You Can Only Possess What You Experience
Several years ago, I was invited to an invite only seminar in Michigan, in the dead of winter, during the time we had a polar vortex covering the Northern United States. Yeah, that sounds as bad as it is. However, If I hadn’t attend this seminar, my trajectory in life would have been completely different.
I was invited to go to this seminar by my friend and mentor Mushtaq Ali Al-Ansari, who is an elder statesman within both the Southeast Asian and African Martial Arts community. Since he asked, who was I to turn him down.
This invite only seminar was to introduce a Mr. Lloyd De Jongh and his Piper Tripwire system to the attendees of this seminar.
At the time, I knew very little about the Piper Tripwire system and even less about Lloyd De Jongh. But, due to Mushtaq’s prompting, I decided to make the journey. I felt that at least I might see something moderately interesting.
At this point in my life, I had been training FMA and Silat for years and was fairly adept at weapons usage, and a Guro in several different systems of FMA. So already, I had my biases lined up; I mean after all, a martial art coming from Africa? Let alone involving the use of a pocket knife? This made me naturally suspicious. I should point out that, I knew even less about the rich vast variety of martial arts coming from the African continent then about the Piper Tripwire system.
Here’s how my introduction to Mr. Lloyd De Jongh went, after a brief introduction, he attempted to demonstrate an advanced knife switch in front of me, and he promptly dropped the knife. At this point, my skepticism was shooting through the roof, and Lloyd proved himself at that moment, to be a mere mortal. My thinking was, “what can this guy teach me?”
The following day when the seminar began, Lloyd moved like a panther, bang! Lloyd moved with an intensity and timing, as well as off-timing, that few of us whom have studied martial arts, had ever seen! Most froze like a deer in the headlights or were just plain confused enough, stuck in a paradigm reset, to be struck by the weapon or empty hand; just about every time. The funny part about this is Lloyd was incredibly jet-lagged so my thinking was, “Dear God, what would he be capable of doing if he were well rested and completely focused!” To be frank, this was some of the most effective and for lack of a better term, dangerous methodologies I had ever encountered. A hard lesson for the martial art egotist to learn, at least it was for me.
It was at that moment, that I decided that I needed to learn this method. The reality being, you can only truly possess what you experience. So take it from me, once you experience this method, you too, will want to learn it!
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Great article John!
I’m glad you’re finally pushing the Piper method. I was always impressed with the depth and breadth of your understanding of FMA.
I remember when you first showed it to me I was skeptical but once you make contact you realize very quickly that it’s quite lethal.
I am looking forward to seeing a lot more of this and to watching the development of the Piper Method!