Episode 654 - Grandmaster Brendan Wilson
Grandmaster Brendan Wilson is a Martial Arts practitioner and instructor, a former US Army Ranger, and author.
When the student comes in, they are treated as a respected member of the art and they owe respect and deference to their superiors, but it’s not one where we would ever dismiss the efforts or the abilities or the contributions of the students because the art depends on the students. They are just as much a part of the organization as their instructor…
Grandmaster Brendan Wilson - Episode 654
Who would’ve thought that being cut from a baseball team will start a life-long passion for Martial Arts? Grandmaster Brendan Wilson, at the height of Bruce Lee’s popularity in America, went to a Taekwondo school right after getting cut in the varsity team to start a journey that would change his life. Grandmaster Brendan Wilson went to the US Army and continued his training there. Presently, Grandmaster Wilson is an author of a sci-fi book The Achilles Battle Fleet: Book One of the Mei-Ling Lee Triliogy.
In this episode, Grandmaster Brendan Wilson talk about his journey as a Martial Artist in the Army, the philosophy of Martial Arts, his other journey as a writer.
Show Notes
To know more about Grandmaster Brendan Wilson’s book, visit his website at brendanwilsonwrites.com
Show Transcript
You can read the transcript below.
Jeremy Lesniak:
How's it going, everybody? Welcome, you are listening to whistlekick Martial Arts Radio, Episode 654. My guest today is Grandmaster Brendan Wilson. I'm Jeremy Lesniak. I'm your host here for the show, founder of whistlekick, passionate traditional martial artist. And that's why we do all the things that we do. Now, if you're new, you might say, well, what are all the things that you do? Well, to answer that question, you should go to whistlekic.com, it's our online home, you're going to find everything we've got going on there, or links to the things because it's a long list. Now one of the things that we've got over there is our store. It's one of the main ways, really the main way that we monetize all the stuff that we've got happen, because well, it cost money. So, if there's something in there that you want to pick up, support the show and our efforts to support you, the traditional martial artists. Use the code PODCAST15, it's going to get 15% off. And it helps us tie together the dots that, hey, this show led to that sale.
The show has a separate website, whistlekickmartialartsradio.com. Because we name things really simply, we bring you to shows each and every week, the entire purpose behind everything we do. Well, it's to connect and educate and entertain the traditional martial artists of the world. If you want to show your appreciation for what we do, there are lots of ways you can do that. Like I already said, you could buy something, but you could also leave a review or share an episode or tell a friend, or grab a book, or consider a training program. or support us on Patreon, patreon.com/whistlekick. It's a place where we post exclusive content. And if you contribute as little as $2 a month, you get some of it. And honestly, we even give you free stuff free merch at all levels. Because while we want you to stick around, we want you to be proud of being a martial artist. That's part of why we do that.
My guest today is undoubtedly proud of his martial arts career. And he's done just about all the different things that you could do as a martial artist. And he did a lot of it while serving in the military. And the combination of those two things lead to some interesting stuff. We talk about some of it, we talk about his endeavors after his time in service. And we just had a really good conversation. I learned a lot. I enjoyed myself, and I'm sure you will, too. So here we go. Grandmaster Wilson, welcome to whistlekick Martial Arts Radio.
Brendan Wilson:
Well, thank you, Jeremy. First of all, it's an honor to have been invited. I greatly appreciate the offer that you've made. I think we talked a little bit before the show about how honored I was to have been cleared, but some of the very, very prominent people that have come before me. So, I'm ready.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Nice. Yeah. And an audience, you know, when we were talking pre show, you know, he says that, and I said, you know, how do you think I feel? I get to talk to all these people, I could call it work, I have a crazy job. It's a crazy job, I couldn't be happier or more grateful that all these people tune in and listen and that these other people are willing to come on and share their stories, like yourself. So, thanks for that. Thank you. Now, wherever you are, whatever you do, if you are doing martial arts, or have done martial arts, you are part of a group. And depending on who you talk to, you know, the group is somewhere between a lot of people and most people, it's certainly not everyone, but it's more than a few. And we all have a lot of things in common.
But what I love about this show, and the way that we do things is we get enough of the stuff that we have in common to know how to relate to each other. But there's enough that's different in how we take that common ground and run with it. That it's interesting. And it's why we can do this week after week after week. So, let's start with the common and we'll let it spin out to the less common. When did you get started in martial arts?
Brendan Wilson:
I got started in 1974. I lived in Alexandria, Virginia. I was a high school student and I got cut from the varsity baseball team. And I went down that day directly from the field to Roberts karate in Alexandria, Virginia where they were actually teaching taekwondo. And I started there. And I think that was a good a good choice for me. And it started a lifelong love of the martial arts for which I look back with a great deal of gratitude both for what the martial arts have done for the people that that I've worked with the instructors and peers and students over the years.
Jeremy Lesniak:
You were cut from the varsity team, and when right to start martial arts like so. You couldn't have just been wandering about this and all of a sudden, you know, well, you know, I guess I'll go do something else. What am I going to do? I'm going to go do, I'm going to go do this. And where's the spot like you were you were thinking about it ahead of time.
