Episode 606 - Sifu Herbert Maier
Sifu Herbert Maier is a Martial Arts practitioner and chief instructor at the Wang Kiu Wing Chun USA.
I realize that just because your eyes see something, it doesn’t mean you’re making an idea out of it. That was a beginning of my interest in thinking, teaching, and why people learn and don’t learn…
Sifu Herbert Maier - Episode 606
Similar to past guests of the show, today’s guest got the inspiration to train in Martial Arts in the movie Billy Jack. Sifu Herbert Maier admittedly learned that he needed to have self-defense skills the hard way after a mugging incident with a friend on their way back to campus way back in college. The story doesn’t end there because when Sifu Herbert Maier found an ad for Wang Kiu’s seminar, he immediately decided to come and as the cliche goes, the rest is history. Presently, he is the chief instructor at the Wang Kiu Wing Chun USA where Sifu Maier preserves the Art. Listen to learn more!
Show Notes
You may find out more about Sifu Herbert Maier at WangKiuWingChun.com
Show Transcript
You can read the transcript below.
Jeremy Lesniak:
What's up, everybody? Welcome. This is whistlekick Martial Arts Radio Episode 606 with my guest today, Herbert Maier. I am Jeremy Lesniak, I am your host for the show founder whistlekick, we do a whole bunch of stuff in support of the traditional martial arts. If you want to see all that we've got going on, go to whistlekick.com. Find the store, check that out, make a purchase, support what we're doing. And if you do use the code PODCAST15 to save yourself 15% on everything there. Martial Arts Radio, gets a website all to itself, whistlekickmartialartsradio.com. And that's where you're going to find show notes with all kinds of great stuff for each and every episode that we bring you. Will bring it too every week. That's why we've got so many. Now the goal of the show of whistlekick overall, well, it's to connect, educate and entertain traditional martial arts throughout the world. And if you want to support that work, you've got a whole bunch of ways you can help us out, you can make a purchase, share an episode, follow our social media, we're @whistlekick, you could tell a friend about us pick up one of the books on Amazon, leave a review or support us on Patreon. Now, if you think the shows, we put out are worth 63 cents apiece, then you might consider supporting us at five bucks a month, you could go as low as two bucks a month, but even $5 a month is going to help out a lot. And what are you going to get at $5 a month, you're going to get a bonus episode. At $2 a month you get behind the scenes information. If you get in at $10 a month, we give you a bonus video episode. And audio and the behind the scenes right goes up for there. We try to give you as much value as we possibly can. Our guests have a number of things in common. All of them have martial arts in common. And that's something that just about every one of you out there has in common with them with me. It's what brings us together. And when we get together as martial artists, we talk martial arts. And of course, you know, that's what we do on the show. Well, my conversation today with my guest was about martial arts. But there's a lot there on the edges. I only got to talk about maybe half of the stuff that the guests brought up on the edges of the conversation. If you've been listening to show for a while you know that I listened to what the guest puts out there and then pick one thing to follow up on and you know, we follow that road? Well, there was a lot of really subtle stuff, what a nuance there on the edges that I absolutely loved, and we didn't have time to unpack everything. And well, that's how it should be. So, I hope you enjoy my conversation with Shifu Mayer, welcome to whistlekick Martial Arts Radio. Thank you, Jeremy. It's great to be here. Hey, it's great to have you here. You know, we've exchanged a few emails, you've checked out some of the stuff that we do. I feel honored. We're also honored to have you on the program.
Herbert Maier:
Thank you. So, do I use down in tremendous work here? I'm very impressed.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Well, thank you. There are a number of us. We're all working hard. And you know, the listeners know that. You know, it's this is far more than just me. And you know that there are a lot of people that get involved in this some of whom are in small parts, you know, referrals like you are the result of a referral from one of your students. Right. By which I mean, I can't think of a better compliment for either of us. He is good at putting people together. Hmm. It's a valuable skill. Yeah. Well, let's talk about martial arts because that's why we're both here, right? Ultimately, we're going to talk about martial arts. And I usually ask the most fundamental question that we can we can really ask, which is your origin story. So, when did you get started?
Herbert Maier:
I started the hard way. I was in college in Houston, a friend and I went to a Saturday night concert downtown and did not realize the buses stopped running. We started walking all the way across downtown back to campus and it happened to be the last night of the international rodeo. The parking lots were full of trucks and drugs. And I had blond hair down to my shoulders. And my friend had darker skin than me and afro then was shorter than me. I think we were interpreted as a mixed couple. Five of them attacked us. My friend when face down, got his jaw broken. I rolled out into the street and It's fortunate, unfortunate that he was injured because it scared the attackers, and we managed to get him to an emergency grow. That was what tied the knot in my interest and being more capable.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Can I ask when this was? What year?
