Martial Edge, United Kingdom
Interview
with Wim Demeere and Loren W. Christensen
Loren W. Christensen: I began training in karate in 1965 after I had injured my back in a weight lifting accident. The doctor said no more power lifting so I was looking for someplace to put my 19-year-old energy. I had heard of something called “karate” and decided to give it a try. The first few months were tough because I was wearing a back brace from the injury and could barely lift my legs because of the pain. But I stuck with until I was able to kick and move as well as the other students.
Wim Demeere: I started training in 1986 when a friend of mine told me he went to a dojo nearby. He said it was a lot of fun so I decided to give it a try. It turned out to be even more enjoyable than I expected and I stayed with it ever since.
Loren W. Christensen: I started in kong su because it was the first place I visited and I was simply swept away by the students’ extraordinary speed, power and fierceness. Since then… in the kick/punch arts I have studied kung fu, muay Thai, boxing and several forms of karate. In the grappling arts I’ve studied jujitsu and police defensive tactics. In the weapon arts I’ve studied arnis. I’ve earned 10 black belts spread over all these arts.
Wim Demeere: I first studied judo and ju jitsu because that was what my friend did. I knew little about martial arts so I just took up those two by accident. A few years later, I witnessed a demonstration of a traditional Chinese style called hung chia pai. The teacher was incredibly impressive as he struck and threw his opponents, so I signed up that very day. Ever since I’ve trained in several Chinese styles: tai chi chuan, sanshou, wing chun, shuai jiao and a few others. While I competed, I cross trained in ring-sports such as muay Thai, kick boxing and shoot fighting to become a better fighter. Over the last decade I’ve also developed a fondness for South-East Asian arts such as kali and silat.
Every art I studied gave me insights I
wouldn’t have found without it. I feel it helped me grow as a martial artist, a
teacher and as a person.
Loren W. Christensen: It’s been 42 years since I took my first lesson and my approach to the martial arts now isn’t even close to what and how I studied in the beginning. Most people hadn’t even heard of karate or the martial arts when I began. Now there are hundreds of styles, systems and approaches with a training facility on every corner.
I also think we train a lot smarter now than when I started. Guys my age started with returning servicemen who had learned their arts in the Orient, methods that were often unwise as far as overtraining and employing ancient exercises that were physically dangerous. Today, modern science has improved the fighting arts tremendously.
Wim Demeere: I’ve experienced the same thing as Loren: When I first started training I did every training session with a lot of enthusiasm and I pushed my body hard. But in hindsight, I didn’t always train in a healthy or even a safe way. When you’re 18 you don’t think about what it will feel like to get out of bed at 35 year’s old. I’m there now and my vertebrae popping in the morning as I yawn and stretch my arms tell me I should have been smarter.
Over time I got interested in finding more
efficient ways of training: Periodization, splitting my training into different
topics, different programs of weight training and much more. I still love
gruelling work outs, the feeling of giving it your all despite your body and
mind screaming at you to give up. But now I allow my body enough time to
recuperate and avoid injuries.
Loren W. Christensen: I like the fact that I’m responsible for my progress (or lack of it), not my training partner, not my teacher, and not anyone or anything else. I like that my biggest obstacle, my toughest opponent is me.
Although I competed for a few years, I never really cared about competition that much. Whether I was better than someone else didn’t interest me. What I did find intriguing, and still do, is facing and conquering my personal demons: laziness, procrastination, perceived fatigue and illness, ego, and so on. I feel like a winner when, after almost convincing myself to plop on the sofa and watch TV, I go to my training area and have a good workout. I am a winner because by making myself train I defeated those syrupy eternal satanic voices and progressed physically, mentally and even spiritually, even if just a little.
Wim Demeere: As a young boy, my teachers and senior students seemed to move in a magical way. They would punch or kick you at will and there was nothing you could do about it. You tried to fight back and then suddenly they swept you off your feet or put you in a joint lock. They looked as if in total control of both themselves and their opponents or training partners. I was intrigued by the skills they showed and I wanted to find out how they achieved these; I wanted to understand how it all worked. What makes martial arts amazing is that you never stop increasing your knowledge and understanding. The longer you train, the more it becomes fascinating to continue learning.