Brendan Wilson:
Well, you got to go back to 1974. Bruce Lee, I think just died. But, you know, Enter the Dragon was big on, they were still playing it. People were interested in it. Yeah, it was something that those young men or I think maybe perhaps young women also at the same time, look to as something that would be exciting with teaching self-defense would make you stronger. So of course, I had seen it. And I'd seen that the sign up there. When I realized I wasn't going to be a baseball player. I decided I'd try my hand at something else.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Okay, and how did that go?
Brendan Wilson:
It was good. I did that for a while. When I graduated from high school, I went to university and in the university town, there was a small Taekwondo studio. I trained there for three or four years in 1980. I got my first-degree black belt, and then subsequently went into the Army after that, where I continued my martial arts training.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Why'd you want to go in the army?
Brendan Wilson:
There's a good question. Well, my father was a soldier, a career military officer. And so, I had been exposed to military life and it's a good life. I did ROTC when I was in college, mostly because one of my friends to do it. I mean, it's just one of those things you do, and you get sort of involved in it. But I love the Army. I was a total of 25 years who first took the oath until I retired. So, I had a lot of fun with it. And I didn't get a chance to do the martial arts in the military. I trained in Korea for a year. While I was in the military, I coached several martial arts competition teams, by trained close protection forces in weapons disarming techniques. And, you know, the military is a good place to meet other people who are interested in the martial arts. I met some great people through the years.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Right, cool. One of the comments, and sometimes it's a compliment, sometimes it's not that people will make up traditional martial arts, is they'll point out the regimented or at least to them regimented nature of traditional martial arts training methods, and no, sometimes they call them militaristic. But yet, not a whole lot of us have the context for saying what is and what is not militaristic, especially when you're talking about really traditional martial arts. If you're talking about the traditions of Taekwondo, you're talking about what's going on in Korea, you train taekwondo all over the world, including in Korea, and you've been in the military. How, what do you think about that comparison?
Brendan Wilson:
It's a good question. And, you know, one of the things you'd said was, we all come from a different place. But I think it's probably fairly common for people who have trained, you know, for several decades, to have changed their position on how they view what's valuable, what's important. For example, I think a lot of people start in the martial arts, looking for self-defense looking if, as a young man, I wanted to be, you know, I wanted to have physical prowess. And then that, after a while is that not so important to you? I think you sort of develop an interest in self perfection, perhaps a spiritual aspect to it. When you get to be my age, I'm 63. You are starting to think about health and fitness. And of course, as an instructor, you're looking at trying to pass that on. But your question had to do with the militaristic aspects. And so, I do have to sort of talk a little bit about the art that I had established about 12 years ago called a [00:08:58-00:09:00]. And I'll give you a little bit of the background and a little bit of my reaction to that very strict, regimented system if that's okay, please do. So, in 2009, I went to Las Vegas for the US Bokken where I competed but as part of that, I went through a two-day seminar that was taught by the cooking one that had come down from Korea. And then there was a test and during that test I had tested for my fifth degree, Black Belt. And some of the things I actually felt like I didn't respond well to, and one of them was that the Confucian idea of courtesy seemed to be sort of a one-way thing that I don't mean to criticize the coupon.
I'm still a member of the cookie. So, I don't want to make any enemies but my impression was that it was very authoritarian. The people that were senior to you or senior to you and they didn't necessarily treat the people below them with the regard and respect that I thought was appropriate, also didn't like some of the techniques, which I thought were weren't really realistic. So, I took a yearlong sabbatical from teaching and went back and try to research and sort of find my roots and developed this new martial art called [00:10:26-00:10:28]. Basically, has all the stand-up techniques that taekwondo, Judo has but it was based instead of on the Confucian ideas of discipline is based on classical Greek philosophy, and replaced courtesy with the word Semia. Antonia is the Greek word for the guest host relationship. That means that the appropriate exchange of courtesy and obligation between a host and a guest is what we use in our studios when we train.
So, the student comes in the student is respected, they are treated as a respected member of the art, and they owe respect and deference to their superiors. But it's not one where we would ever dismiss the efforts or the abilities or the contributions of the students because the art depends on the students. They're just as much a part of the organization as their instructor. And that was one of the five principles of risk dose, which we we've used, and we since built that up. Over time, I had two schools while I was in Belgium, we trained mostly expats students that were in Belgium and then went back to their, their home countries. And to me, back to your original question. I do think that they things can be too regimented. Although the military is not necessarily all just one-way, authoritarian type of thing, but things can be too regimented. Especially when it comes down to the respect that to do to the students.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Not the answer I expected but okay. Makes complete sense.
Brendan Wilson:
Just hoping I don't get in trouble with the [00:12:09-00:12:11].
Jeremy Lesniak:
Well, you know, the martial art is probably the only industry. It's the only one I know of where saying something is older and unchanged, is perceived as being better. And certainly not by all participants of the martial arts. Yeah, but there's a large contingent, well, this is how we did it back in. And this and there's this, I know, you're older than I am. So, you get it. I mean, you live through some of that. And I, I know people today who think martial arts training should be at such a brutal and intense level that most people can't stomach it.
