Episode 784 - Máistir Maxime Chouinard
Máistir Maxime Chouinard is a Martial Arts practitioner and instructor of Antrim Bata.
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Máistir Maxime Chouinard - Episode 784
Máistir Maxime Chouinard started training in 1997 with Kyokushin karate in his hometown of Sainte-Anne des Monts. In 2002, he started to practice and research Historical Martial Arts, focusing on the military sabre, La Canne and Le Baton. The same year, he also started practicing Japanese kenjutsu, becoming an instructor in Shinkendo, Toyama Ryu and Hyoho Niten Ichi Ryu. Over the years, he also trained in Canne de combat, Yagyu Shinkage Ryu, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and Olympic fencing, and participated in Dog Brothers events. In 2007, he traveled to Ireland, where he was introduced to Antrim Bata, a style of bataireacht or Irish stick, which he started teaching in 2009. He now works to promote this art around the world and is heading Antrim Bata internationally. Maxime is also an affiliate member of the HEMA Alliance.
In this episode, Máistir Maxime Chouinard talks about the style of the Irish stick, Antrim Bata, and his experience training in kenjutsu. Listen to learn more!
Show notes
You may check out www.antrimbata.com, www.hemamisfits.com, www.BAHFF.ca
Show Transcript
Jeremy Lesniak:
Hey, what's going on everybody? Welcome. This is whistlekick Martial Arts Radio, episode 784 with today's guest, Mr. Max Chouinard. I'm Jeremy Lesniak. I founded whistlekick cause I love martial arts, specifically traditional martial arts, and that's why we're doing all the things that we're doing over here at whistlekick to connect, educate and entertain all of you. What are all those things? Go to whistlekick.com. If you haven't been in, let's say a month, you're missing out on stuff. We are adding new things, new projects, new products all the time. Get on the newsletter list. That's the easiest way to know about all the cool stuff that we're working on. If you consider yourself a passionate, traditional martial artist, if you do karate or TaeKwonDo or Kung Fu or HEMA, I don't care what it is, you're part of our crew, our family. If you wanna be and we make a lot of stuff and produce a lot of stuff and share a lot of stuff to our family. Get on the newsletter list. Go to whistlekick.com, follow us on social media. We're @whistlekick everywhere. This website gets its, I'm sorry, this podcast, there we go, gets its own website, whistlekickmartialartsradio.com, and that's where you can go to go deeper on any episode, you can grab transcripts, you can search through them. Oh, what would that person said, that thing? You're gonna find it. It's all over there. As well as the links and the photos and the videos, all the cool stuff that we do for these episodes. Now, if you wanna help us out, if you wanna support us, you could buy something at whistlekick.com using the code podcast15, saves you 15%, lets us know that the shows lead to sales, and that's really helpful for us. You could also consider here, what's on my list? Leave us a rating and a review somewhere. Spotify, Apple Podcast, anywhere that you can leave a rating or review is helpful to us. You can join our Patreon, patreon.com/whistlekick, starts at two bucks a month. We deliver overwhelming value. If you like these shows and you say, man, you know, I'd be willing to help out if I got a whole bunch more back. Yeah, that's what we do. So it's the people who love us the most, who plunk down a few dollars a month, and we give them so much back that we make sure they never leave. That's the goal, right? It's all about value exchange. Now, if you are one of our biggest, best fans, if you consider yourself part of the whistlekick family, you're probably already going to the family page, whistlekick.com/family. You've gotta type it in. And in exchange for your periodic, weekly, we update it weekly, review of all the things you can do to help us in our mission is connect, educate, and entertain thing that means so much to so many of us. Well, we give you some exclusive behind the scenes. Some stuff that we do not put up elsewhere. Sometimes it's thoughts for me, sometimes it's photos, and we just again, try to keep you coming back. Now, today's episode with Max was a lot of fun because like a lot of these conversations, and you might have figured this out based on the title Meister, this is someone who's stepped in and done some HEMA stuff, but that's not where the story ends. We start with something that is a little bit more conventional, a little more common in the martial arts world, and then we shift over there. But then there's another hop and we get there pretty quickly in our conversation, but it ends up taking us in a direction that I think so many of you are gonna find interesting, and so few of you have experienced. And that was a lot of fun. So here's my conversation with Max.
Maxime Chouinard:
Hello?
Jeremy Lesniak:
Hey Max, how are you?
Maxime Chouinard:
Good! How about you?
Jeremy Lesniak:
I'm good. Welcome. Hopefully Andrew let you know it was gonna be a couple minutes late. My apologies. Something critical element popped up. I had to attend to it, but now I'm here.
Maxime Chouinard:
No worries at all. I don't know if he told you as well that Neely had to reschedule.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah, yeah, I heard. And you know what? It happens. It happens. I'm always reminded, we had someone in the UK that I messed up the time zone math, I think three times.
Maxime Chouinard:
Okay.
