GM WIDMEYER SMASTER Guy E.Larke

GM WILLIAM WIDMEYER

WARRIOR… SCHOLAR… TEACHER… ROCK‘N ROLL REBEL… PHILOSOPHER…

PART 1 By SMaster Guy E. Larke

William Widmeyer Warrior… Scholar… Teacher… Rock‘n Roll Rebel… Philosopher… PART 1 By Master Guy Edward Larke

The path of a martial artist is as unique as a fingerprint or a snowflake. Some are much more unique than others. As someone who thought outside the box and lived a mile away from it, I find myself drawn to those types. About twenty-five years ago, I met a foreign Buddhist monk in Eastern Canada, where I lived. During one of our many discussions, he told me that the “complete man” journey, so to speak, involved being a father, a son, a sibling, a friend, a husband, a student, a teacher, a warrior, and a healer. Quite an ambitious undertaking, I thought but very inspiring. In reality, the number of people I have met who fit all those is few and far between. It was inevitable that I would actually befriend one. Grandmaster William Widmeyer and I met as we were both in the American Korean martial arts scene (myself more as a writer). He reached out to me, and we began to talk about sharing his story, his art, and his martial revelations. This series is an abridged version of those conversations…

background?

Widmeyer - I was born October 19th, 1975, in Kokomo, Indiana. I grew up in Marion, Indiana, though. My mother is Beverly Widmeyer, and my father, David Widmeyer. He passed away, though. I have a brother, Curt Nickels, and a sister Angela Vest. In addition, I have two sons, Anthony and Vincent, with my ex-wife Kathryn. Recently I married Lorena Acojedo, an amazing lady! Larke - Once you started, was it what you expected? How so?

Larke - What your early years were like? What caught your imagination first, music or martial arts?

Widmeyer - Actually, my first love was roller skating, but I changed to ice skating very young. I ice skated until I was 16. Eventually, I blew my hip apart and had to stop. At one time, I was the best in 21 states at my level. Music came second. Due to my injuries, I started playing guitar in my recovery and downtime.

Larke - What got you into the arts? With who?

Widmeyer - I was mugged, basically. I got ran off the road when I was 16. The guy pulled a knife on me. I was able to defend myself, with only a small cut to my hand and a sprained foot. I was using a cane for part of the rehab for my foot. I always collected knives and swords, so my mother tried to find me a cane sword to use. She called a local school, and he said sure he could get them, and he could even teach me to use them. I had always wanted to study martial arts but could not find anyone to teach me due to hemophilia. Most instructors would say NO WAY. But the local guy was brave enough to take me on. I started under Rembert McGruder in Tae Kwon Do (ITF). Coming from a skating background, I was used to training very hard, so I just changed gears to martial arts. It was great therapy for my hip. I did a lot of searching, and after training with McGruder, I ended up with Grandmaster In-Suk Pak. Initially, I was looking for him, but my research led to many dead ends. When I met him in Toronto on my spring break, Grandmaster Pak was there as it was his school. PURELY LUCK. I knew a lot of high-ranking grandmasters eventually started their own systems. That is precisely what Grandmaster Pak did!

Widmeyer - At first, I was happy just to train and learn. I was a very dedicated athlete, so it was nice to have something to focus on again. They did a lot of point tournaments. I was unbeatable in forms. But I always got disqualified in point sparring for excessive contact. However, part of my training was being sent into no-holds-barred MMA matches.

Larke - What was different about Pak's kind of training?

Widmeyer - We would train anywhere from six to 10 hours a day. Then he had a “set” of different training partners, and it would vary daily who would come in because he was not exactly the gentlest person, to begin with. But he also expected me not to be gentle. So, I would burn through training partners regularly. There were many times those guys went home after one day. Sometimes they wouldn't come back for a week. So, I had groups. One set was on a Monday, while another set was on a Tuesday. But it also allowed me to train with different body types and learn how to fight different body types, which was really cool. But the training was incredibly intense, and he had no mercy. He was what you imagine as your typical grandmaster. He used to wake me up in the middle of the night. I slept on the mat in the school. At night I’d sweep up the hair and mop up the blood before I went to bed. He'd wake me up at 2 or 4 o'clock in the morning. “Hey William, you grab me here.” Then he’d put me in a pretzel. I'd be like, “ARGH!”. “Okay, go to bed now!” and he’d go back to his room because he lived in the school too. Now his wife lived elsewhere, and he would go see his kid during our break time and spend time with his wife every day. He was almost always at the school. If not, he was spending time with his family. He was a harsh taskmaster and expected 110%. I was no exception. In fact, I had it worse. On a few occasions, we would come out of a restaurant or a public place only to have someone assault me (unsuccessfully). Later I found out Pak was the one that was instigating those situations as he was constantly testing

me. After he would analyze and critique my “performance.”

