Martial Arts Nomad

Versus 21 just took down their big dividing wall and doubled the size of the place. Originally, the wall divided the facility. Half was for martial arts and heavy training, and the other half was for yoga, pilates, and bicycle. Well the martial arts side of the business kept on growing. We got together one Saturday Morning in August to take down the wall, which would more than double the space available for martial arts.

Drywall and insulation pulled out

Cutting apart the steel studs

Cutting the mirrors out carefully

Apparently, there is such a thing as world record for demolition of a house by a martial arts team. In Prince Albert, Saskachewan, a karate school run by Wolfgang Manicke holds the world record for housewrecking. Its even featured in an episode or Ripley’s Believe It Or Not, and it is noted in the article that the feat will be registered in the 2002 Guinness Book of World Records. An online search of http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/ didnt return a result on this but the site states clearly that not everything is in the online database. However you can certainly see the video record for the “Most Impressive Breaking Demonstration“. It is very impressive. I cant do that.

But unlike some karate team that shows total wanton disregard and disrespect for abandoned houses, demolishing them in 2 hours, 15 minutes, we tried to be much more careful. Safety first. We were volunteering our time for the improvement of our dojo, we had to deal with tons of icky drywall, insulation, steel studs, wiring, and four large glass mirrors which would be reused. Then we had to sort out all this stuff and hump it down the stairs. I hope this doesnt sound totally wimpy, but we took 3 hours to get the wall down, and we were using tools. Of course we tried a few punches to the drywall, a few elbows, a few kicks to begin with, but say what you will, tools are the way to go. Call it a weapons training day or something. We used cro bars, pry bars, sledge hammers, cutters. and grinders. Actually, it was kind of a weapons day. Any of those would be good for self defence in a real fight. Maybe not the grinder or cutter, they were electric.

Its a common principle among martial arts that a student takes care of the dojo as part of the duties of training in the martial art. In some martial arts like Aikido, the class ends with dutiful sweeping and wiping of tatami. So it was not too terrible at all to put in a little time to help the gym along that I go to train in.

Now look what we have, this big wide open space with tons of room.

New Gym View

A big wide open space

Double the space double the gym