Jeremy Lesniak:
And I don't know how I'm, I was using Google Calendar, it should have been fine, but we messed it up three times. And after the third time I said, I'm sorry, I cannot in good conscious ask you to do it again. And he said, these were not his words, he was kinder, but he basically said, just shut up and call me now. So I've always reminded of that grace and try to extend it to guess as well. Because you know what, stuff happens. Life is complicated.
Maxime Chouinard:
It is. It is. Yeah. Yeah. It'd be a lot simpler if it weren't, but Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
But boring.
Maxime Chouinard:
That's fine too though. Yeah. But boring yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah.
Maxime Chouinard:
Oh yeah. So, well, thanks for having me.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah. Thanks for being on. Thanks for being on. You good if we just kinda run with it now? Or do you wanna...
Maxime Chouinard:
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
It's my favorite way to do it. Cool. You know we're gonna talk about, you've got a style stick fighting you teach, but you've got some other stuff that you've done and I get the sense, still do. And if you're like, I don't know every other martial artist, I know it blurs together now, which I think is always a fun place, we'll get there. I like to start at the beginning. It's just a logical place to start. So, if we were to make a comic book, or if we wanna be, you know, modern adults, film a graphic novel of your martial arts journey, what would we find towards the beginning of the first issue?
Maxime Chouinard:
Wow!
Jeremy Lesniak:
I like the visual. It's a little more fun than saying, how'd you get started?
Maxime Chouinard:
Yeah, no, I like the image literally. Well, I think the first volume, I guess would probably be, wouldn't be as dramatic as Batman, I guess.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I hope not.
Maxime Chouinard:
But I think like a lot of people, you know, that started martial arts, I think one of the cause or the reasons behind this was you know, I was at school, I was getting a little bit bullied. My parents were you know, looking into solutions for that. You know, it's never easy and all that. So they decided that there's this karate, dojo went down, and so we're gonna send you there. And also I think they were, you know, I wasn't the most sport inclined kid when I was young, so I think they were also trying to find something that I would like and I would stick to and get me moving a little bit. Get me out of the couch, you know? And so I started this training at this Kyokushin dojo which was the, I'm from a small town in Eastern Quebec in the Gaspe Peninsula. People dunno about where it is. If you just go up New York, you find New Brunswick and just over that there's like this, what you called a crab pincer which is that peninsula. That's where I'm from, from the northernmost point.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Hold on. I wanna look this up. Because when someone says Quebec, I'm generally, I'm two and a half hours from Montreal.
Maxime Chouinard:
Alright.
Jeremy Lesniak:
But you're talking about farther away from that, so just my own...
Maxime Chouinard:
Yes.
Jeremy Lesniak:
What's the name of the town?
Maxime Chouinard:
Oh, Sainte-Anne des Monts.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Sainte-Anne des Monts?
Maxime Chouinard:
Yes. Saint Anne of the mountains. So, Sainte-Anne des Monts.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Okay.
Maxime Chouinard:
It's just, you know, if you look for Gaspe, you're gonna be close enough. And it's part of the Appalachian Mountains . So it goes up, you know, and it kinda ends.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Oh, ok. Ok. There you are.
Maxime Chouinard:
Yes.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I gotcha. All right. So pretty small town, fairly close to Quebec City is what I'm seeing.
Maxime Chouinard:
That's five hours from there.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Oh, okay. Then I'm not in the right place. Anyway, I'll stop. The audience is going, Jeremy, stop. Okay. I'm back.
Maxime Chouinard:
No, no, no. Sorry. So anyway, yeah, I was from this small town there, and it was literally the only dojo we had in town for early hours. Driving around was this one, but it was great. I think was a great place to start. Started with [7:50.8] we're both kinda a family dojo there. So I trained in there for about eight years.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Wow.
Maxime Chouinard:
And yeah, it was...
Jeremy Lesniak:
Well, hold on, hold on. Eight years is a long time. The most people don't find a school and just plunk down and say I'm training here for eight years. I mean, that's generally achieving black belt. And how old were you when you started?
Maxime Chouinard:
I was, not, I'm not really sure actually how young I was at. I think it was probably around, I wanna say 11, 12.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Okay.
Maxime Chouinard:
Something like that.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Okay. So...
Maxime Chouinard:
Sorry, go ahead.
Jeremy Lesniak:
No, you were talking about bullying and some other things.
Maxime Chouinard:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
So did you and your parents find what you were hoping for in that school?
