Renegade Method
Principle-based Martial Arts
Renegade: noun [ C ]
a person who has changed their feelings of support and duty from one political, religious, national, etc. group to a new one.
No matter what the style of Martial Arts there is a current of underlying principles binding them together. Power generation, timing, speed, resilience, coordination, and fighting strategies are always present in one form or another.
The Renegade Method is all about removing the idea that there is a BEST style or lineage. People do not belong to styles; styles belong to people and it is that kind of outside the box thinking that tends to put people’s hackles up in the martial arts community. My Gongfu brother coined us as Tai Chi Renegades as soon as we started openly sharing all the various “don’t tell white people” things were taught in confidence to one another. Yes, that is a quote from more than one of my masters and his….
Well, that kind of secrecy is what is killing the martial arts today. Secrets do not preserve arts they make sure when a master dies there are near to zero people who actually have all the info he kept secret and so with him dies a part of the art. repeat for a few generations and you get what you see today. Performance martial arts with no bite, qigong with no base in reality, and martial artists arguing on the internet over lineage instead of training.
Renegades because it does not matter where it came from if it works and makes sense; then it is good to train and renegades because we are willing to share openly without all the secrecy surrounding it. I personally will always teach what is appropriate for a student no matter what the secret may be, or the colour of their skin or their faith. I am a renegade because I don’t hold masters up on pillars and understand they are just people too, who have worked hard to become real masters instead of resting on their lineage.
Yeah, sometimes I get called a ruffian for wanting to cross hands and see what’s what, a renegade when I am ‘mixing’ lineages. But the bottom line is I can live with myself not holding back anything when I teach, if I have it then it is always on the table to share.
My NEW drunken boxing volume three : Internal Alchemy book is out (finally) HERE
Neil (thekungfuguy) Ripski 