Herbert Maier:
That was spring of 74. So, I was a ripe age of 19. I went home for summer break, and took a summer job spent all of my time off in the movie theater. Guess what movie was on the screen? [00:05:39-00:05:40]? Yeah, I saw that at least 10 times. Went back to school in the fall, found my classes boring and wandered. I walked into a martial arts demo. I took a look at the demonstrators. I said, oh, he looks like Tom Laughlin. She looks like the Loris Taylor. Okay, I'm in Excel. It took him 47 years later, here I am, huh?
Jeremy Lesniak:
That movie was so impactful for so many. People fall into one of two categories with Billy Jack. Either. They saw it back then. And it made a really strong impact on them. Or they watch it later. And they don't fully grasp how much of a shift it represented in so many ways in because that movie was filmed if I remember correctly, four or five years before it came out. So, it was even more of a step forward and out of the mainstream. Then it was when it was released.
Herbert Maier:
Yes, it was a privately funded project. Laughlin was actually in film school. It was a school project that went viral for that period. Yeah. Such. So, I got into a program that was mostly Taekwondo. It was very good for me at the time, but teaching probably a couple of 1000 lessons over 12 years. I felt like I was getting really good in the legs and becoming a T Rex. In other words, I had these tiny little hands that I couldn't do anything with. That is the best most comical description of Taekwondo I've ever heard. And what makes me want to sketch some things out and classmates would start throwing a reverse punch at me. And I started just slapping and snapping them in the face with the same hand and realize that this landed on everybody. Even people outranked me it was getting in. Cool. So, I used it a lot. A group one evening called me aside and said, you have to show us what you're doing. So, I stood there and showed up. And they literally said, yeah, that's nice. But how are you hitting us? And I realize that just because your eyes see something doesn't mean you're making an idea out of that. That was a beginning of my interest in thinking and teaching and why people learn or don't learn. So, 1986 came, I opened a random magazine to a full-page ad and flew to Canada, for one historic wooden dummy seminar. Five days.
Jeremy Lesniak:
You just hopped on a plane based on a magazine app?
Herbert Maier:
Well, I sent paperwork in I, you know, got approval and paid a fee and so forth.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Well, sure. But what was it? What was it in that ad? Or did you know about his work prior? No. I mean, that's a big step.
Herbert Maier:
I had never heard the name long queue. And I don't think anybody in the United States had. He was one of the mons five, so called course students. He was a civil engineer. Professionally, he wound up owning a civil engineering firm. He never needed an income so he never taught commercially or really visit visibly. He was looking for just people to carry the work on. A chemical engineering student of his and the Netherlands, went on faculty at UBC, started the club and was bringing him over to teach for the club. They ran this seminar hoping to get 50 or 60 people registered for it. They got exactly six. There were more assistant instructors in the group than there were students. So, it was a magnificent opportunity.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Sounds like a commercial failure. But maybe were foreshadowing sounds like it was rather fortuitous for you.
Herbert Maier:
Oh, yeah, changed my life completely. I had been hoping to learn Wing Chun in some way for a number of years. It was not easy to find back in the 80s. Long and I started chatting, and sometimes to people just hit it off. You just become friends. As if you were already. So, I wrote a magazine article about the seminar. And the host of the seminar, Dr. Koo send it to one cue for approval. In return, I got a postcard from the Netherlands, saying that he wanted to come and work with me privately. Wow. It's quite an honor. Yeah, it still blows me away. Yeah, Miyagi moments actually do happen in the real world. Video, so he and his family came over and stayed at my house. He basically uses the can opener on my skull dump the system, man and went home.
Jeremy Lesniak:
How long was he there?
Herbert Maier:
Three weeks.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Okay. And I'm going to imagine, you know, as we think of these intensive experiences, you know, this was not an hour or two of training a day. And if you're talking about dumping an entire curriculum into your mind in three weeks, three weeks, this sounds like three very long weeks.
Herbert Maier:
Very intense weeks. Yeah, yes. So, he did his side of it in three weeks, I spent the next five years figuring it out. And working alone, I basically had to take students just to get training partners, somebody to work with. Fortunately, my 12 years of teaching other work, gave me a foundation and how to get technique an idea across to people. So that went on into the nine days. I kept communicating with Master Wong. He kept giving me more and more principle-based ideas that stretched my brain. I had been looking for something that would stretch my brain because the program I've been in, I had memorized 30 forms. I'd gotten to the point where I started doing some of them backwards because I didn't have anything to think about. I didn't want to be a fighter. I wanted to be a student and teacher. So, I wanted to think I suddenly decided that teaching myself language programming would help me understand what Wong was telling me.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Okay, now, there's a departure. And, interestingly enough, not at the same time because we've had and I've brought this up in a number of times, the number of people who are interested in martial arts and are interested in technology and it in programming.
