Kickboxing clever

Synge Street’s Mu-Gendo Kickboxing club held a martial arts seminar at the end of last month. Malachy Clerkin went along to watch

The martial arts are alive and kicking in the Liberties. For the last four years, Synge St CBS has been home to the Mu-Gendo kickboxing club.

To the untrained eye, kickboxing seems to place a lot of emphasis on the ‘martial’ side of things and very little on ‘arts.’ At a glance, it comes across as a brutal sport more at home on the street than in the ring. After a chat with Joe Canning, however, it becomes apparent that the sport has as much to do with guile as it does with grit.

Canning is the club’s driving force and along with three other instructors he trains and guides around forty youngsters from the age of fourteen up. They are divided into semi-contact and full-contact fighters with the split occurring mainly along the lines of age.

Approximately one fifth of the club’s members are female and nearly all are under the age of 25.Canning has been involved in martial arts for roughly thirty years now. Around seventeen years ago, he switched codes from karate to kickboxing in search of another challenge.

He is an unlikely figure for a black belt. A middle aged man with a considerable middle-age spread, his jolly appearance hides his massive will to win. In his eyes, "it’s all about winning. We must always respond to punishment from our opponents."

His co-instructor is Filippo Fusco, another middle aged martial arts expert. Fusco runs a chipper on Meath Street butthat is not his only experience in battering. He has been involved in martial arts for quite a while also and commands the respect of all in the club, including Canning.

When the seminar begins, Canning always addresses him as "Seance". Pronounced "sen-say", this is an Orienatal word used when referring to a teacher of the martial arts.The seminar begins with an hour of shadow boxing. The fighters split up into pairs and bombard each other with a series of jabs, hooks, uppercuts, kicks and sweeps.

Canning and Fusco walk around, speaking to each pair in turn, giving tips and sharing their experience. Every so often, Canning tells the group to stop and he talks tactics with them. He tells the group that "short jabs are no good unless your whole body moves with them." He stresses the importance of being mobile. "Always be on the move. The more you move the less you get hit. You should always be able to come out of the ring like Mohammed Ali and say ‘Look at me, I’m still beautiful."

The fighters all listen intently and when they resume shadow boxing, their faces are pictures of concentration. Nobody smiles or laughs until they take a rehydration break.

After the break, Fusco leads them in some stretching exercises. These are not your run of the mill stretches that the average football team go through. These look like they would be more at home in a medieval torture chamber. Every sinew and tendon in their bodies are given the treatment.

One of the most cruel looking involves each person putting their hands underneath their backsides and holding their feet two inches of the ground while Filippo walks around standing on their stomachs.

They then do 60 sit-ups and 50 push-ups and, amazingly, nobody cheats. This dedication is the most striking feature of the seminar. Everybody does exactly what Canning and Fusco tell them without questioning the punishment they are being subjected to.

If boxing is "the noble art" then kickboxing is "the global art." This is to be illustrated on Easter Sunday when an American junior team will come over to compete against some Irish fighters at the National Stadium on the South Circular Road.

The Mu-Gendo club will be taking part and Canning is very proud that his charges will be facing the "first ever team from America to fight here."