Teaching Martial Arts While at Northwestern University

When I enrolled at Northwestern University in 1989 I was a Kenpo Brown Belt.

While in college I trained and exchanged martial arts knowledge with students from many other disciplines, which led to some fascinating learning experiences.

I also taught self-defense classes for the Evanston, IL community through Northwestern’s ongoing learning programs, where I made just about every mistake a new instructor could make.

We all start somewhere. 🙂

It’s Fun To Teach at the Evanston YMCA

I was also looking for regular Kenpo partners to train with and stumbled across two brothers, Larry and Rollin Polinitza, who were setting up some classes at the Evanston YMCA.

(That’s me in the middle, with hair, along with the late Ed Barr, between the brothers on the end)

They were just getting back into the martial arts after having moved on to careers in finance and we all thought it would be a good idea to pool our Kenpo backgrounds and train/teach together.

My teacher, Mr. Lee Wedlake, was about 1 1/2 hour drive to the far southern suburbs and I didn’t have a car so falling into a regular teaching & training group right there mere blocks from my apartment was a godsend.

I was so hungry to teach and train that we would often spend and extra hour (or more) in the gymnasium after class training, and talking about training.

So while I was studying for my Philosophy degree on campus, I began to study Eastern Philosophy, particularly how it pertained to the martial arts.

As I navigated my way through university life and society what kept me going was the seemingly secret sanctuary I snuck off to every week to spend my time in ways that few people at school understood or cared about.

It was bliss.

It was also what set my mind thinking that,”I could just to do THIS for the rest of my life and be perfectly content.”

Miles Away and Decades Later

There’s a bunch of story in between, but in Colorado, some 35 years later, here I am teaching, training, philosophisizing and loving every minute of it, for myself and for my students.

Looking back, I never knew at the time that my love of the martial arts would be what set me on the path to live a pretty idyllic life in our beautiful state.

What I know is that you don’t have to have your entire life mapped out beforehand, in fact that’s both impossible and often counter-productive to try, but it you follow your interests and build your skills, they will eventually lead you down a winding path to a life worth living.

This story has many more chapters in it yet to be written.

 

If you’d like to see how martial arts training could change you life TRY A FEE CLASS.