Herbert Maier:
Yeah, yeah, well, it was becoming a thing in the 90s. A lot of people were moving into tech field. But I realize that the way the C language coded things gave me a very good understanding of what Wong was saying particularly on something called font style, which is continuing hand. Where you trap and hip trap and hip trap and hip trap and hit continuous light. Sometimes at the rate of two or three a second. These are a little bit like the scene of Wally's I had learned in Cali before where your hands basically become a machine and you just let them run.
Jeremy Lesniak:
It's kind of like a force statement.
Herbert Maier:
Yes. Very good. Very good.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I majored in ComSci. I don't use it. I quit. It comes up useful once in a great while, like right now.
Herbert Maier:
I might counter that with calling it a while statement.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Okay, I was trying to go I was trying to go a little bit simpler.
Herbert Maier:
And I will quote Fire Science Theater there. Who said he's no fun? He fell right over. As long as he's on his feet, you'll keep doing this. Yeah. So, I did a couple of talks on this topic and got invited to grad school. The chairman said, do you have any ideas to work on? And I said, yeah, a couple. Okay, you're in. And I think I still have the only accepted dissertation on the cognition of high-speed combat. So, I have always wandered off into other paths. I don't have tournament trophies; I never went in the ring. I haven't accumulated street fights. But I consider my degree and conference presentations to be my friend that experiences I still teach privately, as much for my own benefit. As for the teachers, I never really aimed at having a big school or organization, some of my wonky brothers in Europe, have organizations. I was just not drawn that direction. So, the next hiccup in the timeline was about three years ago, when I went to a luncheon run by a friend that was ex-CIA. He called them spook lunches, they were great fun. I met a man there that runs an executive protection and training organization. I have been teaching in his workshops and seminars for a couple of years and I've found that extremely rewarding. I get to work with people that literally put on their uniform and put their lives on the line at work. So, whatever they do, has got to work. This is not an art form anymore. This is what's called defensive tactics. And they are accustomed to situations that flare up in a second or two. There is no warm up. There is no anticipation. The bad guy does his very best to catch you completely unready that that pairs it down in my mind so that whatever I give them and a little workshop has got to finish the job. In two to four seconds, there are no matches, no rounds, no center judges. If they are unarmed, or in a situation where they can't draw a weapon, they have got to manage it without. So, in my mid 60s, I'm starting on a whole new adventure and freshening up my work and my thinking.
Jeremy Lesniak:
It's got a path to that a few times the idea of thought process and how to teach or learn or convey ideas. You've described it in a few different ways. But it sounds like this is the aspect of martial arts that you find most engaging, not. If I can be a bit overly simplistic, it's not for you. And I'm curious if I'm right, it's not the punches and the kicks, it's the how and the who, and the why. it's yeah, martial arts kind of as a vehicle for thinking, has it always been that? Or was that something that occurred at some point after the beginning?
Herbert Maier:
Well, I grew up as a fairly sickly child. In fact, I was pulled out of school for a year or two. And when I went off to college, one of the first things I was looking for was a physical activity that would give me the strength and health that I hadn't gained the Taekwondo serve that purpose wonderfully. It's very athletic, very strengthening, yet was satisfying mentally, for that period of my life. But as I said, I started trying to do forms backwards, just because my brain wasn't engaged anymore. That was an A friend had taken me to see the Bruce Lee movies. I didn't know what he was doing. But I knew that it was something I didn't have. So, I basically put a request out in the universe, that someday I would get a chance to learn whatever he was doing. And I wound up being given the opportunity to learn from one of his first instructors in high school turned out to be a pretty small world.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Martial arts for the sheer volume of people they participate, it doesn't take long hanging around to realize that they're kind of two circles, right there. You've got the people that, you know, listen to and come on to this show. People who are passionate, and it's more than an activity, it's something that they do for quite often years, or decades or a lifetime. And then you've got others who kind of step in and out. It's an activity. But that inner circle is fairly small, despite the size of the outer circle.
Herbert Maier:
Yes. Yes. I once looked at just the basic statistics of white belt and black belt. Back when I was in Taekwondo. And nationwide, it was maybe 1% makes it the first. Damn. Yeah. So, what percentage of that makes it to second or third? How many stays in for a decade or two? Let alone go to multiple teachers or learn a second or third art for how what percentage it does it actually become integral to their life to their being not that many, and the tendency to start meeting each other.