Maxime Chouinard:
I think, yeah, I think so. I think it really helped in many ways. You know, I think it, and it wasn't a good junction in my life, I think too, where you know, I was trying to find myself a little bit more. But it was, I always remember, you know, when, it was this one bully who had a lot of issues with saying, you know, this one day, this morning at the school locker, you know, comes up behind me. You know, he would usually do, grabs my arm, does arm bar behind me and it was at this point I think I had been training for a couple of months something like that. And so anyway, I get free, I turn around, I just slam my elbow into his ribs and he goes, oh! And I look at him and say, oh, by the way, did I told you I started karate? He just looks at me like grabbing and got like, oh, sorry. That's the last time I ever had to deal with this guy. And yeah, that really, that from there it really made a difference, you know? Cause probably have heard about this or I dunno if you've ever dealt with that in your life, but I think with a lot of bullies, you know, it's same with a lot of criminals are looking for easy targets and if it's not easy, then they just move on.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Right.
Maxime Chouinard:
So yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
It's almost, if it's natural and, you know, we look, happens with animals, happens with people, and you know, in the last 20 years we've tried to change that. Does it seem to work so well?
Maxime Chouinard:
Yeah. It's you know, they, well, yeah, I think it's natural. It makes sense that if you're looking for to on people, you know, you're just gonna go for the easiest either sticking, that's human nature, I guess. But yeah, it also sprung me into kind of a lifelong love for martial arts. Because I've always been like this, you know. Whenever I take something up, I never do it kind of half-assed. I always go in it fully.
Jeremy Lesniak:
You immersed.
Maxime Chouinard:
Yes.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah.
Maxime Chouinard:
Yeah, yeah. And I've always, you know, the history was always my, one of my big, big interests and I work in the field now. But even back then, I started, you know, reading tons and tons of stuff about martial arts history and I'm sure my Sensei sometimes were just sick of me, you know. Being a little high school going, like, actually. Didn't say that in class, but yeah, they were great and still friends with them now. But yeah, so I, anyway, I continue with this and I think another big happening for me was in 2004, I traveled to Japan. I stayed there for three months in a friend's family. It's a girl I had met in college and she had come to learn French and she was going back to Japan. She said, you know, if you wanna come around in the summer with me, we loved to act around and I decided to do that. So, and while I was there, of course I was staying in Osaka, like big city. Really, really interesting place. So I decided like, well, you know, while I'm there, let's, I'll do this, my mini martial arts as I can. I'm gonna use that time wisely. So I found this dojo and it's the first time I showed up. So my friend, it was a bit of a misunderstanding as we realized later on, but she called in, you know, she said, oh, you know, my friend's from Canada, he'd like to join in weekly. Just stop by. So she looks at the schedule and she says, oh, there's this adult class tonight. You wanna go? Sure, yeah. Let's go away. I wasn't quite an adult yet for Japan but yeah. Made it anyway. But anyway, I go there and so first off, I arrive late, so I just, I step in the door and I wanna melt in the floor.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah. So embarrassing. I feel the exact same way.
Maxime Chouinard:
Especially in Kyokushin and the way I was brought up in the style of here was you know, it was almost military like, you know?
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah.
Maxime Chouinard:
Arrive late, you're just, you're in for a really bad time. But they were lot more relaxed I found over there about this. But anyway, I get in and, you know, I'm just, so sorry. Come in, come in and I see that everybody's inspiring, you know, and just you know, I get changed and I came in and he just couldn't speak much French or English. Well, no French at all. Not much English, but he looks at me like sparing, sparing. Okay. Okay. I look around, see nobody's wearing any equipment, like, ok, it's early, just, you know, people are, wait a little bit, cardio sparing, you know. Let's go ahead. Let's see how it goes, you know. So first round he steps in with me and know we go with it. And I see him like laughing and smiling a lot and like, what's going on? So anyway, we, so round two we, everybody shuffles, and then I end up with this mountain of a black belt. Now this guy looks at me like I'm not a big guy like I'm 5'6, I'm like, I was even in Japan, you know. I wasn't really that much taller than most people or not at all. But this guy was probably six something. And anyway, looks at me down, you know, with most contempt you could have for somebody. And but anyway, in my mind I'm still, oh, no problem. This is cardio, right? Oh, let's go. So I go and after a while I get, I guess he gets a little bit sick of that pushes me, grabs my head with both hands and knees, right in the side. So, I dunno, I manage to stay up. But anyway, I spin around. It's a big flash. I look around kind of daze and fuse and I'm expecting somebody to jump in and say, whoa, whoa, whoa. No, stop, stop. But I look around and I realize at that moment that I don't know what I stepped into, but this is not cardio sparing. Everybody is just going like full on, no equipment. And I'm like, okay, I don't know much Japanese, I don't know what to say. And I wouldn't, anyway, so I just...
Jeremy Lesniak:
Had you ever done that before? Was that something a way homeschool?
Maxime Chouinard:
Yeah, we would do that in class, but usually no, we would come knowing what it was, what's it gonna be.
Jeremy Lesniak:
You were mentally prepared and yeah.
Maxime Chouinard:
Yeah, yeah. So anyway, I found out after the class that it was actually not quite an adult class. It was a special class they had for full contact tournament that was gonna get me.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Oh!