Brendan Wilson:
Yeah, I disagree with that view. And although I respect other people's views, to hold that, I think, personally, that the martial arts need to be tailored, both to the aptitude and the ability of the students within certain within a certain framework. So, the student can take out of it, what's beneficial to their, their life, you know, when you talk about the tradition versus the modern, I mean, there's so many different truths there. If you look at mixed martial arts training, they're, they're very good. And not all of that is traditional. And I don't think anybody would ever deny that they're exceptionally capable at martial arts, activities. And some of the older techniques are probably not so realistic. And so that, you know, for example, stances, I think stances should be fairly natural. If you watch a baseball player, football player, basketball player, Boxer wrestler, they do not take extreme stances, their shoulders, or their feet are basically shoulder width apart.
And they use that as a combination for balance, and speed and the mobility and the generation of power. And they do what's required, they're not fixed into it must be, you know, one and a half shoulder with toes pointing straight forward. So, I would be all for some adaptation, both for the capacity, the aptitude of the students, and for what you're trying to accomplish. So, for example, I have a 63-year-old student, you know, I don't ask her to do things which I know would injure her. Although I think she can fully develop into martial arts by modifying some of those techniques which are not really appropriate for an older person and they're not necessary for an older person. We have younger people do certain jumping techniques because they can and because it doesn't, it's not dangerous to them. So, I do think it could be adapted.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I've always explained it as everybody's reason there why for training is different. Yes, us. It's okay. You know, if you get someone who comes into class and their goal for being there is wanting to develop a strong self-defense capability, yeah, you're going to push them a little differently than if you know, their reason for being there is to be around other people because their home life is terrible. And they need to be propped up and given some, some positive energy.
Brendan Wilson:
No, I agree with you, Jeremy on that. And I think one of the things you'll see is that students will develop their own view over time, the student that comes in and says, I really want self-defense, they'll get to a certain level, and they may be comfortable with that, and they may want more from the martial arts. As they go forward, they also may get a dash of realism as they go against other martial artists who are very, very good. And some of these, they'll realize the limitations of the self-defense techniques that they're learning, you're not going to be, you're not going to be able to beat everybody, that's for sure.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I would guess that the majority of martial artists who train for at least a few years have at least thoughts fantasies of opening a school, and some of them do. And, you know, you can make the argument that the majority of people who open a school, they're teaching something that's at least a little bit different than what was taught to them. But few of them will go through the effort of codifying, and naming that. So, what was the journey for you in that regard.
Brendan Wilson:
Um, as I said, when I did my sabbatical, we went back to the roots. So, I started in 1974, in the ITF. style. So, we did the Chang hong forms, which were fairly traditional back in back in the day, you don't see much of that anymore. I've also trained a little bit of Tang Soo Do very similar to that. It's the precursor art to the ITF. But I've always been interested in Greek philosophy, and I really wanted something that would, as I said before, that would be more appropriate for the environment that we're in. So, for example, if you ask me now at my current journey in the martial arts, the purpose of martial arts is to show you how you can protect yourself, not necessarily self-defense, or combat. So, we have a term called Arete, which is the classical Greek term for excellence, Aristos that had this idea that, if you, you are what you practice, over and over again, so if you practice to play the flute, you're not just someone who plays the flute, you are a musician, and you are a musician.
Now, once you've accomplished that level of mastery all the time, when you're not playing when you're asleep. And if as long as you keep your proficiency will always be in position, you changed yourself by your force of will and effort into something that's better and different than what you were. And what we had done was we brought in mostly college age students from all over the world, in 10 different countries, in my case, and, and just showed them that if you trade in this, you can make your body do things that they couldn't do before. And to make them understand that they can make themselves different. They can go back to school, they can learn a profession, they can be a better person, if that's their goal, because they have control over their destiny in their future because of their own effort.
Jeremy Lesniak:
That's something that I think most people if you press them, if you ask the right questions, they would be able to articulate but I don't think too many people could describe it as simply as you just did. It was there someone along the way either, you know, a senior officer or a martial arts instructor who kind of laid the groundwork for that perspective.
Brendan Wilson:
I don't think there was any given one single person, it was a martial arts instructor. I did have some very, very good martial arts instructors. And I noticed that the ones that I most appreciated, were the ones who were first. They were modest. They were humble, but confident in their ability. They had integrity. A lot of times when you're dealing with students, you know, you are dealing with people who, who look up to you, or who have a financial relationship with you as an instructor, and how do you behave towards them? When it comes time for tests for certifications for how much you charge them? And how whether you respect them or not. So, I think that gave me an impetus towards this idea that we could articulate something different, or I think you said it right. Which is most people do this, we tried to bring that out. And so, I did rely a little bit, a little more than a little bit on some excellent examples that I had over the years.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Awesome. What else can you tell us about a Christos? Because I was a philosophy major in college. And so, the idea of, you know, going Greek and pulling some Greek names in there like this is, it's got a different part of my brain turning, the wheels are spinning differently than they usually do when we record for the show. So, I'm, you know, just selfishly tell us more. Okay, so
Brendan Wilson:
I went over. Two of them was Zinnia is the guest host relationship, it has to do with the way courtesy is exchanged within the training hall. Arete is the idea of excellence, you basically have the power to change yourself. As far as the technical aspect of it, we have two terms. One is RK, which is the Greek word for foundation, it's where we get the word archaeology, and English anarchy, and that is a series of techniques, and procedures, which we consider core to the art. And you would recognize all of them, the various different stances, mostly hand techniques and blocks, not that much in a way of kicks. And then technique, which is technique, or art, is the mechanism for generating power, which again, most people wouldn't would recognize, you have a relaxed movement until the point of impact, where you have your maximum power, and then you relax and you prepare for the next for the next movement.