Jeremy Lesniak:
It is difficult for a martial artist to not let others know in one way or another that they are martial artists, especially if it's something that really becomes core to who you are. Yeah. You know, listeners we were chatting as you might imagine for a few minutes before we started the show. And, you know, we were talking about a past guest from a recent episode who see if who knows. And, you know, this happens often that someone will be looking at the show, either they've been invited on, or someone's recommended them, and they start looking at the folks that we've spoken with. And quite often I get these emails. Yeah, I wasn't sure if you guys were legit. And then I started looking at who you'd had on. And I know this person and this person and this person in this and the list go on. And they realize, oh, all of my friends have been on the show, I guess it's my chance. And it just the scope of that inner circle, and it's just the fact that it's worldwide and yet, you know, one to two degrees of separation. Just continues to blow my mind years later.
Herbert Maier:
Yeah. My wife and I were visiting the West Coast. We have family out there. Just before COVID, maybe two weeks before things started shutting down. I mean, right before. And I wandered into a school that had Wing Chun on the sign, along with two or three other things. started chatting with the instructor. And he said, your teachers, back in 78. We tried to bring him over here. How small the world can be?
Jeremy Lesniak:
And then did you go on to talk about meeting him and getting such? Such an amazing introduction? Yeah. That might as well have been one on one time ball by the actual one on one time.
Herbert Maier:
Yeah, yeah. This man had actually trained at the Hong Kong school, back in the early 70s, I think, if I remember, right, so he knew all of what's called the core group, as well as a number of the second-generation people. And it's, like running into a cousin in the shopping center.
Jeremy Lesniak:
It is. I've had a number. Actually, I'm thinking of a wedding. A few years ago, where I knew who this person was from competitions. I think we'd had one or two very short conversations. But you better believe for the entirety of that wedding. We were glued at the hip, drinking beer, talking martial arts as if we'd known each other for decades.
Herbert Maier:
Yeah. Yeah. These things happen. They do. It would be nice if they happen more often. But we certainly treasure and tell stories about the times I do. Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
The way that you've talked about your teaching, and if I heard you correctly, you don't operate a what most would consider a conventional commercial school. At this point, is that correct? Okay. Yes. But I get the sense that the way you've approached teaching, since you've been doing it on your own for yourself, has likely also been a bit unconventional. Am I reading that correctly?
Herbert Maier:
Probably, probably. So, I'll give you an example. Back in mid 90s, maybe 96/97. I got contacted email, and then telephone by a man out in Colorado said that your approach to this sounds really exciting, but you're so far away. And how can I work with you? And he told me about himself. He's a professor at a college. He runs the martial arts club on campus and I said, oh, okay, this is perfect. You bring me in as a visiting professor a couple times a year. I teach the club; you soak up what you can and we're all happy. That turned into six years of visiting what was then Mesa State College, in Grand Junction, yet also turned into the data collection point for my dissertation. The instructor got what he wanted the students did. In fact, one of those students still hangs around with the extent that he is the person that put us together.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Oh, yeah.
Herbert Maier:
And I got to finish my degree. So, I have made connections like that whenever the serendipity happens. But basically, I've got a 10 by 20, portable shed building here, I turned into a training Hall. And people that I like to work with come to my house, very much the way my teacher worked with most of his students.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I was kind of brought up that was more the old way that an instructor would have very few students. And quite often there wasn't even money exchanged. Sometimes there were, you know, favors. There was work done in exchange for time and knowledge. But we've had some let's say folks have older traditions, including those from China, specifically, I'm thinking of a couple who talked about attending classes of five people and that being considered large.
Herbert Maier:
Yeah. Yeah. The group I was with, before Wing Chun, I taught classes anywhere from 40 to 120. And if you have a very structured curriculum, where you can say, here's the exercise and count for five minutes, that kind of volume works great. But something that is so interactive, so much a conversation of hands. And yeah, a lot of it needs to be one on one.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah, yeah. There are a few things more impressive than watching a few 100 people in sync doing a form or even just, you know, the most routine basic? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. But to be one of those, when I think of my favorite classes, they've always been very small classes, even one on one. And I remember classes as a kid where, you know, we lived a couple miles from the dojo, and so on really bad snowy nights, I might be the only one there. Yeah. And you better believe I learned far more in an hour on my own, with my instructor than I did in a class of, you know, 20/30/40 people.
