Have A Drink On Me

There's an old story about a dedicated student of quan fa. He trains everyday, very hard, doing his best to emulate his sifu (master). Through the years he improves and becomes a great champion, but one day he realizes he's reached a plateau in his training. His abilities and knowledge have come to a standstill. In spite of his already acquired great skill, he is distraught by this turn of events. Finding himself at the local watering hole, he hopes to find relief at the bottom of a bottle. As certain inebriation sets in, some of the other trainees observe him getting plastered and rush back to the school to inform the master. Enraged, the master sets off to teach his young disciple a stern lesson. Forced to defend himself in this altered state of consciousness, the student is liberated from conventional thinking processes and in turn fights in a seemingly off-balanced, lopsided manner. Finding his charge completely unpredictable with this contorted approach to combat, the master has decided he's had enough and calls it quits. Afterward, when sobriety finally returns, the student realizes he has transcended his limitations with a new creation - Zui quan - the Drunken style. Kung fu would never be the same.

Alcohol is occasionally referred to as spirits. Having spirit in the martial arts is favorable, as in "fighting spirit". But too much of a good thing is no good. Alcohol does indeed have health enhancing properties, and artists of every type have composed under its influence. The benefits of consumption are optimal at about .06% in the circulatory system - about two drinks for most people. Beyond that, things tend to go awry. To say that the effects of alcohol have been known to produce violent tendencies in some is somewhat cliche. A good portion of street fights and even domestic disputes have been drinking related. Squaring off with someone who has "beer muscles" is risky business, as getting tanked significantly reduces one's superego (the Freudian seat of good behavior) and increases the pain threshold. Drunkards have also been known to exhibit unusual levels of strength.

Research has revealed that having a glass of wine twenty minutes before studying something enhances memory retention. When social inhibitions are thwarted we learn better! An adult student showed up one night at the dojo with whiskey on his breath. (Maybe he read that report.) He was relatively new, and he geared up for what was maybe his second time at kumite. When it was his turn to spar with one of the black belts, he attempted to project some of his abusive tendencies onto his senior. He (the novice) came out of it with a broken nose, but I don't think he felt much. Imbibing booze before a rigorous karate class is not recommended, and his pre-training libation of Jack Daniel's thankfully came to an end. See, you can learn something from drinking.