And then the final one is Agon, where we get the English word agony, is the Greek word for struggle. And it really means there's a time to just push on when you are exhausted, or frustrated, or at your blue belt, and nothing seems to be going right for you. They're not advancing as quickly as you had been the previous few years, there's a time to sort of persist and continue on, you know, you can think of it during your sparring but it's really more than just sparring. It's, it's pushing on it, those five principles are the core of the idea behind bris tows. And we've had some, I have to say some good feedback from that from students and from parents. How people are adapting to that, how they're preparing to do other things in their life, which are more important because they're not going to spend their life probably as a martial arts competitor or instructor, they're going to go off and do other things. And they and whatever preparation we can give them to a resource to do that. That's a success.
Jeremy Lesniak:
If you were to make a pie chart of where these martial arts influences came from that you codified into a risk dose, what would the breakdown be? I'm assuming much maybe even the majority of it is rooted in Taekwondo.
Brendan Wilson:
Yeah, I agree with that. Yeah, it's the standard hardstyle Korean martial arts. And that's where most of my experience is, if you go back and, in my opinion, take a look at the thanks judo, which is a precursor to became ITF techniques, they're very similar, with some differences. So, I have to say, Taekwondo is a modern one. But you know, I started under the ITF system, I did a conversion in mid 90s, where I did train with a WTF and I have, you know, trained and competed in WTF types of organizations. But my heart and soul are really in the older techniques. I never really got into the, you know, the, and I don't need to take anything away from it. I went to the 2009 US Open in Las Vegas and competed in forms, and I was fortunate enough to take the silver medal in my category. But I was watching the young people smile, that they were so good, and so fast. I just take your breath away. I mean, you'd see first round eliminations were the person that lost his doing the spinning hook kick faster than I could throw a jab ever when I was 50 years old. So, my I'm not trying to criticize the techniques, or the ability of people to do that. But my heart is really in an older form of martial arts, perhaps that's just a physical limitation. So, I picked the one I wanted.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Sure, hey, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that because again, your y is going to dictate what and how you do. Sure. And I think that not only is that okay, I think that's the intention. Yeah. We haven't talked too much about your time in the military. You know, I, I would imagine that if we were to find some theoretical way to start cutting yourself psyche apart, we could find places where your martial arts influenced your military service, but also the universe that your military service informed your martial arts training. Have you thought about that? And if so, can you speak to that?
Brendan Wilson:
Yeah, you know, in fact, a few, not a few years ago, maybe 25 years ago, I'd written a series of Article articles for martial arts masters, about connecting the principles of war to the martial arts. In my view, the core of the martial arts comes from combat techniques, not necessary, it's adapted for self-defense. But if you just take a look at the history, for example, during the Korean War, they were training their soldiers in during a time of combat to prepare for physical combat. The Korean Mark ROK Marines in Vietnam used to Taekwondo in combat, not in self-defense. And it's a devastating art. And although I, I'm not advocating that in any way that people use those techniques to hurt other people, I do think that is the core of where those techniques come from. I was, as a very young officer, a second lieutenant I attended the US Army Ranger School, where they do have a combatants session portion of the instruction is combative. And it's designed to kill your opponent is not designed to subdue him, or get away.
And it's all very, very basic, just a few things that you do right away right now to save your life and to destroy your opponent. So, it did have an effect on me. When I was later on, I was stationed at Supreme Headquarters, Allied Powers Europe, in Belgium, I was at the time I was the public affairs officer for the NATO commander. And when I would travel, I would go with his bodyguards, his close protection team, because they are the people that that make sure that his travel is completely safe. And they told me that they had been going to Germany for to get training in, in unarmed weapons, disarming techniques. So, I mean, their problem at the time, was that they're Americans, they're in Europe, they don't have the same authorities as law enforcement would have in the United States. And if they have to draw their weapons in Europe, there are legal ramifications, even where that would be justified. What they wanted to be able to do is make sure that if a weapon is drawn in the presence of the NATO commander, that they could, if necessary, disarmed the person without having to draw and discharge their weapon.
So, I said, listen, you don't need to go to Germany, I can do that for you. And we did do a seminar in that. And then I picked up some of them to be my students. And again, this is not really self-defense, this weapons disarming is not self-effects. It's an aggressive offensive thing where that you have to, you know, disable the person right now, and take the weapon from them right now and make sure because you're fighting for your life, that that weapon is taken away. So, I think there has been some tradeoff between my idea of what martial arts are in the military. And I think it goes back and forth.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Why one of the things that tends to happen in some segments of the martial arts community, is this obsession with combat scenarios that occur that would statistically never occur? You know, we're not talking about the I'm in a bar, I bumped somebody, they were drunk, and they lashed out, or the, hey, I'm presented with a knife, and someone's requesting my wallet, but rather, what do you do when the person pulls a gun? And, and, and? And, yeah, and we've got movies that I think have kind of led to a lot of this or rather further these conversations. Yeah. What are your thoughts? How do you feel when you see those conversations?
