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BIOGRAPHY:
 I was born in Bonn, West Germany, and emigrated to Cape Town, South Africa with my parents in 1965. I went to school at the German School, Cape Town and then studied for six years at the University of Cape Town (psychology and languages, B.A. Hons and H.D.E./P.G.Sec.). Worked as bouncer at a variety of clubs close to the waterfront during my student years. Was married in 1986 and divorced in 2002. Have two wonderful children.
Beginning in my childhood, my life has been defined by my interest in the Eastern martial and healing arts. At age ten I began studying Judo. Experimented with Jiu Jitsu. Switched to Karate at fourteen. At fifteen or sixteen years of age, I discovered I had a talent for massaging, I began giving shoulder massages to my mother’s circle of friends, on the basis of apparently having “good hands”.
I represented UCT in Karate ( silver medal at the National Universities championships) and also started studying Tai Chi. My Tai Chi studies really took off in 1982 when I began studying the art with Mr. Fok, Si Yue, in exchange for working on weekends in his restaurant, the “Dragon Inn”. I studied as a private student with Mr. Fok for just under ten years and was encouraged by him to begin teaching in 1986.
In 1983 I also started studying Jiu Jitsu/ World War II Combatives with Harry Snowise, who is my mentor to this day. I also began studying Swedish massage at that time.
In 1993 I further expanded my internal arts repertoire by becoming a student of Dr. Lin, Feng Chao for three and a half years ( Tai Chi Chuan, Hsing I Chuan and Ba Gua Zhang). I started studying Brazilian Jiu Jitsu around this time after seeing the first UFC. I was lucky, the Brazilian consul in Cape Town was a twenty year practitioner and was looking for training partners.
In 1995 I quit my job and spent half a year in Thailand, studying Nuad Phan Bo Rarn (traditional Thai massage), mostly in Chiang Mai with Chongkol Settakorn but also with other teachers, both in northern Thailand and in Bangkok. I was certified not only as a massage therapist but also as a teacher of Thai massage.
I also picked up some Muay Thai clinch techniques when I was in Thailand.
Arriving back in Cape Town I earned my living as a massage therapist for a couple of years.
I met Nigel February in the mid nineties and started studying Piper knife system with him.
Trained in boxing with Lakis Campanis from 1999 to 2001.
Between 1997 and 2002, I taught many seminars internationally (Europe and Israel). Articles by me have appeared in magazines in various countries (Black Belt magazine, USA, Tai Chi magazine, Australia etc). In 2003 my first book (on the art of Jiu Jitsu) was published by New Holland Publishers of London and in 2006 my second book, on Thai Massage, was released by the same publishers. In 2006 my first book was also published in the USA. I taught further seminars, on both clinch-work and Piper in Denmark and England at the end of 2006. I am currently working on an e-book on Piper Knife techniques.
Ranking / Achievements etc.
Hold a Sandan in Ashihara Karate (under Hoosain Narker) and am licensed as a full instructor in the following martial arts:
Harry Snowise Jiu Jitsu / World War 2 Combatives
Tai Chi Chuan
Piper Knife Combat
Hsing-I Chuan
(I was also awarded a blue belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu by Roger Gracie in 2005)
PERSONAL MOTIVATION:
I did not start out as the large, solid, muscular type of guy I am these days. I was a tall, thin, unsportive kid. I was playing on a sports field with a frisbee, close to where we lived, at age nine or ten (it's a long time ago, it was one or the other). Two assholes with a .22 rifle came onto the field and jokingly told me to run, or they would shoot me. Then they started firing shots past my legs, apparently NOT trying to hit me. Well, shit happens and next thing I know, I'm on an operating table at Groote Schuur hospital, having a lump of lead removed from my heel.
Traumatic, to say the least, when you are that age. About half a year later, at ten, I'm walking home, carrying the grocery shopping I had done for my mom. So, both hands holding shopping bags, uphill, pretty much a sitting duck. I was wearing short pants.
