Whatever the reasoning for your fascination with martial arts is, John Le thinks there is one for you.
“I want to find what fits for what person,” said Le, a SESP junior who is president and founder of Northwestern’s Brazilian jiujitsu club. “It’s about finding what you like best.”
This desire to play martial arts matchmaker was the inspiration behind Saturday’s second annual Northwestern Martial Arts Expo, where five of the seven NU martial arts club teams participated: WTF Taekwondo, Paracombative jiujitsu, Karate, Aikido, and Brazilian jiujitsu. Members of the clubs broke blocks, demonstrated how to disarm someone with an umbrella, and gave brief presentations introducing their respective disciplines to those who can’t tell karate from Taekwondo.
“We wanted to put all the martial arts together, like a career fair, because people would come up to us and ask ‘What’s the difference between Paracombative jiujitsu and Brazilian jiujitsu?'” Le said.
While Paracombative is more about self-defense and protecting oneself from various weapons, Brazilian involves sparring rather than learning to protect oneself. If you didn’t know that, no worries: Beginners are more than welcome.
“Many of the people in our club started as beginners and worked their way up,” said McCormick senior Brendan Higgins, president of the Karate club. “There’s definitely an advantage to doing that, and that’s that you can integrate everything together from the basics to a high level.”
John Yang, a Weinberg junior and president of the WTF Taekwondo club, estimates that 75 percent of the members of the club were beginners when they joined, including himself and Higgins.
The practical experience gained varies by club. Most stress a “defense first, competition second” mantra, but several of the clubs have the opportunity for intercollegiate competitions. Higgins’ Karate club, for example, competes four times a year, traveling to Purdue, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and hosting a tournament every April in Evanston. Yang’s Taekwondo club competes in just one, a Chicago-area tournament against other colleges.
Stan Chikando, McCormick ’08, is now an instructor with the Paracombative jiujitsu club. He decided to stay around after graduation because of the informal atmosphere, the friendships he made within the club, and the opportunity to stay in shape.
Chikando also stressed the practicality of learning how to defend oneself from his fellow instructors – often policemen, bouncers, and in one case, a U.S. Marshal – people who get to use jiujitsu on the job.
Like many other students, Chikando thinks about having a chance to use the skills he has learned at college in “the real world.” However, he’s not talking about the corporate workplace, but a poorly-lit street.
“I haven’t had a chance to use jiujitsu outside of here,” Chikando said, grinning and gesturing at the surrounding gym. “But I’m looking forward to it.”