Herbert Maier:
Yeah. And that fits other forms of education, as well. If you're talking to a classroom of 10 or 20, students, you've got to talk just a tiny bit below the average of the group. Yeah. So, you're losing a few of them. And you're boring a few others to tears. But that's the situation that you're working in. I taught Wing Chun one on one. And that is my favorite way of passing it on. I'll have two to four people over when it's really nice to be able to change partners once in a while. As I say, in class, everybody gets ugly after 10 minutes, you don't want to look at him anymore. I love it.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Now, I'm also going to guess that like many instructors, and probably more so for you, if I was a betting person, I put an above average amount of money down on this bet that when students come in to train with you, quite often, maybe the majority of the time you're working on the things that you're working through in your mind. This is the stuff that's consuming you. And so that's going to greatly inspire what you work on with your students.
Herbert Maier:
Yes, yes, as I said, I feel quite free to use my students as guinea pigs at whatever level they're able to work. Something that engages and expands myself as well. I'm certainly not teaching to make a living at it. I mean, Master Wong was capable of getting $1,000 an hour for tutoring. But look at the name he had. I simply wanted to understand what this man was saying to me. And I feel like I will probably scratch the surface. By the time I'm too old. I don't think I'll ever catch up with him.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Now, I'm going to poke at that for a bit, because we hear that quite often, you know, whenever we have someone on the show, they talk and they speak reverently about an instructor they had. They talked about how this person at the time. They met them more than they're ever going to know. And I, you know, this is not me, being combative. I feel that way about several of my instructors. How much of that may be that it's a moving target. That what you knew then, what I knew then what any of us knew, then when we met this person, even though we've progressed, the instructor has continued to progress. And so, there's still that delta between us. Could that be part of it? Oh, absolutely. Yes. And might there also be a bit of, I guess, humility in there, too. You know, I look at some of my instructors and say, these are amazing people, I will never be as good as them. But I'll be honest, I've trained with some people who have told me I'm very good, and I don't see it.
Herbert Maier:
Well, yes, we're not that good at measuring ourselves. Which is why things like rang tests are useful. To point. Yeah, yeah, I've got a rank test story, but not for today. On one cue, always. I guess you might say the other side of it out there. He told us constantly. You must surpass me. If none of you surpass me, the art dies, yet must move forward in every generation. He said my generation took Wing Chun from the Earth to the Moon. Your generation must take it from the moon to Mars, or it is dying. That's a lot of responsibility. Wow. Pressure, holy cow. Now you see where grad school came from? Yeah. I'm certainly not going to do it physically. I will try to find other ways to do it.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Can we talk a bit more about grad school and that work and dissertation? Yeah. Because, you know, we've had a few people who have brought academics into martial arts and martial arts into academics. I very much enjoy breaking down martial arts concepts, you know, no surprise to show. But can you go a little bit deeper about what you were looking to learn as you dove into that project?
Herbert Maier:
Yeah. I actually was working on a project. Prior to grad school. I was taking the basic structure of a Filipino Hubad Drill, where attacks are exchanged fluidly randomly, and you keep the flow going. And the conversation evolves. I designed a drill set like that with nothing but beginner level Wing Chun hands. I realize that it was possible even with only three or four techniques to utterly confuse a person and make him helpless very quickly. That was not his lack of knowledge. It was not his lack of skill. But it was the fact that I was bombarding him with change. So that is attention and thinking started falling a cycle behind my opinion at the time that was what the wooden dummy was about. If I am overpowering his thinking, he turns into a wooden dummy and becomes very easy to work with. He's not keeping up or resisting anymore. So, I was thinking abstractly in those terms and trying this activity out with people. When I did a couple of talks, that little meetings, I was invited into grad school at Texas A&M, the main campus was the College of Education, educational psychology. One of the first courses I took was an introduction to cognitive psychology, which is conscious thinking, decision making, type thinking. I realized that literally, the computer science, I was teaching myself and cognitive psychology are sister scientists, thought sister sciences, they grew together. This gave me a working model to work on. And what my dissertation did, was the filter out for basic measures of performance, speed, of course. But more importantly than that, diversity, which means do I have more techniques than you? Can I show you something you don't know? fluency? The same as in language? How fast can I make changes? In technique? Can I baffle you with changes? and consistency? How well can I stay on task? Our minds have a tendency to wander squirrel. Gotcha.
Jeremy Lesniak:
You did? You did. I was actually looking out the window at a squirrel as you said that's a little bit? A little concerned that you're reading my mind right now.
