© 2010, Marc Denny

When I was a young man, I thought country music was rather awful, but as it and I have grown up, through my exposure to it through my wife I have come to discover that there is a lot there now that I like a lot– to the point that occasionally my wife is shocked to discover me listening to country music on my own.
One of my favorite songs has this refrain:
“I ain’t as young as I once was, but I am as young once as I ever was.”
What a perfect battle cry for those of us past our prime!
Amongst the reasons that it is such is that it sings mightily to the eternal internal battle to distinguish quitting, accepting the inevitable consequences of living past one’s prime, and discovering just how much more one can grow. Perhaps more importantly, it is a good anchor for summoning up our fighting spirit when fight we must against those younger, stronger, more agile, more fit, and more durable.

I remember my teacher speaking from time to time of a student whom he had back in the days at the legendary Kali Academy of the 1970s and early ’80s. The man was a spectacular athlete with, as the saying goes, “a body envied by men and desired by women”. As the Sticks of Life Twirled On as they are wont to do, this young man moved on until a chance meeting some ten years later. My teacher did not recognize the now not-so-young man for in front of him stood some thick-waisted slouching man of little athletic appearance.

From there he spoke of how some young men train in a great frenzy and sharpen their edge to extraordinary levels of sharpness, but that after they peak, so too does their motivation and subtly and slowly, or perhaps not so subtly and slowly, they find themselves in a spiral into the death of mediocrity from which they never recover.
For him he said, the idea was to stay on the path for the long haul. This caught my attention on a deep level.
No surprise this, for it was the essays on the manongs in the beginning of Guro Inosanto’s now out-of-print “The Filipino Martial Arts” that had drawn me to the FMA and Guro Inosanto, particularly the essay about Manong John Lacoste. This is why the mission statement for Dog Brothers Martial Arts is “Walk as a warrior for all your days.”

When I was 48 I had a really nice Dog Brothers stickfight which really manifested most everything upon which I had been working for many years and it came to me that it would be a good fight on which to retire.

With about 140 fights to my credit, along with Top Dog and Salty Dog I had been one of the “Big Three”. In Gatherings when neither of them was there I had been the man to whom people ultimately looked to represent the Dog Brother name—and during those years the Dog Brother name continued to grow. This I did while running the Gatherings, ring mastering the fights, and coaching my students who were fighting—these being part of my responsibilities as “the Guiding Force”. I confess to being rather proud of this.

During these years my annual training cycle consisted of getting into fighting shape for the two Gatherings of each year which were held in early May and late September. Thus there was less than five months between the May and September Gatherings, and more than seven months between September and May.

This flowed very nicely with the rhythms of the seasons. For the early May Gathering the weather had been nice for long enough to get into good fighting shape, and the for the September Gathering (held on the Saturday closest to the Autumnal Equinox) we had had all summer long to get into peak fighting shape.

With the seven and a half month winter break (not a brutal winter here in SoCal it is true, but wimps that we here are, it is winter for us) between the September Gathering and the May Gathering, it was time to work on the lessons learned and develop one’s game to the next level, whereas the summer break was more about taking one’s physicality to the next level.

But with my retirement from active fighting, in a subtle way my inner rhythms began to lose their propulsive power. For a few years I trained “as if” I were going to fight and this worked somewhat, but as time went by each year my efforts became a bit less. Fighting students were becoming more “respectful” as I sparred with them to help them get ready.
What happens when one no longer is fighting?

Of course, we continue to train. After all in DBMA our mission statement is to “Walk as a warrior for all your days”! But less us be candid, motivation is easy when one knows that one will fight at time and place certain in the not-too-distant future. It is not so easy when one knows one may never be actually touched by the flying fickle finger of fate—and it is all too easy to remember oneself as one once was.

A good training cycle includes peaking, but if one is past fighting age what is one to do?

I am reminded of something Guro Inosanto (around 65 years old at the time if I remember correctly) said to me one time after going an amazing forty-five non-stop minutes on the Thai bag “From time to time, we should test ourselves to see where we truly are.”