Maxime Chouinard:
So anyway, fun times. But what this kind of made me realize when I trained there, let's see where I'm going to with this, but again, small guy like me and I was thinking, you know, like all the while, you know, I did this cause started initially cause I wanna defend myself from bullies and all that. And I realized that, you know, if I met this guy in the street and he attacked me and I try to use Kyokushin and he does Kyokushin or something similar, I have no chance. He's just gonna steamroll me. So at that point I was like, you know what? I need to do something else. I need to find other tools to put in my toolbox. And so, that's when I started doing like I trained for a while in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, maga. That's where I also found weapons and started training in Shinkendo at first which I fell in love with. And I still do kenjutsu by, I did about eight years I think in, as well as Shinkendo. Then I switched to Niten, to the school of Yamato Musashi. [16:14.6]. And from then on, I really kinda fell in love with weapon martial arts. And so that's, it's been one of my main thing now.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Had your karate school growing up, done any Kobudo?
Maxime Chouinard:
A little bit. A little bit. And I was, it was one thing that really always resonated with me too. And I think I had a little bit of a, I guess a knack for it. I wasn't the best student when it came to doing kata, you know, or they had a hard time usually remembering the whole sequences. And then, sometimes my...
Jeremy Lesniak:
You're not alone.
Maxime Chouinard:
Yeah, my teachers would be a bit discouraged, but with the weapons and Kobudo stuff, they were sometimes amazed by how more, how easier it would be for that. But yeah, we did very little and it's something that, me jumping around a little bit, but it's something that I realized over the years too is that, you know, doing so much weapon work, martial arts, that oftentimes in a lot of martial arts circles, weapons are very much an afterthought, if anything at all. And people come from an unarmed martial arts background and they bring the theories and the understanding they have from unarmed martial arts and they try to squeeze that into the weapon world. And it doesn't always work because there are things that are universal. There are things that translate very well, but, you know, discussing these things with a lot of people sometimes I realized that when they come from an unarmed background, there's a lot of deprogramming you have to do sometimes. Because some things are like range, measure, temple, those kind of things that are important if you're doing an armed martial arts, but not to the extent that they are in and with weapons where, you know, I can, if I'm boxing, I can take a few punches to the body. I can, you know, I can stay in what I would call in and stick fighting time at hand, no problem. I can protect myself at least for a while there, but I can do that if I have a knife, if I have a sword. I can't just stand there and take blows, obviously.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yes.
Maxime Chouinard:
It would be a really bad ending for me. But it's, you know, this is a common theme whenever I deal with people that again, come from these unarmed martial environment and I went there too, you know. But you know, like, oh, you just gotta crash in, you know, just come in, you know. And then they come in, they crash in.
Jeremy Lesniak:
That's very much the Kyokushin way.
Maxime Chouinard:
Yeah, yeah. Absolutely.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Meet force with force. Get there. Be willing to take the shots.
Maxime Chouinard:
Yeah. Oh yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Just be tougher. Just be tougher than the other guy and you'll win.
Maxime Chouinard:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Doesn't work with a sword, like you said.
Maxime Chouinard:
Many classes I spend just be like next two minutes and he's gonna punch you in the guts. Just gonna stand there and take it.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I had a little bit of that growing up. One of my instructors was brought up in some Kyokushin so I get it.
Maxime Chouinard:
Yeah. Yeah. We had some really tough Sensei sometimes. It was this, some of these guys, you know, like when I was younger, there were still a few older Japanese guys, you know, that came here after the war and they still had this very much like military bootcamp attitude to training. And which you know it, they, I think it certainly has some benefits were a lot of people, but also, you know, it sometimes you kind of have to get over that and find some better ways to get that knowledge through. But yeah, so they, anyway, it's been one of pet pieves under the recent years trying to really explain those differences to people and how important they are and how they can sometimes present solutions to some problems that people have coming into our martial arts you know. Like people saying oftentimes, you know, when, oh, when you're knife, you're doing knife fighting but some people say, oh, there's no knife fighting. You know, that's another subject but people say, oh, you should always expect to get cut. And I was like, maybe, but again, yes, if you're approaching it from the same strategy as unarmed martial arts, yes, you should expect to get cut. That will happen. But if you're really, you know, training your measure, if you're training your tempo, then you know, as long as you're not being rushed by some dude on CBC or whatever, or PCB or whatever, but it's actually, there's some chances you might not get injured at all. And I don't, I say there, I say this from somebody who's never been in a life or death knife fight, like think 99.9% of his population. But yeah, it's things I've observed over the years. But anyway, all that to say, yeah, it was, we did some Kobudo and Kyokushin. Especially thinking back on this now, it resonates with me that you know, again, people were always approaching this from their Kyokushin background and not necessarily seeing the value because it's, you knows all these old stuff, you know. It's not gonna make you win any tournament, any kind of tournaments. [22:09.1]. And then a couple of years later, I traveled to Ireland with my brother-in-law and we, because one day we were in our Irish pub, and maybe we drank a little bit. A little bit, well, maybe a few guinness, too many and we go like...
