Last Straw

I got two shoulder impingements: one in the right shoulder in 2019 from a martial arts training injury, and the other in the left shoulder in 2021 from a car accident.The physical therapy required from the second helped me more fully recover the first and reminded me of many things my martial arts instructors taught me back in the 1990s. My martial arts injury was from taking a bad fall from someone accidentally isolating my arm while we were doing a double leg throw DRILL. (I have never been inured that seriously sparring no matter how crazy and gym-fight it got.)

I was studying JKD/Kali with an instructor who was teaching as directly as he possibly could from Dan Inasanto's system. I got to cover many bases in martial arts I hadn't tried before, namely Kali (my previous formal FMA training was in Arnis,) Wing Chun (my previous close range Kung Fu was Yang Style Tai Chi,) JKD (my previous long range Kung Fu was Choy Li Fut,) Silat (my previous joint locking outside of Kung Fu was Aikido,) Muay Thai (my 90's Sifu taught what would now be considered Dutch Kickboxing) and I got to stick fight a Bujinkan black belt (I am in the red shirt, and I am a founding member of weapon free sparring group Tres Espadas going back to 2010):

This Guro was very knowledgeable, but I have been doing martial arts off and on since the 1980's and in the year I studied with him I only learned a handful of techniques I hadn't seen before, and only a few of those techniques were good enough for me to add to my personal arsenal. The problem was that the shoulder impingement I got training with him was not worth the few techniques I was able pick up. This was the last straw: I realized that I already know more martial arts techniques that I would like to master than I have time left in my life to train.

Wouldn't it be nice if there was a martial arts system that focused on the practical weapons, dirty boxing, and good posture to help old people like me be better fighters? Ironically I already practice that art, a sparring oriented form Yang Style Tai Chi heavily influenced by Choy Li Fut, Arnis and cross training in MMA, which I have abbreviated for my own use. This is me practicing against someone I taught Tai Chi saber to with real-weapon-weight sparring weapons:

I have considered martial arts lineage and rank a legal liability for decades. I don't charge money for teaching martial arts, so when I do teach others martial arts it's so that I can have sparring partners to train with. What I am actually known for publicly is my knife fighting, and I have demonstrated numerous times that I am reasonably good at it. 

Some YouTubers talk about martial arts as if the most dangerous situation they will get into is someone insulting their girlfriend at a pub. My personal interests and professional requirements have taken me regularly through dangerous urban areas in Seattle and Pittsburgh. In MY environment knife fights happen more often than fist fights, and that is what I prepare for.

Why not just go to my local MMA gym? The first problem is most MMA coaches are too young to understand the training needs of a 50 year old martial artist. For example no I can NOT do 50 burpees for being late to class, the potential injury from that might take a year of recovery for me. In order to continue training injury prevention has to be my top priority, and it appears that I am the expert on that subject.

The second problem is MMA doesn't get there. Muay Thai gets close, but I have to prepare for very specific scenarios. For example: when on the ground I have to train to get up from the ground, which means I have to also train to retain others on the ground so I can understand the full dynamics of getting up. No, I am not concerned about someone on the street trying to catch me in a triangle choke or arm bar. Yes I may cross train MMA or Muay Thai more in the future, but no I do not necessarily need to. I need Wrestling for the Elderly you say? 

There's Tai Chi again.

After I got that shoulder impingement in 2019, I was on the mat with a number of new people who were able to muscle through my superior technique because of my weakened state. No matter how tough you are, one shoulder impingement and you are the weakest person in the room, less able to defend yourself than if you had never done martial arts in the first place. This reminded me of my MMA coaches in 2018 encouraging me to focus on strength building as I largely already had the skill to execute techniques, but I generally lacked the over all body strength to execute them against people much larger or stronger than me. 

This also reminded me of the focus on training good posture Tai Chi, as bad posture is what you have to correct to prevent or recover from shoulder impingement. I am going to continue training with friends in Tai Chi and participate in Tres Espadas, and I am not retiring from being a martial arts consumer advocate, but I am retiring from being a consumer of martial arts lessons. I need training time for strength training and perfecting the fraction of the techniques I already know that I find valuable to me personally.