Two teenage kids come up to me and start shooting small bent wire hooks at my legs, from elastic bands held between their thumb and forefinger. Hurts like a bitch. I ask them nicely to stop. Obviously, they don't. I drop the bags and punch one of them in the face. He falls down and cries. The other one retreats a few steps. I pick up the bags and head home. Problem solved. Well, apparently not. In the next week or two, I spot these assholes once or twice in the neighborhood and they keep away, but tell me they are going to get me. I tell them where they can put it.
A few weeks later I'm chatting to a friend and he suddenly turns pale, spins around and runs. I turn around to see what he is running from and find myself surrounded by about ten to fifteen teenagers, all a few years older than me, my two previous attackers being part of this gang. Well, long story short, they beat me to a pulp, until I lay in the gutter, then some of them took off their belts and started laying into me with the belt buckles. Tough neighborhood, right? Apparently so!
Anyway, those two incidents plus being bullied at school created a burning desire which basically SHAPED MY MARTIAL ARTS TRAINING FOR THE NEXT FORTY YEARS:
I WAS NEVER GOING TO BE BEATEN AND HUMILIATED AGAIN.EVER!!
That's it. No search for spiritual perfection (a warrior identity, now, yes, definitely, spiritual perfection: in my next life, perhaps), no deep competitive urge to be a "sportsman" and excel in measuring myself against my fellow man (the very idea of a "fair fight" makes me cringe, if you are in a fair fight, you've done something wrong, strategically).none of that.
Simply this:
"YOU FUCK WITH ME AND I WILL MAKE YOU FEEL SO VERY, VERY SORRY THAT YOU EVER SO MUCH AS LOOKED AT ME!!
That was me, in my teenage years. Every hour of marching up and down assorted dojo floors, doing a million punches, every time I was slammed into a mat, every time I was knocked out (first time when I was fifteen, in a Kyokushin class taught by Lucky Paizee Sensei, someone punched me in the groin and I woke up to excruciating pain, sitting, legs splayed out, the instructor bouncing me up and down on the concrete floor in the fond hope that everything would fall back into its natural place.)
That was my mission then. At fifteen I bought two sets of boxing gloves and challenged the three biggest bullies in school to a kind of "really-bad-Vale Tudo" match.I did not knock them out, but neither did they knock me out. We reached a sort of "truce" or understanding. they went and picked on other kids.
The five years as a bouncer burnt off the pent-up anger..I have no idea how many "serious fights" I was in, who the hell counts this stuff anyway? When I hear someone saying that they had over four hundred street fights, I always wonder how they reach that number, don't you!?
At a guess, I was in danger of ending up in intensive care or in the morgue between fifty and a hundred times in my five years of bouncing three nights per week. In total, I've been shot twice, stabbed and slashed thrice and have bled from assorted "hits" I have no idea how-many-number-of-times.
I would say that, as an adult, I was only "beaten" once, the last time I was shot, lying in the road because I had been shot through the leg and could not get up any more. The rest of the time I "won" or "survived", whatever you want to call it, through escalating the level of violence faster than the other guy could follow, through luck, and, perhaps a little, through technique. Sometimes through sheer bloody-mindedness, such as the one incident which started with me being "ambushed" by a head butt and ended with the other guy running off screaming into the night because I had bitten off his ear.
The point of all of this being the following: These days I'm a nice, well-adjusted kind of guy, unless you piss me off. The last two times I got pissed off was when someone pointed a gun at me and demanded my car keys a few years ago and, before that, when I came across someone trying to commit a rape. Other than that, I'm a sweetheart.
I do, however, get quite upset when I see the nonsense that is being peddled as "self defense" by so many people nowadays. I have been very lucky in having learnt some systems and methods that have been battle-tested and will actually will work in life-and-death combat.
Piper is one stunning example of this, World War Two combatives as taught by W.E. Fairbairn to British Commandos and taught to me by Harry Snowise are another. |