Jeremy Lesniak:
It's an Irish spot, right? I'm pretty sure that's the cost of admission. It's too many guinness.
Maxime Chouinard:
Oh, yeah, yeah, sure. Like we're the only people that ever happened, ever drank too many guinness in that pub definitely. We decided, hey, you know what, this summer, let's go to Ireland. So we did. We stayed there for summer. And again, because I was so much into martial arts, I think eight. You know what I, by then I had been involved in HEMA for a few years. You know, was studying mostly 19th century fencing, sources and, stick fighting. And I ran into some forums of people saying, talking about Irish street fighting. And in my head I thought, oh, it's a thing, you know, Irish street fighting. I'd love to try that. It must be schools in every city in Ireland, right? So, anyway, I go into one of those groups there, but that time there were Yale groups, if you remember that.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah.
Maxime Chouinard:
But you know, those kinda email based discussions groups. And so I go and one of them was maintained by a guy named Ken Frager. He passed away a few years ago. But on that group, somebody told me, hey, cause I emailed, said, hey, we're going to Ireland. I'd like to train Irish stick. Is there anybody you could connect me to? So this one guy, Louis Pastor was in Glasgow, just messaged me and said, hey, reach out to this guy, Mr. Ramsey. And he probably can teach you a thing or two. So I emailed the man, and right at this point, one of his first response was so are you two [24:06.3]? And I'm like yeah, yeah, we are. Okay. Yeah, I'll teach you. Oh, all right. Told me afterwards that, you know, he accepted to teach us cause said, you know, during the regimen, there were quite a lot of Irish folks that ended up in Quebec, the overly Catholic area that we were. And I said, you know, the people in Quebec were very welcoming and two Irish people I need, and so that's why I decided to teach you what I know. But yeah, so we go to Ireland and again, in my mind, expecting that Irish stick is this big thing, everybody must know about it. So, you know, we meet a few people around along the way and we get a range of reactions to us talking about this, you know. When I say, hey, we're gonna learn this stick fighting, you know, with Shillelagh's. You know, people that were genuinely interested and were like, oh yeah, no, that's great. And some people that were, that found it very funny and some people that found it not funny at all. And over the years, I've had all of these reactions sometimes. Cause unfortunately, Irish stick fighting is deeply associated with what people perceive as a very dark period of Irish history. And the 19th century, the faction fights and you know, for people that may not have heard of a practice before. So in at least until the early 20th century, there were all over Ireland. There were some faction fights happening, and it was mostly battles between groups of people that were sometimes family affiliated, sometimes they were affiliated by clans, by old feuds, political parties and it would fight it out using mostly stick chili leaves, knob sticks, or wanna name them. And people would sometimes die in those fights and interestingly, it wouldn't be a problem, you would end up in front of the judge and they would usually say, well, you know, that person entered into a profession fight. They knew what they were going into. Well, case closed. And so anyway, but it was used by the British a lot to say, Hey, look at these Irish people, you know, they don't know how to confirm themselves or violence. They do all these faction fights and they're drunk. And so the, you know, when the Irish people started to go up and say, Hey, you know, we gotta get together to get our independence. And then a lot of people said, you know, we've gotta get away from all that faction fight. It's shameful and so unfortunately, because stick fighting was closely associated with that. People started going, well, you know, we shouldn't be doing that anymore either. And so the reaction I got from a lot of people was, what? You wanna learn this? Like, are you, are you crazy? Like this is just, this is violent. This is barbaric.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Because they saw the darkness, not that it was a martial art.
Maxime Chouinard:
Yeah. Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Most people, we give most people a map of the world and say put pins everywhere that martial arts originated. You might get some people will say, well, they were everywhere, and they'll put pins everywhere. But most people are gonna focus on Southeast Asia.
Maxime Chouinard:
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. How many times I've had to explain the know saying I teach Irish martial arts and like, what? Irish martial arts? No.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Probably assume it's some drinking metaphor.
Maxime Chouinard:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Fun.
Maxime Chouinard:
Oh yeah, that too. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I do Irish stick fighting. Oh, you stick fight with a beer in your head? Like, no, no, that's not what we do. But again, it goes back to this idea of the Irish brawler stereotype that, again, a lot of people in Ireland are not too fun of. And they sometimes when you present it that, Hey, I do Irish stick fighting, or I wanna do Irish stick fighting. They react with some hostility because they think that you are trying to pedal Irish stereotypes and that they think that they're, again, they're kind of sick of, and they, they want people to move away from. And, but anyway, like that can maybe come back to that later on. But that was some reactions we had to go through. And so anyway, we travel on to Cork and we meet our teacher there and we learned the techniques a week. We learned that and by then we had realized that, but that it was one of the rare people left in Ireland that still knew the stuff. He had to learn it from his dad, grandfather, uncles. And he wasn't really teaching it, you know. He was, first he just wanted to find people in Ireland that were doing that and he wasn't very successful. Mostly he went online and asked around and realized that he was pretty much alone in his corner. And when we finished training with Emmy, he told us, kind of outta the blue, he said, so, you know, you guys, you get a permission to teach this now. And we were kind of taking aback because that was not our intention at all at first, just, well, just wanted to learn it and try what it was.
