher and more smoothly
than I had in the past; more than a year later, I still find myself more flexible
than I was before training at Renshinkan.
Near the end of my stay in Florida,
sensei Heyman called me into his office after class and asked if I would be
willing to teach my own training wheel with the adult class. Naturally, I was
floored, and at first objected on the grounds that I was too inexperienced to
teach him or his students; I had only just received my shodan in Aikido,
while he had been training in several martial arts longer than I had been alive. He waved my
flustered objections aside and fixed me a patient smile. “You’ve got everything
you’ve learned in your lifetime.” He explained, gesturing next to himself. “And
I’ve got everything I’ve learned in mine. It’s all different knowledge.” He
continued, smile broadening gleefully. “ It’s when we can come together and
share that knowledge, that suddenly each of us can have the experience of two
lifetimes. I want to see what you do. So teach what you know, Charles. I
want you to try being sensei. It’ll
be a blast!”.
Charged with his characteristically
indomitable enthusiasm, these words expressed the relaxed, welcoming, and
progressive attitude at Sensei Heyman’s school, and explained the origin of the
mixture of modern and traditional ideas which make the school great. This
perspective alone had struck a chord in me and won me over, but that notion
aside, I wasn’t about to tell a shihan I wouldn’t instruct his students.
For the next six weeks, I taught
formal Aikido classes to groups of shorinji-ryu students at Heyman’s Academy of
Karate, starting with the basics of ukemi (rolling, falling, and
protecting one’s self throughout a technique) to basic throws, joint locks, and
finally jiyu waza (freestyle practice). I was immediately surprised by
how readily sensei Heyman’s students took to Aikido, despite the fact that the
style of practice was worlds away from their sparring sessions and forms and
the range at which techniques were performed was closer than they were
accustomed. I taught what I knew and only that, sticking to basic ideas with
which I felt comfortable and admitting ignorance to those concepts with which I
didn’t.
My most successful teaching tool
was to teach Aikido in Karate terms. That is, to show how proper body
positioning (and posture, movement, etc.) to execute an Aikido technique is
identical to that required to perform a karate technique. By keeping one’s hips
towards ones partner, for example, an Aikidoka maintains stability and power in
performing ikkyo ura, while a karateka keeps their weapons in line with
their targets.
Naturally, sensei Heyman grasped my
Aikido within minutes, and by the time I had finished explaining a movement I would find that his technique
was far better than mine. “Good Karate is good Aikido.” Sensei Alex told his
students, a statement which he showed me applies more broadly to the other
martial arts, and has been a core tenet of my training philosophy ever since.
After training with Sensei Heyman
for about four months, I returned home to Boston with a changed view
on the compatibility of both styles and cultures in the martial arts. I feel
immensely fortunate and grateful to have had the opportunity to train with him
and his students, and to have had shared my martial “lifetime” in return.
Check out a recent
article on sensei Heyman's Lake Placid dojo.