Larke - What did you learn in all the competitions you got involved in?

Widmeyer - I did what I was trained to do. I defeated my opponents by analyzing what they could and couldn’t do. Then I employed what seemed to be the most logical offense.

Larke - Aside from what he taught you, what did you “learn” in the ring against these different fighters?

Widmeyer - I would go both routes. So, I did what he said to me before getting in the ring with person “x.” Then. He would tell me how I was supposed to beat that person. If I, let's say hypothetically, went to do an outside wrist lock and failed, the training I had that night was worse than the fight I had earlier. So, I really learned how to read people. I also learned how to understand the theory of auto kinematics or how the body works. That's really what he was teaching me was how to understand it. Even though it's a living organism, it can still be scripted on how they moved. The biggest thing I learned. The way he was training me. Basically, to learn. If you're patient, you’ll see there's a moment in every one of these competitions where somebody will win or lose. “A,” you have to be patient enough and get there and not care whether you win or lose. The way I was taught, I went into instinct mode. Be it good or bad; I always got tunnel vision. Often, I’d win a fight and not realize “how” I won until somebody told me. If you “think,” you already lost! You cannot activate the brain fast enough to operate in that type of warfare. I was more like more of a striker than a grappler. My thing was I was able to mirror whatever your weakness was. So, when I was in Canada, training with Pak, we used to go to school for school every other day or so. You go to a judo school, we would go to a traditional school, and we'd go to these different schools to watch and “spar.” What he taught me to do was watch people. So, I learned that various arts move in different ways. I could watch a guy warm-up, then how I had to fight him because I knew ways to shut down their primary techniques and advantages.

Larke - When did you start to conceive creating your own style?

Widmeyer - That's hard to answer to be honest with you, because Grandmaster Pak died so many years ago prior to his death we were reworking the complete curriculum. It was honestly a mess of charts and notes, I had to make sense of it all and put all the proper pedagogy in place. Everything was there, I just had to finish putting everything in a complete logical framework, and make sure it all worked together. The main person that was a huge help to me in that process was Dr. Maung Gyi. He's a Bando (Burmese martial art) grandmaster. Dr Gyi’s main thing was, I can't really teach you anything new. All I can help you do is make sense of what you know. So, he taught me how to break things apart, into what he called the philosophy of motion or the philosophy of movement. That concept helped to teach me how to break it all apart into core physical concepts. Larke - When did you meet Dr Maung Gyi?

Widmeyer - I believe I met him 1997.

Larke - So, did you look for him or were you introduced to him?

Widmeyer - One of my students, Dr. Dakin Burdick approached me and invited me to join him at a Bando seminar in Ohio. To be honest with you, I was very reluctant to go, but in the end, it was life changing that I went. We went to the seminar, during the first module Dr Gyi was doing Min Zin meditation, essentially it is meditation with rocks. To be completely honest and transparent with you, I did not understand the purpose of it. Dr Gyi looked at me and stated, You look like you are bored but you move very different. Then I replied, Well, I've done a lot of meditation and I understand the motion, but I really don't understand what we're doing. Then he said, We're trying to focus, trying to teach you how to generate power. We were using a single rock while meditating, passing the rock from one hand to the other in large circular motions.

I told him, Well, I don't think I really have a problem generating power. I just would like to understand the “why” of what we're doing. Then he went, Well, you can generate power. He asked me to show him. So, I took the rock and I broke the rock with my other hand, and he went, Oh…. That was the moment that Doc fell in love with me and vice versa. It was like a switch. After that, he was kind of a secondary. I can't say teacher, more of a mentor, advisor or whatever. Dr Gyi was unbelievably helpful in helping me make rhyme and reason to everything and putting it in a logical framework. When Grandmaster Pak had passed away, he left me control of the art we were working on, it was called Kong Jin Hapkido, J-I-N. The romanticization is very similar, only different by one little line from Kong Shin Bup. But the meaning to the root Chinese is hugely different. Kong Shin Bup means the Way of the Empty Mind. Kong Jin means the Way of the Meritorious Retainer. So, he left me an art called Kong Jin Hapkido. In 2014, I had the opportunity to connect with GM Rudy Timmerman; another fellow classmate under Pak. We were able to share a lot of stories and reminisce about him.