Jeremy Lesniak:
You must have been impressed with how quickly you picked stuff up.
Maxime Chouinard:
Yeah, well, you know...
Jeremy Lesniak:
Telling you that so soon.
Maxime Chouinard:
Yeah. Well, by then I had been doing lots of weapon martial arts and yeah, I kinda never quite asked him why he granted us so quickly to us. But we were you know, when he told us that, we also realized, you know, that, hey, you know, this is important. Like this guy hasn't taught this to many people and don't. Do something, this is just probably gonna disappear. And like he was saying, like, my kids don't wanna learn it then. And since then he has just completely stepped back from teaching at all. He said, you know, he received some threats from people who seemed like wanna come in and just you know, kick your ass. And you know, he does live in Norton, Ireland, where it's not a place where still today you want to have people old grudges against you. So anyway, he decided to just step back and leave all this to us. And, but we continued for, no, we went back to Quebec, we continued for many years will still continue to now, but to talk with him and you know, get his impression of what we do from a distance and gotta meet him again this past spring when I went to Ireland and you know, it's still very happy with what we're we're doing with his family art. But yeah, we spent many years of training together, just making sure that we got things right before we started to get other people in our little group. And yeah, from there, it's just started to snowball and I think it took me about 10 years before really feeling confident in what I was doing. But yeah, it's been how many, like we're in 15 years now and we had groups in seven countries now.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Oh. Cool.
Maxime Chouinard:
A nonprofit where this was one of the conditions that my teacher had. He said, don't want you to turn this into a sport, and I don't want you to make money out. And that was two conditions for allowing us to teach it.
Jeremy Lesniak:
If I may, I mean, as you know, very few people who are watching or listening would have experience with Iris stick fighting. We've had one gentleman on before who comes from a family lineage and without even, you could probably guess who it is cause it's such a small world.
Maxime Chouinard:
Yeah. Oh, right, Glen. Glen.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah, exactly.
Maxime Chouinard:
Yeah, we're both in the same country, but cause of life and things happening...
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah. Well, he's in...
Maxime Chouinard:
Now he's in Newfoundland.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Ontario? Oh, okay. I don't think I knew he... You're not. Okay. You're not, okay.
Maxime Chouinard:
Yeah. Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
All right. Yeah, Canada's a huge country.
Maxime Chouinard:
Oh yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
But we have quite a few people who have spent some time with Filipino sticks.
Maxime Chouinard:
Yep.
Jeremy Lesniak:
You know, Kali, Eskrima, however you wanna term it. Could you just give us a quick primer? I'm assuming you are at least aware of Filipino martial arts.
Maxime Chouinard:
Absolutely.
Jeremy Lesniak:
The general difference. Like what's the difference?
Maxime Chouinard:
So, I would say one of the biggest difference, and I know this is mostly in audio podcast, I'm trying to make this clear for our listeners, but the, so I got a stick here. This is an antique, I picked up in Dublin last spring. But the main difference in our style comes from how we grip the stick. So, you know, if you're doing Kali, Eskrima, usually you'd be grabbing the stick around the hand, right? And what we do in Irish stick fighting is we or at least in our style, we grab it around the third, or at least where the point of the stick here goes past the elbow by an injury. So we grab it like this. So the merlon, the knob is on top. And this is really like a defining thing for our style because what this allows us to do is to take guards and do certain techniques that would be dangerous if this wasn't there, right? This is the guard, kinda the shield. The same thing as with a sword you know, you have to imagine that this is a bit like a guard, okay? And so when I'm fighting, what I'm molding what call our outside high guard, for example, this, you know, this is in the way of somebody would want to attack my elbow, my face, I can block with this. I can block and recall at the same time. You know, I can use it when somebody comes close and fighting. I can stab, I can strike with this and I can also do it with the other hand. So if I was holding it here, certainly I would be very, very exposed and because of that, I would need to use some bigger motions and keep my stick maybe a little bit closer to my body to try not to get any advanced targets out there. But this allows me to do this and it allows me to swing the stick from an elbow motion, like here, right? Again, where I would have to do these wider movements here I can troll my strikes a little bit more. Like I would do a punch or jab again, because whenever I come back, I have this lower part here that's coming to cover my arm, right? I've had a lot of people looking at this, you know, because it's kind of unusual and be like, oh, I could totally get your arm when I, you know, like this. Sure, thanks. Come in and try.