Brendan Wilson:
I have for many years taught women's self-defense. So, I can tell you what the approach we took on that was, first of all, what we wanted to do is to put it in a realistic environment, if a woman is in a situation where she needs to use self-defense, probably to prevent a sexual assault. And we didn't want her to think that, you know, the two techniques that we taught them were going to save them. We wanted them to say your objective is to prevent serious injury, death, a sexual assault. And your best bet, of course, is to avoid situations that put you in that danger. And if that's not possible that it's to escape and call for assistance. So, I think that's we tried to make that much more realistic. And one of the things I would do to show that realism is we would show them the standard how to break a wrist grab, and how to get out of a headlock, or something like that. But then I would bring one of my I had a very young, very strong young man, who was Mike, one of my third-degree black belts, and I would come over, and I'd say, “Okay, now he's going to grab your wrist, and I want you to do the technique that I just showed you.” And they couldn't move. You know, nobody could move, he was just that strong.
So, I didn't want them to have the wrong idea about what they could do. But some things they certainly can do. And if they need to respond in a self-defense situation, they need to do one or two very simple things with great force and speed as an attempt to try to break a hole and to get away. But even when we showed them, weapons, disarming techniques, and so forth, we'd always say, you know, when the guns in your hand, you haven't solved your problem, because you don't know, unless you are used to firearms, whether that gun is loaded, you don't know safety's on, you don't know anything. And yet the person you just took it from and knock down isn't going to stay down. And he or she knows whether that weapon will fire or not, your best bet is to run and not get caught with that weapon because it might be used against you. So, I hope that answers your question.
Jeremy Lesniak:
It does. Oh, so many places we could go and my brain split brains fighting for which one? So, let's talk about let's talk about competition a little bit, because you brought it up, said you did it. But it almost seems contradictory is too strong. The way you've spoken about martial arts, I would not have put money on the fact that you would compete especially at a higher-level competition. Yeah. Am I miss reading you?
Brendan Wilson:
You know, I think you're right. Okay. First of all, people are complicated.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Well, of course. Yeah, if they weren't, the show would be really boring. And we would have tapped out at like, 50 episodes.
Brendan Wilson:
You know, I think almost everyone, at least my age, we started back in the 70s. Went through a phase where we did lots of competition. Because it was a lot of fun back then. And we, you know, you want it to show your ability to get people from other styles and so forth. And so, I had gone through a phase like that early on. Then when I was in the military, that was what everyone was interested in, you know, the soldiers wanted to compete. And quite honestly, the commanders wanted us to compete, because they wanted to say the US Army team did X, Y, and Z. So, we did some of that. In the US Open one, I'm not quite sure why I did that. I had just gone through. I interesting story, I was a diplomat at the time, I was working overseas, and I was actually at his horrible cold. And I was in Ukraine. And I had to get from Ukraine, all the way to Las Vegas.
Come in, if we stop along the way and see a doctor get by things clear. So, I was actually pretty miserable. When I went in there. My son, who was a red belt at the time came out and join me from college. So, it was kind of nice to have, you know, Father Son routine, go out and compete. And I just kind of wanted to go out there and, and, and try my hand against what was what else was out there. But you're right, I think too much competition is across the effect. I don't like it.
I didn't do much of it. When I was running my schools. We went to one fairly large tournament from Belgium, we went to Germany. And quite honestly, I didn't like the behavior of the other constructors and coaches, you know, yelling at their students yelling, arguing with the referees. There was some favoritism shown. During judging, that's all completely antithetical to what I think the martial arts is about. So, you're right, there is a concept there. I guess a little bit soured on the competition.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Okay. Do you think that competition today is dramatically different? Or has just your perception perspective changed?
Brendan Wilson:
It's a good question. And I have to say that I don't follow it very much. So, I don't know how much it's changed. To see whether see how different it is. I did watch the Olympics. And some of it was new to me. I'd seen it before. Obviously, the competitors are very, very good. But yeah, I guess the best thing for me to say is that I don't really have enough information to answer the question.
Jeremy Lesniak:
And that's okay. That's okay. No worries. You've talked a little bit about having some remarkable people that you've trained with. But you haven't, you haven't really named them. Now, of course, the name is may not really be the important part. But I'd love to hear more. Because you you've had opportunities, opportunities to train in places that, let's face it, most of us are never going to train at the [00:35:25-00:35:27]. Most of us are not going to train overseas just by the numbers. Could you talk about the diversity of training you've had, and maybe how you think that may have set you up differently than the typical martial arts journey, which is a small handful of instructors from generally the same geographical location?