Larke - Was there a certain unifying concept or theory in particular you were trying to break away from?

Widmeyer - Well, to be honest with you it was after I met Dr. Dakin Burdick. He was a he was a professor at Indiana University, and they had a big martial art program through the United States Hapkido Federation, after I met him, his thing was, What you do is effective, efficient and straight to the point. We need to do something with this. Years later, I found myself teaching Combatives for the Department of Defense and other federal agencies.

Larke - Okay, when did you officially label what you do?

Wildmeyer - It was prior to the Korean Martial Arts Masters Hall of Fame in August of 2017. That was the fourth annual Hall of Fame event, held in Sault Ste. Marie, Canada. At that time GM Rudy Timmerman formally promoted me to my ninth dan and the formal Kwan was established. Ohaeng Hapkido was at that time recognized as a standalone Kwon.

Larke - How symbolic are the levels?

Widmeyer - Each belt rank is symbolically represented within the logo of the art. This logo was used by GM Pak in one form or another since the early 70’s. The original logo was just the five element cycles, it didn't have the triangle, and it was just inside a circle. It was the original Canadian Hapkido Association logo, and then modified a few more different times.

Larke - Is your system better suited to experienced fighters or new practitioners? Why is it?

Widmeyer - The Ohaeng Hapkido system can be used by someone that already has a high level of skill, and augment what they already do. By applying my principles to the existing applications and concepts can be refined, creating a better efficiency to already existing knowledge. Yes, is the best way to answer that. As I mentioned previously, Ohaeng Hapkido can be employed by someone that already has a high level of skill, and augment what they already do. By applying the principles of the art to the individual’s existing knowledge, everything they know can be refined and improved upon. I know I will never be able to create a clone of myself. My goal is to help all my students become the best version of what they can become. On the other hand, the system was designed to teach a beginning student conceptbased learning that can be applied to a multitude of applications. My university degree was in psychology there are a lot of learning principles and cognitive principles on how people encode things in the brain more. The way the art is built and designed it is meant to reinforce the next layer of learning. The principles that are taught in white belt, are revisited in white belt/yellow stripe. From that point concepts and principles are revisited again in yellow belt, so the pedagogy is always layered upon itself. For example, one of my female students, Jessica Bennett, had zero martial arts background or experience, she was able to learn conceptual progression from the

first day. Miss Bennett just recently was promoted to blue belt-red stripe. As far as understanding principles and being able to do things, I would put her up against most anyone, she is able to apply what I call “TLC” properly. TLC stands for torque, leverage and compression. Those principles are what is needed to manipulate any biomechanical movement. Miss Bennett understands how to generate power from the core; not focusing power generation from ancillary muscle groups. The primary focus is to generate power from the core.

Larke - I just wondered what your opinion is in learning what you're doing? Is it better to start with a clean slate, like the empty cup? Or is it better to have something to start with?

Widmeyer - I really can't answer that because every person is different. I have no problem teaching anyone from either scenario, developing them from there. The main thing is understanding the core concepts and principles. Once a person understands the core principles and concepts, they start to apple them together able to lace it all together. Each student has to learn what works best for them and put that into their fundamental “tool box.”

Larke - So, it's more of a thinking man's art than athletically based?

