Erwin Legaspi was born and raised in
Waipahu, Hawaii. Erwin’s early martial arts background included a few years
of doing kata at a karate school for mischievous kids and being training
dummies for friends who took judo, boxing, and Wing Chun.
Erwin’s real journey into the martial arts
began in 1994, after a spending an entire summer of being a library bookworm
researching his Filipino heritage and martial arts. Ironically at the same
time of self-discovery, he met Maestro Eustaquio ‘Snookie’ Sanchez Jr. who
also happened to have a school in Waipahu since the early 80’s and was world
renown for his skills with the bullwhip and doing hard unpadded training.
As he recalls:
“Everything about those
days was tough. The school was in a rough place and my classmates were
street fighters, soldiers, cops, and ex-gang members. People would come by
to the school or to Waipahu Pump Liquor (where Maestro Snookie worked) to
try to test some of the older guys out and even Maestro himself. I was just
a bookworm – It wasn’t my scene and at times it was pretty frightening. At
the very least though, I saw early on the type of things that worked in
application and other things that were meant only to be practiced as mere
training drills designed to strengthen specific athletic attributes.”
“Above all though, the
training was the scariest. Maestro Snookie believed in the old, hard,
unpadded training, and because of this, we lost A LOT of students. In the
first two weeks both my hands were entirely swollen, and I had several bone
spurs and fractures. I don’t think I was able to knock on a door for over a
year. My arms and hands would also constantly tremble after unpadded
sparring, as if I had a nervous disorder, because they were hit so much
during every class. Since we trained at least three times a week for three
hours and sparred majority of the time, my hands never completely healed. I
also received a few concussions from direct hits to the head with the
rattan. I was young and I didn’t dare say anything about my injuries
because my parents would have forced me to quit. As a guy who never liked
sports and was really a bookworm, I didn’t stay because I was tough - the
only thing that kept me there was my desire to learn more about my culture
and the fact that Snookie was such a positive role model for me. Though we
no longer practice this way, the lessons from those days still stay with
me. It still keeps me honest about what I know (and don’t know) and has
given me a practical perspective in understanding techniques and their
probability of success in actual application.”
After Maestro Snookie died in 1996, Erwin
supplemented his Kali-Eskrima training by working out with friends who did
other arts like judo, Kenpo, and Japanese jujitsu. Erwin eventually joined
up with Makaha Kenpo under instructor Gordon Magallanes and received a black
belt under him. “Gordon was very open to allowing us to try the things we
knew and to see if it worked, because if it didn’t, everyone else in class
let us know it didn’t . . the hard way. Gordon was very open and practical
like Snookie because they both had to use their art in many actual
self-defense situations. Gordon also liked the Kenpo old, hard training as
well, and made us take as much punishment as we dished out – a moral lesson
I don’t think a lot of schools have nowadays to teach the student the
consequences of their actions – even if it’s justified for self-defense.”
Though the club is much smaller from its heyday, Erwin still practices with
the few active remaining members.
Erwin graduated from the University of
Hawaii at Manoa and got a BA in Asian Studies, with minors in philosophy
and Southeast Asian history. He formally joined the 02 family in late 2006
to learn Gracie Jujitsu and is back at UH MANOA to finish his masters degree
in Asian Studies. He currently works at UH for a program directed at
increasing underrepresented populations in college. He is presently a O2MAA
blue belt.
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