Brendan Wilson:
Sure. So, I can give you some examples. When I trained in college at university, I went to James Madison University, which is in Harrisonburg, Virginia. There was a small studio, they're called Kung studio, taekwondo, and the instructor was another college student a few years older, Stan Alexander, he was a first-degree black belt, wonderfully, a wonderful person, very, very good at his martial arts, very dedicated to teaching the students and I think that set me on a good a good path. You know, it's always good to have a good instructor that brings you up to the level of first and I think, because you're sort of set on the path, but that years later, after I came back from Korea, I was in Boulder, Colorado. And I worked out at Boulder karate, under instructor Larry Wilk. Again, a wonderful guy. Huge heart. The love the martial arts. He said he since not doing Taekwondo anymore does, he does other things. But I always remembered it. We used to train at different levels. A little bit of a, an anecdote there. Once a week, we would do what he didn't have a name for it, but I would call it anything goes right.
So, as long as we didn't hurt each other, right, we could use a variety of techniques. And it was probably closer to mixed martial arts, although that really wasn't a thing back in the early 1990s. At least not with me. But we were wrestling around. And of course, he was much better than I was. But we got to one point where we had sort of rolled over to where there was a little fence between, like a railing between the floor and where people could sit and watch. And this young mother had come in with like a five-year-old child or something. And he had a large group of students. And so, I was carried on his back that he had his legs around like, my, my rib cage, and he was squishing me. And I take my elbows. And I jammed him down into his groin area. Of course, I wasn't hurting him. And he wasn't hurting me. But it really looked like we were fighting to the death. And I was killing every time I hit him. And that just made right out the door with their child. And afterwards, I told them, I said, I think I lost you a customer. He said, “Well, you know, that's the that's the way it happens.” But yeah, he was just such a wonderful guy. And I'm still in touch with him. I think he's retired now.
When I was in Louisiana, and I was the coach for my team from the 18th Airborne Corps. I also worked out at local Korean master's studio Jackie Quan. He's from Louisiana. And you know, he's a traditional Korean instructor. He was on the Korean demonstration team back in the 50s. He has martial arts master for both Taekwondo in the ITF and the kukkiwon, and in the grappling arts, and he was a wonderful guy. I mean, he was just great for the community. Lots of I think families were the student where the students came from underprivileged families. And he provided them discipline and hope and support. Anytime they would get a good grade, he would give them a certificate. He'd have the local newspaper come in and take a picture of them.
Wonderful tournament's just a great guy. He's still doing it. And, you know, I still stay in touch with him. I have the greatest respect for him. And I did my third- and fourth-degree black belt test with him. Yeah, there's some great people and then recently, as an organizational thing, I've come under [00:39:43-00:29:45], who is the head of the International some Judo association and that's been great because he is good with the kukkiwon. So, if I have a student that wants to get a cookie, one certification, we can go through him. He's good. person to call him for advice. He is honest and forthright. And if he says he's going to do it, you can do it, and he's not going to do it, he's not going to do it. And it's been good for me because it allows me to be an independent instructor to do the martial arts that I want. And yet if I need to reach out to the more formal organizations, and I have someone who can do that with integrity.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Nice, nice. Now one of the others...
Brendan Wilson:
Because I've left out some others, I'm sure, but I didn't want anybody.
Jeremy Lesniak:
As long as you've been training, I can't imagine that we could ever get the whole list. Yeah, you know, just when we start talking about influence, because influence isn't just instructors in schools' influences, you know, that person who you just click with, and you're always, you know, trying to partner up with each other, because you know, you're going to get a great workout, you know, that you're going to advance more going with them than you will with, you know...
Brendan Wilson:
I completely agree. And one of the things you'd asked about is, you know, the other people, you know, when I've had some great students who are an inspiration to me, and have gone on to do great things, I'll tell you a little anecdote, I, when I was, I taught a class in Belgium, for Hungarian military wives, it just so happened that was the forum. And they were, you know, middle aged, most of them. You know, most of them were the wives of military officers. And they came in and normally what would happen is, I would give them the safety briefing, and then I would say, you know, we're going to learn some techniques. And I want you to punch the pad or kick the pad or something. And we're going to do it all together, right, just to sort of get the, to get it going.
And normally do this, I would say, ready, one bite, and I would hear a pop up. But what are we doing, and they all hit at the same time, I've never seen anything like, they were just really tough. And the whole class was like that. And at the end, I always gave him a chance to come up and break a board or something with the techniques that they had been using, and they all do it. And so, he wanted to do two boards, and I wanted to do different techniques. And I ended up having, getting some of those students into my class for a few years. And it was really funny. I mean, these Hungarians, I'm not going to say that it's cultural or anything, but these people were very, very dedicated. They were good students. They were tough. Even the children were tough. The parents were tough.
One time had one of my students injured and was rolling around on the floor and called his mother to come over to the studio, pick them up. And she took a look at them. She said, I don't see any bone. Get your ass up and go back into class. What she did? Oh, pardon.
Jeremy Lesniak:
How old is the child?
