Dear WT-World Readers,

I am not a member of the EWTO, but probably the oldest friend Keith (known to you as "Si-Gung" and other things) has, and would like to add a few remarks to the interesting interview with Keith R. Kernspecht in WT-World.
Keith gave me a copy of the magazine when we last met up over Christmas.
 
I have probably known Keith the longest, for I first met him on our very first schoolday in 1952, on the way to the Muhlius Infants School for boys in Kiel. Both of us were armed with the customary first-day confectionary bag, and were escorted by our mothers. We quickly became friends, and not only because we had the same homeward journey, which we were soon making without our mothers.

Concerning the playground battles which took place to establish the pecking order amongst us boys, which Keith mentions of page 65 of the magazine, it really did amaze us all that as an otherwise not very robust fellow who exhibited practically no sporting talents whatsoever (except as an object of ridicule), Keith was able to use what for us were unfair tricks (e.g. a headlock)to get the better of all but one of us. Speaking of ridicule, as seven year-olds the gymnasium always rocked with laughter when it was Keith’s turn to try his hand at rope-climbing. To everybody’s great amusement he would hang on the end of the rope by his arms like a wet sack, unable to pull himself up by even one metre. And I still grin inwardly when I think of Keith’s efforts to get up onto the overhead bar. The awkwardness with which he tried to get one knee over the bar in the first place, never mind trying and failing to swing himself up onto it, was a slapstick act worthy of Mister Bean himself. Even our teacher could hardly contain his laughter – it was just so funny to watch Keith battling away to no avail.
But now back to the trick with the headlock. The pecking order had already been established in countless duels, and Keith had been firmly identified as one of the weaklings. But then one day he reshuffled the deck. During his more recent fights he had taken to applying a headlock on his opponent, then letting himself fall backwards where conventional wisdom had it that the fight was over – after all, both his shoulder blades were touching the ground. But to our amazement this was where Keith really got started, squeezing the opponent’s neck so relentlessly that the latter always had to whine for mercy, as he could no longer breathe properly!
I still have memories of Keith’s vice-like grip myself. There was no escaping it. Accordingly Keith rose in the ranks like a comet. The strongest boy in our class, Wolfgang Markl, whose whereabouts Keith would still like to know so that he can issue a challenge – who can help? – only tried his hand with Keith once. Once he had freed himself from Keith’s headlock with great difficulty, which meant that the fight was declared a draw, the two of them gave each other a wide berth thereafter.
A rumour spread around the class – perhaps it was I who started it as his friend – that Keith had only learned this one devastating headlock from his father, who also happened to be a conjurer (well, fancy that!) – otherwise he was still as useless at sports as ever.
Those were the days, when we young proletarians were still able to dish it out to our future masters without fear of punishment.
After the 4th grade Keith’s ambitious parents sent him to the ”Academician’s School” in Kiel, a school which appeared to us street kids to be something from another galaxy, as even the name implied.

Let me say the following about the "loser-leader" of the class photo accompanying the interview: it is not just with hindsight that one can see who is likely to make it and who is not. By his dress and position (very prominent, of course), the future leader is already obvious, while the losers or "street urchins" – nowadays it is hard to believe that our parents used to send us out into the street to play – had to make do with the last row – I am right on the left. How well a class society and a class photo go together!

Finally let me say that Keith showed all of us in the class what two and two makes, but according to the interview he still has a pretty low opinion of sport.
I wonder if he can climb a rope nowadays?