Herbert Maier:
Obviously, I knew that. So, I put that together into a teaching method. And completed my dissertation, my committee looked at it and said, well, you have an entire lifetime's worth of research to do here. And I attended a few conferences, got acquainted with some of the top researchers at that time and at a really good time with that part of my life. And that's dribbling out a little bit. I do have a website that goes into some of that aspect of my work. That's tacticalcognition.com. As well as my Wing Chun one. That's a separate one. Yes, I have wangkiuwingchun.com. That is the pier Wing Chun side of things. And tactical cognition is the phrase I came up with for the mental function of high-speed combat.
Jeremy Lesniak:
As you investigated, that mental side, you know, I would imagine that some of the research informs your training and change your training. Can you talk about those changes?
Herbert Maier:
Yeah, and I was in a traditional hardstyle Taekwondo base activity, there were set routines that you worked out with a partner, block, punch, kick, block, kick, punch, and you went through hundreds of reps of these, drilling them into yourself. But those are monologue, you are speaking somewhat to yourself, you're not really responding to what the other person does. Things like the scene, the Wally's from the Philippines, there's a vocabulary of techniques that you need to have to have a conversation. But it is truly a conversation where I say something you respond; you say something I respond. It's not a fixed memorize sequence like a two-man form. But it has the continuity, and just enough structure, that it's not really free sparring, either you're not stumbling over each other, you have an opportunity to get the fluidness and to relax more into. I think you're using your brain differently as well.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Okay, I can wrap my head around that. Good. When people come to you, or I guess I should ask it this way first. Because if you're not teaching conventional style classes, I assume you're not advertising the fact that you are available. So how are people finding you? How it is? Is this the kind of the cliche, kung fu instructor that, you know, pops up out of the smoke sometimes, literally in the movie and says, you are now ready my son or daughter and then you leave them? You know, a vague set of directions that involve, you know, digging a hole and climbing a mountain and then they end up cutting the train with you.
Herbert Maier:
You've seen too many movies, sir.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I have.
Herbert Maier:
Well, that's all I have time to go on. I grew up in martial arts and a fairly public community that had, you know, open tournaments. You knew the other schools and town that sort of level of interaction. But when I started in the Wing Chun in the 80s, it did not have a strong sense of community. It was not necessarily a pleasant family to be a part of. I got used to working alone. So, I would talk to a neighbor. My most senior student here. I happen to go to his art gallery and see a brochure. Oh, he was teaching Kali. I said, I used to do a little bit of what I do Wing Chun. Now, let's get together and play and he became a student. So, a couple of others have you been word of mouth? I do have the website so that I electronically exist. I can be found there but I'm so far down in Google, but don't worry about it. And I consider the teaching to be like my teacher, a joy in life, I don't want it to become a routine. I don't want it to become, oh, 7:30 on Tuesday, I got to go around in class.
Jeremy Lesniak:
So then is your use of the word play a few minutes ago? Was that intentional? Yes. Okay, talk more about that because I support the usage of that word to describe training. But it's not a word that I think most people would use.
Herbert Maier:
I have seen two very useful ways to use that word. One cue talked in terms of Wing Chun's players. But when I asked that turned out that he was borrowing that term from Tai Chi. So that Wing Chun sound, which is very distantly similar to Tai Chi is push hands, where you're one on one and continuous pressure and so forth. You used the term in that way. I tend to use that and add psych sort of way of children learn best when they are playing. Yeah, you can buy your child a $200 gift, he'd rather have the box that came. I know I wanted the box.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah, I'm laughing out of understanding. I still get boxes. You know, I'll order something on Amazon. And sometimes it comes in like, actually, this is a really good box. Yeah, I got to save this box.
Herbert Maier:
I'm sitting looking at one right now that has office supplies scribbled on it? And I say, oh, no, that's whatever I say it is. Sure.
Jeremy Lesniak:
You sound like you still have after, you know, quite a few years of training just as much, if not more passion for what you're doing. And I've got to imagine that your approach using that word play that this is all interrelated. So, let's carry the timeline out a bit. What's coming? What's left? Are there goals? You talked about this? I use the word pressure you didn't but I'll reuse it. This pressure from one cue of advancing Wing Chun? Yeah. So, as you look to the next years of your life, you know, where do the priorities lie? And how are you balancing all of these requisite things?