Widmeyer - I got this from Dr. Gyi. If you take all the martial systems and break them down, they're going to fall into one of three categories. They're going to fall into an athletic based system. That's your Taekwondo, boxing, Muay Thai or MMA. The emphasis is that it is system that is regulated by a formalized set of rules. Then you have your aesthetic systems, where they do things, the way they did it before, and the strength lies within the tradition of the art. That's what they believe the strength of the art is found. So that's a lot of your Japanese and your Chinese and some of your Okinawan systems are very, very deeply rooted into the ancestry and the lineage and we've done it this way, don't deviate, don't change it. This, the strength lies in the consistency from the start to where we're at now. Lastly you have what I call a combative based system, which works on maximum efficiency with minimal effort in the shortest amount of time possible. Usually these are disciplines that teaches realistic self-defense scenarios. The way the curriculum is designed, is people learn things, aesthetically, from the start. Then about yellow belt - blue stripe, they start getting into more athletic approach to it, then about Poom belt, they start getting into more combative approach to it. So, what you've done is you've taken the efficiency as aesthetics to here, then you take the efficiency of athletics to here, then you take efficiency to Combatives to here. You cannot teach someone a combative system with zero experience. What I figured out by teaching Rangers down in Benning, is I was trying to teach Combatives. These guys didn't understand the idea of how to move with things, or how to not over apply force. So, we figured out that for guys like that, we have to start with an athletic approach, and then eventually refine it down to combative and to go from that aesthetic approach down to a combative approach. You absolutely destroy people.

Larke - Next one, what does Ohaeng mean literally and figuratively?

Widmeyer - Ohaeng is a translation from the term Wu Xing 五行 . That's the Chinese for the Five Element Theory that leads into Ohaeng which is the Korean translation of it.

Larke - Why did you choose that?

Widmeyer - Everything uses principles from within the Five Element Theory in an applied fashion.

Larke - So, I just did I didn't get touched on this already with people that have the experience. But I'll ask it again, how much room is there in the system for individuality or creativity?

Widmeyer - Everyone, every individual is going to be unique on what works best. Based on what I call a size matrix of how tall and how muscular, or your weight in relationship to your attacker. That relationship is going to dictate certain principles that are more efficient from this one to that one over here. But if I'm working from this one to here, the principles are going to be different. But if I'm the guy here going down to there, my principles are completely different based on my way over here. So, the idea is to make each individual as efficient as they possibly can maximizing their strengths that they have based on the relationships and minimize the weaknesses based on analyzing what's called a size matrix. (This will be discussed in a future issue).

Larke - What kind of skills do you teach first?

Widmeyer - The first thing is I have to figure out where they are, as far as their core skills as far as balance and coordination. Okay, once we understand that, I can work on helping them with movement, you can't teach movement until you know how a person is able to move. Once I understand that we can plan and start the developmental stages. But the root of everything is balance, coordination, and structure. Understanding that and applying it allows students to develop and apply power generated from core movement.

Larke - But what would be next, like would it be like stances like that or be defensive skills?

you're going to develop your balance and your coordination. Stances are going to be your balance; movements are going to be your coordination. So, then you add in your blocks, strikes and kicks. Later, we start working on the falls and throws. Next, we start applications. as far as the technical applications, then it bounces back and forth. But that goes to the 14 pieces of the art; stances movements, strikes, punches, kicks, blocks, weapon techniques, applications, escapes, encounters, throws, falls, pins, and ground fighting. Lastly, you work on your concepts, theories, knowledge of anatomy and the philosophy. So that's the 14 pieces. --------------------------------------------

Currently, training can be done at any one of eight schools in four nations or at one of his many seminars (27 this year in 11 countries). --------------------------------------------

Testimonials:

My impression of Grandmaster William was a kind, gentle, honourable man, who clearly has a deep passion for his martial art. He was very respectful, knowledgeable, and fun to be around. He was very friendly and radiated positivity and confidence. All the students and my kids took to GM William straight away.

The reason I love Ohaeng Hapkido is because it is very unique. I have trained in quite an array of different martial arts throughout my life, but Ohaeng Hapkido is special, with a hint of madness. Ohaeng Hapkido is so effective. Grandmaster showed me and my students some really awesome techniques. He taught in a way everyone picked it up. We had a few children on the mats also, and Grandmaster William was great with them. He showed great leadership. The children fully respected GM William and had lots of fun. The adults and I loved every minute as well.

Master Gary Peck, Oxford, England

I host the Korean Martial Art Festival (KMAF) every year in Crestview, FL. In 2017, Grand Master William Widmeyer presented at KMAF and has every year since other than when we all missed due to COVID. I've also seen him present in Canada, New Jersey, Georgia, south Florida, and other venues. He is one of the busiest people conducting seminars. He has some unorthodox ways of twisting people which is always welcomed when you’re with a group of twisted people like those of us in martial arts. He now runs the non-profit Korean Martial Arts Masters Hall of Fame and tries to make a positive influence in the martial art community. He’s always eager to help and enjoys seeing the success of others.

Master Thomas Gordan, Texas, USA