Reinhard Winkler

Dear Reinhard,
Even though your revelations are bound to do enormous harm to my image 54 years later, I intend to print them because they read so wonderfully. They are also true, and they support the assertion in my editorial that you can make anything of yourself with willpower, even if you are a bookworm with no sporting talent as I was …
Your friend
Keith

Dear Keith,
I must admit that I opened your e-mail with some trepidation, after all my drastic description of you on the climbing rope as a “wet sack” might have really given offence.
But as it proved, I was right in my assessment that you would see the funny side of my childhood memories of you, just as I saw things at the time.
But your career from being a "wet sack" to the ultimate martial artist is both a wonderful demonstration of your iron determination to succeed and an unrivalled source of motivation for your students.
My very best wishes to you – by the way, do you remember the remark you once made to me during weight-training, when you were trying to get me interested in it: "Reinhard, we need to physically prepare ourselves for marriage. Women demand a great deal of us men!" That’s so wonderful that it would be a pity not to record it for posterity.
Your old friend
Reinhard

Dear Reinhard,

You are indeed my very first friend from early childhood, and are particularly aware of the very stages in my development. It makes me laugh that I was apparently so useless at sport – I must have suppressed the memory somehow. After all, 54 years have passed since we first attended school.
How I turned from a loser into a winner in class, from a zero to a hero?
As you correctly say, my father really was an amateur stage magician or illusionist, and a pretty good one too, for at one of his students later became something like a world champion magician and the famous Marvelli also learned from him, later being awarded the title "Marvelli" by his master on my father’s recommendation.
My father was not just interested in illusions, however, but also in suggestion, hypnosis, feats of memory and self-improvement methods. He used to take part in relevant seminars held by a certain Mr G. in Munich and Dresden. When he returned he would teach me self-defence "tricks and dodges” which he had also learned there. My repertoire therefore exceeded the "sacrificial drop with choke-hold" for which I became famous in class, and which gave me the coming-out that changed my fate.
You are right in saying that none of this made me more sporty or strong at the time, as my superiority was based exclusively on technical skill and a sheer determination never to be the loser again. I was a skinny weakling, and a bookworm.
It was only much later, long after I had changed over to the other school, that I became interested in having a powerful physique (you know, mens sana in corpore sano …). I began systematic strength training in around 1958, having already started to learn martial arts). My uncle Albert in
Ellerbek was a wrestler and gymnast, and later he taught me some moves on the overhead bar, using the carpet-beating pole in the back yard. But with the exception of pull-ups and dips on the parallel bars, I never really grew fond of equipment gymnastics.
Since I keep precise records of all my training sessions, I had a look through them and in training diary No. 5 I found notes on a session held at my home in Kiel on 11th January 1964 – the other participants were a certain Joachim (A.) and you, my dear Reinhard.
As you can see from my handwritten notes from over 40 years ago, the three of us started with standing one-armed military dumbbell presses. With the right arm you managed the respectable figure of 60 pounds, with 84 in my case. During one-armed thrusts with slight leg action you managed 71 versus my own 101 pounds. In one-armed horizontal presses you again managed 71 pounds, while I managed 101.
Afterwards I challenged both of you at once to a wrestling match in my room. Naturally, if I had not won this I would not mention it here. So on 11.1.1964 I noted in my diary: "Beat both Reinhard and Achim at wrestling. Forced Achim to give up with a choke-hold, meanwhile kept Reinhard in a leg-scissor before choking him to submission as well."
During my entrance examination to join the police, I think it was in 1965, I had to demonstrate that I could swim and also climb a rope. Fortunately I knew this would be expected and was able to practice beforehand. I spent weeks at the "Vossenpott" near Kiel practicing my swimming, and rope-climbing in a gymnasium in Kiel (near today’s ADAC building) until I was able to manage it by the strength of my arms alone, without using my legs.
Very much later (and very atypically for WingTsun, as we mainly exercise the extensor muscles) pull-ups became one of my favourite exercises, and I still do them almost on a daily basis.
But this has still not made me "sporty" in the conventional sense, as my thing is to concentrate all my forces on a single goal, while the object of sport (even etymologically speaking: Latin deportare, Old French
desport) is to spread them.

My dear friend, thank-you for your letter – it shows that even somebody who is useless and a joke at sport can achieve something like "sporting" honours if he has the burning desire to do so – and if he catches himself at a successful moment in time, and makes this permanent and irreversible.

Your old childhood friend
Keith