Brendan Wilson:
He was about 12. Yeah. And he ended up he ended up getting a junior black belt from me a few years later, and was a great student. I don't want to put up my website. If you go to aristos.club, you'll see a picture of him doing techniques, where the person doing the photographer put a timer on. And he's pretty darn fast. I mean, his hand techniques are in a 10th of a second. And even his turning back kick is half a second. The kid was really bad. So, whatever his mother made him do, turned him into a pretty competent 14-year-old junior Black Belt.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I love it. Now, what are the other things they have here in my notes is that you wrote a book. And unlike just about every other martial arts book, we've talked about on this show, it's fiction. Am I getting that right?
Brendan Wilson:
You got it. Right. So, I guess it's under the heading of sci fi, but it has a martial arts theme. The main character in the book is a young Asian female navy Lieutenant. She's a board of starship. She has come from a martial arts family, her father as a martial arts instructor. She competed in the Naval Academy, and her senior year was the captain of the competition team. So, she's still trained in the martial arts. And during the storyline, the actual plotline is that she's in this convoy of vessels that gets attacked as part of the galaxy wide attack on the fifth hundred, 500th anniversary of Pearl Harbor. And she is forced to sort of step up and take a leadership role to try to put this organization back together so that it can continue to fight. And in the process of that she starts to train with the marine commandos. And she trains them in the martial arts and they train her and their techniques. And then she has to go on various different combat operations where she uses her martial arts in the process of that she started discovers what her martial art is all about. So, both in the spiritual sense in the combat sense, and also in there are techniques or techniques change because she really license, what they need to be in order to, to fight in combat. And as the process of that I put in some of my philosophy in the martial arts in what the forms are for, what the techniques are for. And, yeah, so I guess every author does that they sort of express themselves through their, through their art chart. The decision to make the protagonist female.
Jeremy Lesniak:
You know, it's always interesting to me when, you know, the author of a book, last year, wrote a novel that, you know, it certainly not sci fi fantasy, but has strong martial arts influences. And I can't imagine anybody that knows me reading that book and not seeing me in the main character, actually, the main characters? Was there a specific reason you went and created a female lead?
Brendan Wilson:
That's a very good question. In general, I really enjoyed training young people in young women, especially, partly because in the environment that they were coming from, a lot of them had not been that they've not done sports, they have not been, they've been taught to be fairly submissive, not to be aggressive not to be loud, not to assert themselves. And then of course, we treat everybody the same in class. And typically, there was a time when I was doing this for the, for one of the local church organizations, and you know, the parents would drop their kids off, and then pick them up, and they didn't really know what the children were learning. And then we would have a test and the parents would come and we'd have the pastor come and some other notables would come. And then they would just wash their faces as their, as their daughter, you know, smashes three boards. And then, you know, we do the self-defense. And we and I both know that self-defense during the test is a little bit programmatic.
I mean, they know exactly what's coming. But you know, they see a big male, near adult swing at them with a with a club, and then, and then their daughter just takes the guy down in a heartbeat, and then can actually spar and that's, that's actually pre scarring. So, but I really like to see people develop their confidence in themselves. In particular, at the time I began the book, that character was based on my now ex-wife, Sonia Mei Ling. And she is, to certain extent matches that person, that person, so I named the main character Mei Ling which is my ex-wife's middle name. And my ex-wife is born in Hong Kong, as was the main character speaks languages that is a fifth-degree black belt in Taekwondo. And by the way, I have wonderful relationships with my ex, like, there's no...
Jeremy Lesniak:
I was guessing. So. I don't know, too. I have plenty of friends who are not close with their exes any longer. And I don't know any of them that would put them in as the main character of a book, the villain, perhaps? Not pretty not paying them off image in that way. I'll give you an interesting story. There is an anecdote in the book, which is similar. So, my ex-wife, Sonia, is about five for two. She's tough looking, you know, she's strong. She doesn't look weak or petite or anything. But one of the very large males in her office, thought that he would play a little trick on her. And he heard that she is a martial art and he came up behind her and poked her with his finger.
She does not like to be touched. And so, she spun around and put him in a submission hold. And he said, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. And she said, Can I help you? He said, No, no, we're good. We're good. She said that she tightened it a little bit, you know, and said, Are you sure? Right? He said, “No, I'm sure. I'm sure”. She said, I don't like to touch. He said, I got it. I got it. And he was at least a foot taller than her and 100 pounds heavier. So, I think it's good for women to stick up for themselves. And there's a scene in the book that that very, it's under the exact same situation but the thematically it's the same, it's an aggressive male trying to dominate a smaller woman physically and then finds out the hard way that wasn't a good choice.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Is it out where do people find it?
Brendan Wilson:
Okay, so you can go to Amazon, it's called The Achilles Battle Fleet. Or you can go to my website, which is called Brendan Wilson and it is out in the print version, there is a Kindle version as well, and the audio version should be up. By the time this gets published, I suspect, we had a really good experience with audio version. My editor and my producer, Tony Beard Moore and David Hill, had recruited this [00:50:20-00:50:22] saying she was a recent graduate from an MFA program at DePaul University in Chicago, to be the voice actress, and she just nailed it. And I mean, you know, the thing wasn't written by me as a first book with the in mind of what the voice actor would have to do. But there's one scene in there, there's a court martial towards the end where there's about a dozen different speakers. And they all have different accents, different ages, different genders, and she just nails it. I mean, I think the reader and listener is just going to enjoy the thing, but from a producer standpoint, and a writer standpoint, I just stand back and claw.