Jeremy Lesniak:
And a huge difference, probably the, the most obvious difference is that sticks a lot longer. You know, it's about a meter, right? About three feet?
Maxime Chouinard:
Yes. Although when we grab it, right, so the length is at least the active range is not that much different from what you'd see in Kali or Eskrima. It is very different though when we do, this is a favorite technique of mine whenever we inspire with people from any other background, but a lot of with Kali, Eskrima people. We have this [35:54.0] called a hook. So what we do is we slide a hand to move on to the knob here. We let go of our lead end and we swing from this stand position and we can come back instantly here. So it gives us a lot of possibilities range wise, cause suddenly, my opponent gets a little bit used to my range. It's like, ok, this range, I know I'm outta this time at hand. Time the foot.
Jeremy Lesniak:
You feel safe and you switch it on him.
Maxime Chouinard:
Yeah, I can start think about, you know, what I'm gonna have for dinner tonight or something and then this happened.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Love it.
Maxime Chouinard:
Believe where it came from. A couple of years back, I attended my first dog runners gathering. And I was, that was the first time I was really going in that kind of arena. And one of the first fights I did there, you know, one of the first techniques I truly...
Jeremy Lesniak:
Oh, you didn't just go, you fought.
Maxime Chouinard:
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
If anybody out there hasn't watched video of what these fights look like pause this right now and go watch, because this is some serious stuff. You are not getting me, in those rings. I don't care how much padding you're putting on, please continue.
Maxime Chouinard:
Yeah, it was you know, for me it was a bit like again, because there's so much pressure being like behind the style and even more so back then kind of the main figure representing it you know. I got, I had so many people, like, oh, you should go, you know, you should go try this with a dog runner so you'll never work. And anyway, so I thought, okay, well let's see about that. So I met Sebastian, pirate dog, when came to one of my seminars was doing it in Montreal. And you know, at first, were, he was like, well, you know, I told him I'd like to come to one of those scatterings at some point. Like, oh yeah, I dunno you know, it's pretty tough. And so by the end of the class we spared a bit and told like, yeah, you should come next one. And so I went there and he was actually the first guy out. And usually, you know, with those gatherings, they say, you know what goes on and the fights stay there. They don't want people to start bragging or talking about that. So people don't get hotheaded or start to do dangerous stuff just because they don't wanna look bad. But yeah, you know, I got to use the smarter growth technique in my fights and you know, I remember like using it against some people that you know, they, well, the first time I used it really, the other guy was, you know, standing with a very high guard and I thought, okay, I'm gonna go. And I went right to the ribs, bang, bang, bang. And the other person, you know, doesn't bunch stay there, taking blows. I'm like, man, ok. I'm not anything hard enough or it's not working, I'm just gonna, okay, I'm gonna switch strategies. And then by the end, he finally comes to see me anyways, like, man, when you were landing those blows on me, I just froze. No idea what to do. I was not expecting that. Then I said to myself crap! You should have kept that.
Jeremy Lesniak:
You had your strategy. It was working.
Maxime Chouinard:
So yeah, it's a very, very neat technique we have there. And there's around about 40 or so different techniques in Antrim Bata. Different strikes.
Jeremy Lesniak:
What's the style called? What's the name of it?
Maxime Chouinard:
So, Antrim Bata. Antrim for Antrim County, which is the area it's from originally. That's why we settled for that name. Cause one thing about the style is that it's never quite had a name. It was just, it was stick fighting.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Cause it's all family lineage, right? Kind of like you know, old days of karate, it was, you know, this family, this family, this family and Irish stick fighting my understanding was all the same. They're still familial.
Maxime Chouinard:
I think it goes even beyond that. Like I had a revelation a couple years ago when I watched this '80s documentary on Zulu stick fighting. And they were really presenting how people were training really traditionally, you know. And tribes and villages and how really the art was passed down. And I kinda, you know, doing a lot of research on Irish stick fighting, I realized that this was probably also how those things were passed down in Ireland most of the time, where, you know, you just have kids, they start up really, really young. They just, they wanna the adults, right? So they see the adults fighting, so they start fighting with twigs and stuff and, you know, they get pretty good and the adults look at that. Then at some point they see, oh, you know, this one, it is a lot better than the others. Like just say, come on over here, kiddo. I'll show you a few tricks. And that it's kind of, it's not necessarily like this lineage like you would see in Japanese martial arts or words like they've got this style that's, you know, I'm handing it down to the next headmaster or something. It's more like come, you know, where we were just like, this group, this clan, or we just, you know, from one family to the next and people are just learning by imitation. And so there's no names, the techniques because it's just stuff you've been doing since you were a kid.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Sure.
