It’s been pretty cool having an NFL player start training Ving Tsun down at the Detroit school I attend (and I can’t wait until he gets opened to tsui mah… actually, I’m deathly afraid of when the guy will be able to start hitting everyone else around the floor). I just figured I’d pop in and share the story, since ESPN even picked it up and has given my sifu a few phone calls. And also, Andre is a pretty cool guy.
But at 6-feet-2 and 290 pounds, Fluellen stands out in a martial-arts class designed for self-defense and populated by baristas, bail bondsmen, truck drivers and musicians.
“The art is for self-defense,” said Owen Matson, Fluellen’s Sifu – or instructor – and the academy’s owner. “The real, primary question of self-defense is facing a larger, more aggressive attacker. So it’s nuts, because how many times are there that a 300-pound guy is going to be legitimately training to defeat opponents who are bigger than he is? He’s one of the only people I could imagine in that situation.”
While Fluellen’s foray into martial arts had little to do with football at first – he watched the kung fu movie “Ip Man” earlier this year and thought taking Wing Chun would be a fun, challenging way to spend the off-season – it took one class to realize how much carryover there would be to the field.
…
“A guy who coached me before, he calls it the power circle,” Fluellen said. "Our defensive line coach (Kris Kocurek) calls it your inside number. The Wing Chun Sifu, he calls it your centerline. You can’t let anybody invade the centerline, so at all cost, you’ve got to either use your hands or use your body to turn to either defeat the hands or get around the hands.
“That’s pretty much really what’s going on (on the defensive line). It’s just trying to defeat the hands and get into the other person’s center.”
Also: http://espn.go.com/espn/page2/index?id=6631391
Dagon Akujin
P.S. Yes, I know it’s been years since I’ve been around. Also, I’m doing great, for those of you wondering. 