Herbert Maier:
The top thing on that list has to be aping the one promise I made to him back in the 80s. He did not take me as a student, to be a fighter to build an organization to do any of those approaches to what. We were learning a basic hand position called a [00:53:25-00:53:28]. I happen to spout out the owl. This is exactly how a flying buttress works on a cathedral. He was on the other side of the room he spun around pointed at me and said I want to work with you. He wanted a communicator, someone who could put his thoughts out into a durable form. And that is the problem. I still have to keep I wrote one book in time for him to see it before he passed. You have a copy of that by the way. This interview is a way of getting me off dead center on that promise. I've got writing to do. I've got instructional and concept videos to put together. So, I don't know about you know advancing myself or advancing students or turning out a half a dozen JR instructors are something so much as keeping the promise that brought him to my house. I owe him. What do you think of your book? The one time I visited his house after sending it to and sending him a finished copy, one of my training brothers nudged me, and pointed at the coffee table and said, it's on his coffee table. I think he likes it. But he did criticize one thing. Some of my brothers talked to me into giving him the term Grand Master in the book. He did not like that at all. Why? He said, in the core group, we looked at all of these young people declaring themselves grandmasters, and we agreed among ourselves that there was only one Grandmaster yet, and we would never accept the term. And I said, Yeah, well, all of your brother's students forced it onto them. But no, he thought that the book was spot on that that was the very first 10 minutes of that five-day seminar turned into a whole book. So, think about five days and then three weeks.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Did you take notes? Or was that all from memory?
Herbert Maier:
Yes.
Jeremy Lesniak:
It's something that I don't see many people doing. Today, with martial arts, very few people take notes. I've attended plenty of seminars, especially when physically I'm getting tired. You know, from day long weekend, week-long events. And you know, you take a break, but you still show up and bring a notebook and jot down some things. And that's been some of the most mind opening stuff I've done is that “mental training”.
Herbert Maier:
There was far too much in that first five days to hold in my head. If I had not taken 86 pages of notes in that time, I would have lost most of it. I filled a three-ring binder. With notes, I was constantly running over the table, scribbling something down. So well, absolutely. And I tell all of my students when they start, I said, if you don't start a notebook, you're going to lose it all. Yeah, I think it's really important to document things after you know, five or six classes, they say, Can I borrow some paper?
Jeremy Lesniak:
Good. Yeah. Folks listening, you know, even if it's a standard class, having a place to jot some things down immediately after class, if not during class, I think it's a great idea. It can be any format. It can be, you know, diary format, it can be bullet points. It could be questions to yourself, it could be “Don't forget to look up this video on YouTube”. There's, you know, there's no one size fits all.
Herbert Maier:
One of my students uses the notepad on his phone. In his pocket all the time.
Jeremy Lesniak:
When we think of martial arts as education, you know, I can't imagine anybody taking an any kind of academic class and not taking notes, not considering homework, not rounding out the education beyond that class time. And yet so many people do that with martial arts, which is kind of a bummer.
Herbert Maier:
It depends on what they're coming to martial arts for if what they want was a good hard work out with a little blood on their knuckles, then they're not thinking of book. Right? And different teachers will imbue their own belief on it. You're not sweating hard enough. And that's one teaching method. Mine tends to use long queues phrase of Yamcha. Let's have some tea. Let's talk about that.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah. It's the conversations in the storytelling. Among martial artists that ultimately inspired this show, you know, I found so much about. Are you in talking with other martial artists and found that the times to do so were limited? And honestly, sometimes the requests of people to share those stories were denied. “Oh, you so you told a great story”. You know, last time we were together, and I'd love for this other person here with me to hear it, would you tell it again? Now, you know, I'm not really in the mood to tell a story. Oh, damn it, you know. So here we are with the show and bringing people on and telling stories and they don't have to tell them again.
Herbert Maier:
I got them. Long queue was so central to your mind that he knew everybody's history on everything. And he wouldn't tell me some sort of anecdote about something that happened. And I said, “Shifu, tell me more. Tell me. I want to know the real history back there”. And he said, “well, okay, a little bit, but don't write it down or anything because nobody wants the truth. They want mythology. Nobody wants real history”. And I said, “well, I do. Please talk”. Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah, I think reality doesn't need to eliminate the mythology. I think sometimes people think it does. Sometimes the reality is more inspiring. Sometimes it's more dramatic.
Herbert Maier:
Well, yes. Let's say okay, mine was just like the movies. And he beat up everybody in town, and you know, was God's gift to martial arts. There's nothing attainable there. There is no imagination that you might equal his left thumb. But if you know something about his life and say, okay, he had hardships, he had to deal with this. And this didn't go well, some of the time, then, is a dimensional human being that you can say, oh, I probably could have lunch with that guy. And understand a little bit of what he tells me. You know, mythology, as it's useless, but we all have feet of clay, all of us. And if we keep those hidden, too much, I find some of the inspiration missing. Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I like knowing that if I work hard, and train with the right people, I can advance and I can see a path forward maybe not to any of these famed martial artists, but I can at least get closer to where they are. And yet when it comes to mythology, why bother? Yeah, if that person is a God, and I'm never going to get there, what's the point? Yeah, yeah. And I think that for some that elevation is subconsciously an excuse to justify their lack of effort.