Loren W. Christensen: Although I’ve trained for over four decades I only competed for about five years. During that I time I got ranked in the top 5 in my region.
I was a Military Policeman in the Army for three years, one of those years in Vietnam, and I was a street cop in Portland, Oregon for 25 years. During those years I got into hundreds of fights, small ones and big ones. I’ve used that experience to develop a training program that works in the street. I have communicated much of it in my books, DVDs and magazine articles. I’m always pleased to hear from people who tell me that they learned something from me that helped and even saved them on the street.
Wim Demeere: I competed in Chinese full contact fighting (Sanshou) and held the national title in my weight class several times. Internationally, my best result was the bronze medal at the 1993 wushu world championships. I coached the Belgian national team for a while and still work as technical advisor to it.
A defining moment was my instructor’s test in hung chia pai. It was a gruelling 7-hour ordeal of showing forms, performing applications, full-contact sparring and facing multiple opponents both armed and unarmed. The test ended after we held a low horse stance for an hour. I stood there with a broken nose and wrist, so it still gives me great satisfaction that I managed to hold on until the end and pass the test.
Writing with Loren and making instructional DVDs are obviously also something I have enjoyed immensely. When you hold the finished product in your hands for the first time, it gives a warm feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment.
Loren W. Christensen: I was a defensive
tactics instructor for 24 of my 25 years with the police department. I’ve also
taught many other police and security agencies. I began my writing career by
contributing regularly to the martial arts magazines and then writing a book on
it. Then I wrote another book and another until I now have 20 plus books on the
fighting arts. From there I branched out to writing articles and books on other
things besides the fighting arts.
Wim Demeere: I’ve been fortunate enough to make a profession out of my passion so martial arts are a part of my everyday life. As a personal trainer teaching the arts to clients on a daily basis, they are constantly on my mind. I couldn’t be luckier.
Loren W. Christensen: Wim and I belong to an international martial arts internet list. We swapped emails a few times about various things and I could see that he was a pretty sharp guy and wrote amazingly well, though I would never tell him that to his face. And English isn’t even his first language. At one point I was busy on two books, one of them On Combat that I was coauthoring with Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, a huge project that took nearly three years to write.
I got an idea to write one on nutrition for martial artists after reading a magazine piece that said it was the next big trend in the fighting arts. Since I didn’t have a lot of time because of my other projects, I asked Wim if he liked to do research and if so, would he be interested in doing the ground work and writing drafts. I would plug in my two cents worth and do the editing and formatting. He agreed. As it turned out we both did about the same amount of research and writing.
Wim Demeere: Loren and I “met” on a martial arts e-mail list several years ago. At one point he asked a question about a specific aikido technique and I happened to have a videotape on which it was demonstrated. I offered to send it to him and he graciously sent one of his books in return. Since then we stayed in touch via email and became friends. Loren then asked me to work with him on our first book, The Fighter’s Body, which got the ball rolling.
Loren W. Christensen: See above Q7.
Wim Demeere: Idem ditto.
Loren W. Christensen: A combination of several things. We decided from the beginning that we wanted a highly readable and fun book, something that martial artists would read and benefit from.
Both of us have always been interested in nutrition – me from my bodybuilding days and from observing how much it helps training and Wim from his career as a personal trainer.
Wim Demeere: One of the things that make Loren’s writing so successful is that he always gives a lot of concrete ideas, concepts and techniques; things you can use right away when you read them. There is obviously plenty of theory to explain how and why things work but his approach gives the reader so much useful information he can actually learn and grow artist from the books.
In The Fighter’s Body we tried to balance out theory on nutrition and training with no-nonsense, practical tips and techniques the reader can apply immediately.
Loren W. Christensen: Too many martial artist follow diets of excess: excess calories, excess fat, excess sugar, and so on. Not only does this lead to obesity, which is epidemic in some places, it’s detrimental to your martial arts progress and your general health.
Here is the best advice I can give: Take the middle path. Don’t get excessive with any food or any supplement. The advice you got in first grade is still pretty good. Eat a balanced diet of everything.