And I was so glad I told my producer, I said, you know, a few years, we're not going to be able to afford her. Let's see if we can get her to a contract locker and now. Yeah, because she's superstar. So very, very nice, young person, they're very personable and easy to work with. The producers loved working with her because, you know, one, there's a lot of military terminology. And when I wrote the book, I didn't realize, you know, that not everybody knows how to pronounce, you know, up for or something like that. And so, so we went through, and I didn't bother to point that out. And so, we were having to redo a lot of these things to make them so that they would, they would sound right. And she was she was just really, really great with it. She's also a native Mandarin speaker, there's a lot of Chinese speakers in the book who are speaking in English. And she, of course knows how to reproduce that sort of accent in a way that I think would be understandable and realistic to people who are Mandarin speakers or Cantonese speakers.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Nice. Yeah, I'm a big fan of audiobooks. And when they're done well, it's not just an audio book. It's a performance. It's a play. It's a radio play. Yeah. And it sounds like yours is leaning more in that direction. So, I'm pumped for that. When does the audio come out?
Brendan Wilson:
It should be out within days. I mean, we had to do certain things in sequence, you had to do the print version than the Kindle version, that the audio version is complete, ready? Just a question of when it gets up on onto whatever format, the producers are going to put up on it. I think by the time you publish this...
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah, it sounds like that'll be out before we go live here. So that's great. So, we can want to tablets, make sure you get us the door, the direct links to all the different versions, and we'll make sure they're in the show notes.
Brendan Wilson:
Absolutely. Awesome. Awesome.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Well, this has been a lot of fun. You mentioned how to find the book. How to find you otherwise social media? Or is there anything else that the listeners should have?
Brendan Wilson:
They could go to my martial arts website, which is the aristos.club. And I mean, they could look at it. There's a media tab in there that we made a film in Greece a few years ago, which is included in there. And actually, there's two parts of the film. One is sort of a documentary on the film, where we talked about Christos, it's done on site in Athens and out on the beach. And then there is a longer series where we've included all the forms our art, which includes some potential forms ITF, Kukkiwon, WTF forms, as well as the forms that are specific to aristos. One of the things I didn't explain was when students first come into recess, we teach them taekwondo up to the level of first grade black hole. So that's fairly standard. We have our take on stances and certain techniques, but if they want to test with the ITF for the WTF, they can certainly do that after having done that at first. And beyond that, it gets to be tailored, they have to develop their own forms. And it's a little bit more specific towards aristos. So we have lots of losses, although the forms that you'll see on that website, almost all will be taekwondo forms of one type or another.
Jeremy Lesniak:
So well, you've been amazing today, and I really appreciate having you on. So first off, thank you. And then secondly, you know, I'm going to record an intro and an outro later, but this is kind of the last block where you're going to talk to the audience. So what is it you want to leave them with, you know, wisdom, final thoughts, you know, however you want to term it. Go out on a high note.
Brendan Wilson:
Let's go out on a high note. Well, first of all, I would like to say thank you so much for having me on and given me a chance to talk that and lucky to get it as a huge, huge honor to have been offered the chance to do this. I'm very grateful, I would say, as I look back on the martial arts, and any advice that I would give is that it's one of gratefulness. Because it's been such a wonderful journey for me, and the people that I've met. And I think that good that it has done me. And another one is humility. You know, we've all been in a situation where we come across people who are far better than us, for better than we're going to be. And that's okay. That shouldn't discourage anyone. But it also should put in perspective, you know, you're probably not the toughest guy. Or girl, there's somebody out there, who can beat you. So, and you know, that that's pretty much how I would leave it is, for people that want to do that journey. There's lots of great people out there, find the martial arts school that's right for you, the artists right for you be flexible, and be prepared to have your views change over time, because they probably will, if you stay with.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Isn’t it good one, some good stuff going on there. And some of it really different than what we've heard before yet, as we already talked about early in the episode, still relatable. It's one of my favorite things about our format, you get enough room, everybody to see yourself in them and understand who they are. It's majority of the time. But you can see, ah, they went there, they did that they met this person, this cool thing happened. And we get to celebrate our differences, which is one of my favorite things about martial arts training. So, Mr. Wilson, thanks for coming on. Thanks for your time you're sharing, looking forward to the audio book, and all that good stuff.
Now, listeners, make sure you check out the show notes, whistlekickmartialartsradio.com. Or, for those of you that don't know, and I know I never say this, and I probably should, you can check the show notes in your podcast player, every podcast player I've ever seen, gives you access to the show notes so that when we link stuff in there, you can see it. So don't be afraid. Don't be afraid to do that. Check it out. If you head on over to whistlekickmartialartsradio.com, though, that's where you're going to find all the photos and the really the multimedia stuff that we've got going on. It's where we dropped the transcript once that's ready. And it's also the easy place to sign up for the newsletter because the newsletter keeps you up on what's going on. Behind the scenes. We do a lot of stuff as you know, if you want to support us, thank you. And remember, you've got a bunch of ways you can do it.
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