“What exactly do you guys do out there at the park?” is a question I get asked a fair amount when I tell folks about the martial arts club.
So I shot a video. This is us throwing an intro session for a few people trying out Cabal Fang for the first time.
The Flag of The Order of Seven Hills
Update 7/18/19: My club still uses the flag but we’re now called Cabal Fang Temple, and we’re a 501(c)(3) non-profit educational charity. Visit our website or purchase our 12-week personal growth program at Smashwords, Amazon, B&N, or wherever fine e-books are sold.
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Original post:
This is our flag.
We are the Order of Seven Hills martial arts club, and this photo was taken on Saturday 3/2/13 at Petronius S. Jones Park on Idlewood Ave. in Richmond, VA.
Next month will be our 3rd anniversary. For three years we have met outdoors, twice a week, rain or shine in all four seasons, for an hour of martial arts practice followed by half an hour of savage calisthenics.
We are not superhuman commandos or ex-Navy Seals. We are just a bunch of guys from all walks of life, some thick and some thin, some young and some old, getting fit enough to defend ourselves and our loved ones, cultivating our character, and expanding our minds.
We have frozen in cold dark night and baked in the hot afternoon sun. We have boxed, wrestled, attacked with and defended against wooden sticks and knives, practiced gun disarms with airsoft guns, drilled and dissected martial techniques of every description, tested ourselves against multiple attackers, subjected ourselves to savage gauntlets, pressed 10′ logs overhead, slammed, tossed, and hefted tires, told stories around fires in the dark, faced enlightening initiations, and anointed our heads with oil.
We are The Order of Seven Hills.
We meet on Tuesdays from 7:00 to 8:30 PM at West End Manor Civic Association, 8600 Lakefront Drive, Henrico, VA 23294-6100. Saturdays from 3:30 to 5:00 PM we meet at Petronius S. Jones Park on Idlewood Avenue near VCU.
Membership is open to anyone over 18 years of age. We are a club not a business, so there’s no charge. Just come and work out with us. If you stick around we’ll ask you to sign the scroll and you’ll become an official member.
Our martial art is called Cabal Fang. To learn more about Cabal Fang or connect with us, here are some helpful links:
Cabal Fang info site on Tumblr
Cabal Fang Members on Tumblr
Cabal Fang on Twitter
Cabal Fang Martial Arts Group on Facebook
If you look on the menu on the right-hand-side of the page you will now see a new link under MY OTHER PROJECTS called My Workout Log. Click that link and you will be directed to a Googlesheet showing my workouts.
I’m still being cautious about my elbows, trying to make sure the tendonitis is really gone before I push it hard. But I am nonetheless slowly ramping up to a serious fitness test, and an adjunct to the Cabal Fang project, coming sometime in May.
More on that later.
12 minute martial fitness workout: For 1st 7 mins, as many sets as you can of 10 Squats, 15 Situps, and 20 Double-unders. Then as many full-power kicks as you can in 5 minutes. I made 4 sets and 150 kicks. Disappointed – wanted to make 5/200. Oh well, next time…
Getting “Wisdom of the Raven: The Mystic Way of Cabal Fang” ready for publication on Smashwords started me thinking about the reasons I started Cabal Fang. One of the big reasons is that I no longer wanted to be teach people how to be obedient cogs in the Civilization Machine. And then I realized that, although I’ve told all my friends, I’d never publicly explained my position on martial arts for kids.
First of all, let me say that I taught Korean Karate (TKD/TSD hybrid arts) to inner city kids for years through the YMCA and City of Richmond Recs & Parks. I meant well, and I believe 99% of martial arts instructors mean well too. But I noticed first hand some things that others didn’t seem to see, and I stopped teaching kids. Eventually I developed Cabal Fang — which I specifically designed for adults only.
Martial arts can be great for adults. Here’s why I don’t recommend it for children.
Kids don’t learn that fighting is a dangerous last resort.
Martial arts indirectly teach kids that fighting is ‘cool.’ Sometimes they even do it directly and without shame. I recently saw a martial arts school website where they advertised pizza and “martial arts movie nights” for kids — which is basically a babysitter armed with bad food and even worse messages.
Direct messages like the example above are easy to spot, but the indirect ones are less obvious. The first problem is that no sane instructor is going to let kids fight with any level of contact approaching realism. The kids spar at a very low contact level while layered in padded foam. Fighting is rendered a safe and innocent-seeming ballet of violence. Kids aren’t stupid. No matter what the master says, they get the message of the action: that fighting is cool and fun.
