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Voice of the Fox
The Newsletter of the Martial Arts Training Service

A Well-Rounded Education
by Gary Wasenaar
Summer 1997

I started judo at the local YMCA when I was in my first year of high school, back in 1965. After about a year I started tae kwon do, but I still did judo once in a while. It was fun, good exercise, and I wanted to stay in practice for the falls. For quite a while it was just classes on Saturday, and slow advancement. After I could drive, I started going from the South Side to the main school on the north side of Chicago. I had my first degree brown belt when I went to school at SIU in 1974. While there, I worked out at various times with a Japanese karate club, the tae kwon do club, and a hapkido club.

Working full time, starting in 1976, made practicing regularly more difficult. I got a little distracted by motorcycling, too.

I started doing Yoshinkai aikido sometime after my 1984 bad experience in Road America's turn 11 at Superbike School. I thought I could learn something else while getting back in shape to do tae kwon do. One of my TKD instructors had taken students to see an aikido demonstration, and I thought it would make a good complement to a kicking and punching art. Gilbert James taught the six-week introductory course, and as it repeated, I became a sort of demonstration dummy and assistant, as I could do the basic falls. Sometimes we started out with 30 people and had only two left by the last class.

After a couple of years of introductory aikido, I got to know the techniques and started going to Gilbert James's school. Eventually I even got into judo at the same school, and tae kwon do at a south-side branch of my original school.

I moved to Plainfield in 1993, and in early 1994 I found MATS in the telephone book and started judo again. I was pleased to find the jujitsu was for real. I had read about it but never expected to study it. I did aikido for a while, too, and would like to do it again if my shoulders ever get well enough.

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