Recently I was invited to join a tactical tracking course. The course description said to show up in shape to do four to twelve hilly miles a day in Arizona’s Sonora Desert for 5 days while carrying 45 pounds. In that the area in question is quite near the Mexican border, a bit of danger and adrenaline are in the air. (I want to make perfectly clear that this is NOT a militia thing and is 100% legit. It is done with full knowledge of the US Border Patrol. We look to track only and avoid all engagement!

How perfect! Although different than the peaking required for a series of three minute explosions as in a Dog Brothers Gathering, the physicality required here is no less. As the oldest man on the team my motivation is to keep up with fit young men of elite military background—and so for the first time in nearly ten years I have a particular mission of being ready at time and place certain. What a gift this is!

I do much of my training at Boxing/Muay Thai Works in Hermosa Beach. Those of you who have seen our “Bolo Game” and/or “Combining Stick & Footwork” DVDs have seen it. I have a key and during the day I pretty much have the place all to myself save for an occasional trainer and client; and so it came to pass that there I was on the rowing machine with the music system playing my CD of “The Jefferson Airplane live at Woodstock” REALLY LOUD.

A few words about the Jefferson Airplane. For me, they were THE band and the music they played was, and is, the song of my youth. As a young man I saw them 23 times. They would play the Fillmore East in the Spring, in August, and over Thanksgiving. Though I had a midnight curfew, I would catch the early show, and go home (the Lexington Ave IRT subway line) in time for my curfew. My folks would then go to bed and I would sneak out the backdoor and take the subway back down to the East Village and catch the late show. This meant I usually missed the opening band and some of the second band, but the Airplane usually did not come on stage until about 01:30. Typically they then played until 04:30 or more. Then I would go home and sneak in the backdoor and to bed before my folks awoke.

The Airplane was an incredibly talented (and erratic) jamming band. Its bass player, Jack Casady, was my guitar hero. Jimi Hendrix’s drummer Mitch Mitchell wrote in his book that Jimi invited Jack to join the Jimi Hendrix Experience but that Jack passed to stay with the Airplane. Still, the two bands were close. Often Mitchell, who was a truly great drummer, would sit in with the Airplane and Jack sometimes sat in with Jimi (see e.g. Voodoo Chile on “Electric Ladyland” and on “Hendrix Live at Winterland”) Jack was a musician’s musician. His technique and rhythm was unique and his expression at a level beyond description. Often his bass was as much a lead instrument Jorma Kaukonen’s guitar (the two later formed Hot Tuna).

When Jack would take the lead typically he would stand behind drummer Spencer Dryden turned sideways to the audience. The music was not a vehicle for him to demand attention, the music simply was what mattered, and what he played took us in the audience to places impossible to describe. The sounds, the vision of his eyebrows dancing in counterpoint to his rhythms, the band’s women dancing (typically, nearly naked) around the band, drummer Dryden propelling and supporting on the floor tom toms, rhythm guitarist Paul Kantner texturing on his Rickenbacker 12 string guitar, Grace Slick in a trance (we too in the audience) as she absorbed Jack’s playing, the psychedelic light show in the background, all this and more is the song of my youth.

And so as I have Boxing/Muay Thai Works to myself and train to prepare myself to be ready to go into what is as close as my middle-aged life gets to “in harm’s way” and I put on “The Jefferson Airplane live at Woodstock” (I was at Woodstock by the way, and the Airplane was the headline act for Saturday night though due to the vagaries of the event they did not get to play until dawn on Sunday) the music takes my spirit to the song of my youth, to the place where I am, in the words of that country music song, “as young once as I ever was”. My spirit soars, the words of my mind cease, and I am filled with unfettered joy. I am the Crafty Dog.

Postscript: With about one month to go until the tactical tracking course, I was at 8 miles of hilly terrain (the clip of me along the bluffs overlooking the ocean) with 50 pounds when word came in that the course had been postponed until October. Such a moment offers a tempting invitation to feel let down, but I think I would rather focus on the fact that my resting pulse on a good day is now 48 and I have put on several pounds of muscle.

The Adventure continues!

Punong Guro “Crafty Dog” Marc Denny