Kids don’t learn self-discipline.
What they learn is that you have to take orders from adults and more advanced students if you’re going to get your next belt. That’s a far cry from self-discipline. If you want your kid to learn how to be a good little soldier and obey the pecking order, you’ve come to the right place. But not if you want to encourage your kid to form peer relationships with others and peacefully stand up to anyone for what they believe — kids, parents, and stupid adults included.
Kids don’t grasp the spiritual side of the martial arts.
As a general rule, kids can’t comprehend the intricacies of meditation and contemplation. They will sit and pretend to be meditating because they know it won’t last very long and pretty soon, if they’re quiet and obedient, they’ll be allowed to bang on each other some more.
If you want to teach your kid self-discipline, that fighting is bad, and how to get along with others, enroll them in a team sport like Football, Baseball, Basketball, Soccer, etc. with a good coach. Better yet, teach them yourself. If you don’t know how, read a couple of good parenting books and the whole family will benefit.
If you’re dead set on self defense training for your child, enroll them in the school wrestling program or in a good Judo or Jiu Jitsu school (not MMA). Just check out the coach/master first and make sure there’s no freakish weight-cutting going on and that there’s an emphasis on the team aspect.
Wrestling is full contact with no strikes. At least your child will learn that fighting is dangerous and that it hurts.
Walking on park trails, stop every 4 minutes and do Zombie Squats (arms extended, butt to heels). First set 12, second set 24, third set 36, etc. up to 60 (total of 180 squats in 30 minutes). Walk it off (10 minutes). Contemplation or Meditation (10 minutes). Transit time to/from work (10 minutes). Total 1 hour.
1/2 pyramid up to 10 reps: Lunge, Jackknife, Jump Squat, Pike (Total of 55 each, 20 minutes). 500 kicks in combos of 2, 3, or 4 (20 minutes). Stretching (10 minutes). Contemplation/Meditation (10 minutes). Total time 1 hour.
Being interested in both martial arts and occult matters, I searched for news related to both. This article turned up.
It looks like a fun event for the kids, but I wonder what Mas Oyama, Gichin Funakoshi, or Johannes Liechtenauer would say if they could see this kind of thing.
Maybe I take things too seriously, but events like this don’t seem to be in the true spirit of Halloween or in the true spirit of martial arts, and I wonder if they might be a disservice to the children. I’m not completely sure, but sure enough that I decided to stop teaching martial arts to kids back in 2000.
If I was going to host a martial arts event for Halloween, it would be somber event for adults, perhaps a workout followed by a meditation on the those who have fallen in defense of others.
Dave Durch
In the folder that holds my martial arts resume you will find the certificates I earned from taking Dave Durch‘s JKD/Kali seminars. It turns out that Dave landed a role in the movie Tomorrow You’re Gone. The film stars Stephen Dorff, Willem Dafoe, and Michelle Monaghan. It is in post-production and is scheduled for release later this year.
Yes, Dave has the panther-like body mechanics of a master martial artist; and yes, he looks like a man who could put you in the ICU (because he very easily could). But Dave is one of nicest, most sincere and caring martial artists I’ve ever met. Go see his movie when it comes out. He’s the real deal.
Congratulations Dave, I’m happy for you!
Cabalfang.com‘s webmaster (my son, aka “Spider”) will be running in the October 22nd-23rd Tough Mudder at Wintergreen, and he’ll be doing us proud in a Cabal Fang t-shirt. More to come…
Click here to download my eBooks from Smashwords.com in multiple formats, or visit these links to get them at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Books2Read.com
I teach free of charge through Heritage Arts , a 501(c)(3) educational charity offering free or donation-only classes related to martial arts, fitness, outdoor skills, and spiritual development. Distance learning programs available. Visit the Heritage Arts website to find out more, or click here to join the Heritage Self-Defense group on Facebook.
What is Heritage Rough ‘n’ Tumble? It’s mind-body-spirit form of American Rough ‘n’ Tumble, which began as a manner of no-holds-barred fighting in the Southern Virginia backcountry during the Colonial Era and has since grown, evolved, and adapted to the realities of modern self-defense. An amalgam of the varying techniques brought to America by colonists from all over the world, blended with the fighting methods of the over 900 distinct indigenous tribes, American Rough ‘n’ Tumble is perhaps the world’s most fearsome martial art.
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Robert Mitchell Jr. 