Wim Demeere: When I coached the national team, I met lots of fighters who didn’t stay close to their fighting weight throughout the year. Too many of them can’t be bothered with sound nutrition and have too much body fat. They then have to resort to all sorts of unhealthy tricks to make weight the day of the competition: Fasting, using diuretics to purge water from their bodies or hitting the pads while wearing sweat suits, all to lose a few more grams. They invariable perform much worse at the competition than when you see them during training sessions. Unfortunately this practice is still all too common.
Loren W. Christensen: There has been some press recently about the negative side-effects of taking high dosages of vitamins. For example, at least one study shows that it can lead to prostrate problems among older men. Some scientists are recommending smaller dosages. I’m currently following that.
Wim Demeere: Since the jogging craze of the 1980’s the whole world was led to believe low-impact, low-intensity, aerobic exercise was the ultimate training protocol and this has become a part of modern thought on exercise and health: to lose weight or get in shape, you have to jog slowly once or twice a week. But this isn’t necessarily the best solution. Numerous studies show how efficient high intensity, anaerobic workouts are at building endurance and strength, while simultaneously providing lots of other health benefits, as well as allowing you to train in a safe manner. This knowledge has gained a lot of momentum in the last few years and there are increasingly more training systems that follow this approach.
Loren W. Christensen: Women need to be concerned about getting sufficient amounts of calcium and iron. In general, women need 15 milligrams per day, 5 milligrams more than guys. Women age 19 to 50 need 1000 mg of calcium; women over 50, about 1200. As martial artists, you’re in the business of banging bones together with others. You want yours strong.
Wim Demeere: See Loren’s answer.
Loren W .Christensen: The irony is that at a time when teens and younger kids need quality nutrition the most, so many eat high-fat, high-sugar, and greasy foods. These things are not what they should eat before they train and definitely not what they should eat afterwards. Doing so slows their progress.
There is no argument about this (as a father of three I know how kids like to argue). If they say that they eat fast food and they are progressing, they need to think about how much more they would progress if they fueled themselves with food that helped them recover from training and helped them grow muscle. Attention teachers: you need to lead by example.
Wim Demeere: Eating regularly (every three to four hours) is perhaps the most important nutrition tip you can follow. Doing so increases your metabolism but most of all, it prevents you from getting hungry and overeating or snacking on junk food. Children and teenagers often don’t have the discipline yet to pick the right foods to maintain this regular eating schedule. For instance, at school, chances are high they’ll pick soft drinks and candy out of vending machines over health food when they feel peckish. As a parent, you should help them learn sound eating habits and give fruit and other healthy alternatives throughout the day. Teach them well while they’re young and they’ll thank you for it later in life.
Loren W. Christensen: Wim and I have written four books together. One on nutrition, called The Fighter’s Body, one on timing, called Timing in the Martial Arts, and two books on bag training which are in the development phase. I’ve also written about 20 other books on the martial arts on such topics as speed development, power development, police defensive tactics, jujitsu, vulnerable targets and several others. I’ve also made six DVDs on various martial arts subjects. The interested reader can check them out on my site www.lwcbooks.com.
Wim Demeere: Apart from the books with Loren, I finished a series of six DVDs on a self-defence system called Combat Sanshou, which will be released in July of this year. This summer I’ll also be filming a new DVD on training with the heavy bag. This will be a companion to our upcoming book.
Loren W. Christensen: Although I have been training non stop since 1965, I continue to be amazed at how much there is to learn in the martial arts. Not only are there new styles, systems and techniques to learn from, but there are constantly new findings in science – sports medicine, fitness, and nutrition - to help us progress. I’m convinced that we have learned more in these areas in the past 30 years, even the last 20 years, than in all the years before.
On a personal level, I have been training and researching as to how best to deliver devastatingly effective techniques as I get older. I understand more than young people (who believe they are going to permanently stay as they are), that I can’t rely on raw power forever. So I’ve been slanting my training to emphasize vulnerable target selection and to develop techniques that cause damage without the need of great muscle power.
Wim Demeere: Ever since I started training, I’ve spent much energy on trying to understand the martial arts I practice. Not just “know” the techniques or concepts but research how and why they work. And then discover how they fit into the bigger picture of that system. This research fascinates me and I hope to continue it for a long time.