This interview took place in May 2006 Steve Rowe continues his conversation on with Dennis Jones… SR Before we move on to some of your more humorous anecdotes Dennis, can we finish the bullying theme we started last month and then a bit on technique? I’ve had a lot of feedback on this subject and it seems that two thirds of the students in any Martial Arts class have been the subject of serious bullying, particularly at school…. DJ That’s right! As I said last month, I was seriously bullied at school when I was young and I feel that emotionally scarred me for life, it certainly gave me the driving force to ensure that it would never happen again. In schools the “pecking order” is not determined by who can fight the best but who is able to shout the loudest and most confidently. When we get into the habit of yielding to bullies, we don’t realise that fighting back is an option. As I got older and started Boxing and training in the Martial Arts I realised that fighting WAS in fact an option and that some of those people didn’t understand any other language! Whatever options you use to prevent bullying, you must always be prepared to talk their language if all else fails and be quick, hard and totally ruthless. I believe in being polite and having good manners, the problem is sometimes that can be perceived as weakness SR I bet you’ve got a story to illustrate this point….. DJ (Laughs) That’s right Steve, I was working on the door one night and this guy had picked up his coat to go home and found that a key he thought he had left in his pocket was missing. I was quite relaxed and caught a little bit off guard when he started to verbally abuse me over it. In Chatham “vernacular” (that means add an “F” or a “C” expletive between each word) he accused me and the other doorman of “losing” the key and started to threaten me. My internal energy went down, not out of my body but compressed in my abdomen, I didn’t want to fight and unwittingly reverted to the child that was used to being bullied. He went on and on…. and this pressure in my abdomen built up. He really “put it on me” and was completely out of order… He then wandered over to the other two Doormen and started to abuse them telling them that if they didn’t go and find this key he would be “sorting them out”. By this time I had walked about ten paces away… I sighed… and said to myself… “I’ve had enough”. I realised that I should have dealt with the problem and had instead passed it on to the others. This compressed energy fired up, all those years of being bullied at school as a youngster fuelled my power. I walked straight over to him and knocked him out, hitting him so hard that his legs seemed to stay still as his head rocked violently, he was out long before he hit the ground in a pool of blood. I stood over him and said “why did you make me do that?” That, Steve, is a consequence of being bullied. SR Would you call that anger? DJ No. Anger is something that you don’t need on the door, it rises and fades too fast. SR Yeah, the Chinese call that “Lik” it’s like the ringing of a bell, loud for an instant and then fades fast. “Geng” is warrior energy, it’s described as thunder and creates the “Warrior and the Gardener” – someone able to kill in battle then go home and tend the roses… DJ I suppose if you had to describe it in English, it was “righteous indignation”. The other doormen were… shall we say… “surprised” at the speed and power. This energy has served me well over the years and usually ends confrontational bullying in seconds and with a knockout. SR I think the “naturalness” of your movement has to be seen (or felt) to be believed. DJ That’s right. All of my training has been based around enhancing the natural movements of the body. SR I feel that all humans have some natural fighting skills. What often happens is that a Martial Arts Club actually takes these skills away from a person when they start training by their rigid formality in basic technique. This can become so bad that a person could fight better before they started Martial Arts than as a Black Belt! A good Martial Arts club should be able ENHANCE a persons natural fighting ability rather than take it away from them. It amazes me how many senior Black Belts step back and try to block an attack instead of moving forward to utilise their skills. DJ It’s amazing how many people refer to the training as “soft!” SR Exactly! You can be too “soft” or too “hard” but there’s only one way to get the optimum amount of power that’s often described as “soft” by stiff, awkward or clumsy people. It’s the same as “internal” and “external” everyone’s got an inside and an outside – so both have to be trained! So if I’m asked if I do “internal” or “external” I say both… if I’m asked if I do “soft” or “hard” – I say “optimum”… DJ People have to realise that softness and gentleness is not a sign of weakness and neither is respect and good manners. Before a Tiger pounces it crouches low and gathers energy, this is an excellent method for the readers to consider as a way of gathering and compressing their internal energy; then there is full commitment in the response. My training has been all about what’s happened to me on the Doors for over 23 years. The difference between winning and losing in a confrontation is literally a hairs breadth, so the training methods become very important. If you look at my training methods they appear to be soft and yet when you consider that I started in Kyokushinkai Karate, I discovered the “softness” from practical experience. BUT never mistake softness for sloppiness! In fact it was the search for efficiency that brought me there. SR It’s attentiveness… the ability to be able to brighten your mind, then focus it. Where the mind leads, the energy and then body will follow. An attentive mind will lead to the body working most efficiently. I think you put it in a nutshell Dennis when you said that any technique is 80% mind. DJ 75% of my training is done in the dark and outside. It’s when I’m out in the open looking at the starlight sky that I feel a great peace. There is a kind of acceptance… a non discriminatory mind, it’s open – and it’s in that state – not worrying about winning or losing, that I perform best in combat… SR An excellent point to pause for another month…..
Posted on: Wed, 30 Oct 2013 08:47:47 +0000
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