Can your grandfather break rocks with
his hands and head? Ours can!
After training in traditional martial
arts for 50 years, Grandmaster
Hausel of Gilbert still practices 5 to 6 days a week and teaches 10 classes
3 days a week with periodic weekend clinics. The former professor of martial
arts taught many hundreds
of students karate, kobudo,
jujutsu, samurai
arts, self-defense,
martial arts history, and women’s
self-defense classes while at the University of Wyoming from 1977 to 2007.
After retiring from the university, he moved to Gilbert and opened a martial arts school on the border of Chandler, Gilbert and Mesa and has students who travel from
as far as Phoenix, Scottsdale, Queen Creek and Tempe three times a week and others
who periodically travel from as far as Colorado, Massachusetts, Maryland, Nebraska,
Utah, Wyoming, India and Vietnam to train at the Arizona Martial Arts center. He kicks and punches most every day
except when he is searching for gemstones
and gold and writing books.
 |
| In 1976, Soke Hausel broke roofing tiles with his head for karate demos. While at the University of Wyoming, he actually broke slabs of rock quarried north of Laramie at half-time demonstrations at University of Wyoming basketball games. |
Fifty years ago, Grandmaster Hausel played
guitar in a rock n’ roll band when the band decided to take classes at a local
karate school because long hair was not popular. In 1964, if one had long hair,
people actually restrained the person to cut their hair. So the band learned self
defense. Even his high school administration bullied and discriminated against
kids with long hair, so he took matters in his own hands, so to speak.
It was a different time. In 1964, bullying
was encouraged. “But I highly recommend
it. One had to learn to stand for what they believed in; unlike today, where
adults cry over anything that doesn’t go their way. Our society has really
wimped out over the past few decades”. The Hall-of-Fame martial artist
began when karate training was brutal. Even so, he elected to continue martial arts for the rest of his
life. Martial arts should be a lifelong commitment - not a fling.
 |
| Soke Hausel taught rock breaking to UW students every spring. |
Traditional arts provide opportunities
for people to earn rank and learn to defend themselves. Unfortunately, there
are many schools in Arizona that require 6-month, very expensive contracts in
order to receive a black belt at what is known as a McDojo or a diploma mill, whether
you can defend yourself or not. Traditional martial arts are about earning
everything and are inexpensive!
“I
feel like a 30-year-old in a 60-year-old body. I have more power and acceleration
in my punches, kicks and blocks than at any other time in my life. Martial arts
have kept me healthy even though I have a few back problems – but those were
all related to younger times when I tried to lift too much weight for a skinny
guy.”
Soke Hausel teaches martial arts at the Arizona School of Traditional Karate
(aka Arizona Hombu) on the border of
Gilbert and Mesa. He has a few thousand students scattered worldwide: many are
university professors, teachers, engineers, scientists, doctors, lawyers,
social scientists, law enforcement agents and artists. His son, daughter and
grandsons are proficient in martial arts.
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