I get contacted by people all over the world. Some years ago I received a letter from a man in Austria, looking for a recommendation for a school in Austria or Germany. As it happened, I had met Marc Sigle, who was living in SW Germany at the time and had since moved to the Stuttgart area. Mike was living on Lake Constance (Konstanz), about 2 hours away. He had been training with a kenpo group in Berlin, but it wasn't working out for some reason.
Mike arranged to meet Marc and subsequently started to train with him, driving the distance frequently, and going to seminars. After five years, last night we tested and promoted him to first degree black. Mike had a written thesis about a half inch thick in both English and German, with both the written and form parts explained with diagrams. It was very clear as to what his goal was in demonstrating his grasp of the system. You English only speakers should think about your test and consider what it might have been like trying to answer questions put to you in a language not your own, even with a translator, under the stress of the exam. Not to mention the frustration of not knowing the words to explain the answer suitably, and the fact that we often ask questions you don't know the answer to anyway and wondering if it's because you don't know or if you just didn't understand the question because it might as well have been in Chinese.
Mike had experience in Kyokushin previously and did a nice blend at times of the hard Japanese striking and leg kicking into the kenpo techniques. His structure and execution was good. This a guy you want with you in a dark alley.
It was well done and I congratulate Mike. Who would have thought that an answer to a letter from across the Atlantic would have me sitting at his black belt test?
Mike is now actively teaching kenpo to nine students and is the progenitor of kenpo in Austria.
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