Herbert Maier:
Also, if I am the anointed priest of this God teacher, then that elevates me. Which I have trouble with. Yeah, I would rather see a human being who learned from a human being so that I don't have to struggle to be a carbon copy of them. I can be a human being with my own excellence.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Absolutely. Now, you mentioned your websites earlier, and we should start winding down here. So, let's, let's tackle those and I got one more question for you before we will we wind up websites, social media, email, anything like that, that you want to share that people can connect with you on?
Herbert Maier:
Yes, my Wing Chun website is WangKiuWingChun.com. My research website is tacticalcognition.com and I'm not going to spell that. My email is shifu@WangKiuWingChun.com. I would be happy to hear from people.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah, yeah. And the book is that book available for people to purchase.
Herbert Maier:
I published that back in 06. I sold it privately and over Amazon, I've got a couple of 1000 copies of the original left. But to be frank, about eight years ago, yet grabbed up by some of these free download sites. And my sales vanished. So, I imagine that people have been finding it and downloading it for free. On the other hand, I just heard from someone who bought it 10 years ago, and said it is also showing up use for four times what he paid for it.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Nice, nice. Well, our audience is not the kind of audience to go find and pirate books from listen from guests. So, is it still on Amazon?
Herbert Maier:
It is on Amazon. Okay, take 30%. So, I would be happy to take that 30% myself if you email me.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Perfect. There we go. We know you have options. Yes. Now that now they have options and decisions to make? Yes. Well, of course, if they reach out to you directly, maybe their copy would come autographed. Maybe you know that's not going to happen on Amazon that's happening. They don't have autograph robots yet. I mean, soon, maybe. But you know, not yet. And here's the last question that I want to ask you. Because when we look at the book ends of this conversation, we're talking about some pretty overwhelming changes, you know, your reasons for starting martial arts, you know, that initial impetus being so dark, so negative, so cynical about or at least I see it as a cynical commentary on humanity, to what we've talked about, more recently in our conversation that you know, these very positive, aspirational, uplifting ideals. So, if you had the opportunity to go back to the emergency room that evening, and have a conversation with younger you think you said you were 19-year-old you? What would you say?
Herbert Maier:
I might, quote a situation from Circle of Iron. There will be a bell ringing in the crowd. Notice the bell and follow the blind man. Follow your intuition.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I had a lot of fun with this one. Great conversation, great person, great stories. You know, I come away from just about every episode feeling inspired. But I also came away from this one feeling pretty thoughtful. And that doesn't always happen. Nice to talk to a kindred spirit in that world. So, thank you, sir, I appreciate you coming on and hope we get to talk again. Listeners remember, you can check out whistlekickmartialartsradio.com for all the show notes, from videos, links, social media, websites, photos, transcripts, and a whole bunch more. Each and every episode, we try to give you as much as we can to support not only the guests, but you as listeners, give me context. If you're up for supporting the show and the work, we do a whistlekick, you have a number of options you might consider buying one of our amazon books, whether you know maybe Martial Artist Handbook, which I wrote, or the novel that I wrote, or any of the other multitude of things that we put out there over on Amazon. You could also tell somebody about the stuff that we do here with the show or with whistlekick course. You could support the Patreon. Patreon.com/whistlekick. And you know, don't forget we have this incredible speed development program for martial artists you can do to at home and grab it at whistlekickprograms.com. Don't forget to code PODCAST15 to save yourself 15% off anything. And if you have guest suggestions topic suggestions, I want to hear them. Follow us on social media we're @whistlekick. My email address, Jeremy@whistlekick.com. Until next time, train hard smile, and have a great day.
Herbert Maier:
The one thing that add an aspect of Wong's personality that I didn't work in was his wicked sense of humor. When we started the wooden man seminar, there were six of us standing up there, like little wooden soldiers frozen at attention. Yes, sir. And he found this unacceptable, so he started climbing up on to one and scratching himself and hooting like a monkey. Until all of us were holding our stomachs, laughing, many jumping down and said, “good, now we can start”. Oh, that's phenomenal. And when he was at my house, I came down to the kitchen one morning, he was already having coffee. And at 32 I made the serious mistake of saying, oh god, I feel old this morning. He was 66, for half a second started laughing and rolled on the floor laughing at me. Until I said, Yeah, okay, okay, I get the point that he just laughed louder.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Sounds like a great man.
Herbert Maier:
You silly child. You feel old huh? That's another side of the man that I treasure.