Maxime Chouinard:
And there's you know that there's schools and we know there were schools teaching that and we know there were secret techniques, secret stuff, because there's always people that wanna keep their, you know, their things to themselves and then what works for themselves. And but yeah, I think it was, it's just this very, very old way I think of teaching martial arts that's kind of lost today because we don't really do that. We do that in other things, like how kids learn to play ball or soccer or like how they, you know, how to learn how to just hammer a nail or to, there's all these skills that we learn from our families and relative people around us just imitating and we just that's how it's done.
Jeremy Lesniak:
We don't encourage a lot of figuring out. A lot of experimentation in martial arts. Yeah.
Maxime Chouinard:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
It's gotta be this way. Do it this way.
Maxime Chouinard:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Okay. Okay.
Maxime Chouinard:
But that's, I think what I probably brought to the style was this, you know, we had to find names or nicknames for this. We had find a name to the style, because now we're, you know, we're not just teaching our small little group now. We're, you know, we have this group opening up now in Montreal. We have this group now opening up in New York and Paris and like, and like, all these people are far away and they're like, oh, can you remind me? So you need some common vocabulary now to people to communicate those things, to have people understand what you're speaking about and understand the concepts. So, and also publicize it, you know. But we try to stay very, very true to what we learn. But I'm always very adamant on this that, you know, my, my role in all of this is I'm teaching you what I've been taught. You go on, you can, you know, you wanna use that and for your own stuff, it's fine as long as, you know, just say tell people where it came from. But I'm not you know, that's, I'm not here to change or perfect a style or anything. I found that what I learned, and by pressure testing, it was pretty efficient. And yeah, I think it's worth reserving and it works. Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Now, I'm curious because you have such a body of martial arts knowledge and experience prior to this. Were there things that you found that you said, ah, you know, here's the family lineage, here's the codification of what I was taught, but for my own personal purposes, if I am stepping into a dog brother's ring, I'm gonna make this adjustment or that adjustment, I'm gonna add this. Like, did you find stuff like that? I would imagine.
Maxime Chouinard:
Yeah. Well, I think it was mostly the way to train it and practice it. Because, you know, that could, well, bringing in training equipment, sparing equipment wasn't a thing before and you know, finding ways to, creative ways to teach and train those skills. And I think sometimes definitely, you know, I come up with some variations, some things that I find that worked for me when I was sparing that I wasn't taught and I will use them when I fight, obviously. I'm always gonna be, if I ever present 'em to students, I'm always like this is not traditional style, but you know, if you're ever in a pickle, you can use that.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah.
Maxime Chouinard:
But yeah, I couldn't say like consciously that I've really integrated things that from outer style, and I've always been a little bit careful about doing this because it's very hard to teach and publicize this style that, because it's so uncommon that you get people always coming up and saying, oh, you've made that up you know. I've been in Ireland all my life. I've never seen this. I've never heard that. And so, you know, I think it's, for me, I'm proud of saying, nope, This is all stuff I've learned, like all what I teach is what I've learned. Maybe the only things when I find out I really had to bring was the wrestling aspect. There's really not a lot of that in our styles. There's kicking that is interestingly close enough to what you would see in some styles of Savate where you kick not with the foot, but with the sole of your shoe. Because you're expected to be wearing our sole shoes, you're using those to strike. But there are mostly kicks below belts. Nothing to the head, nothing acrobatic. Well, you have a few punching at, call it slapping, it's mostly back end punches, gouges, things like that and a few wrestling, but like double and interestingly, like we have these single or double leg take down with a stick. You have a, called the crossbotics where we just flip somebody over your hips. But it's fairly limited and I figured out that, also one other thing that was done in Ireland back then was color and elbow wrestling. And they also had that, I'm forgetting the, there's a Gaelic name for this one, but, oh, what's the name again? Scottish Backhold Wrestling was also taught over there. And I realize, you know, looking into that, that it must have been kind a compliment to stick fighting and gave you that strong base in grappling that you could use in faction fights. By the way, if you wanna read or hear more about this, Rubin McFadden is a guy that's been very hard at work resurrecting for another wrestling. It'd be a great people to talk to in one of your episode.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Is that somebody you know, you could connect us with?
Maxime Chouinard:
Yeah, yeah. Oh yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
That'd be great. Yeah, please.
Maxime Chouinard:
He's great guy from Ireland, but he lives in Germany now. And he wrote a book about Cobo and it's been trying to bring it back to the sport now.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Oh, cool!
Maxime Chouinard:
Yeah. Anyway, so that's, yeah, it's been one thing that I've kind of tried to add on to this style.
Jeremy Lesniak:
It makes sense because, you know, eventually you're gonna close range and that's a long stick. You're gonna need to do something other than just both stare at each other back up.
Maxime Chouinard:
Yes. Yeah and especially in the [47:52.0]. Because they just go on, you know, and even though you bunk the other guy in the head, you might still just keep going and bring him down, and then you better have something else than your stick fighting. You're gonna be in the world overt. But yeah, I think you need to be well-rounded and that's part that I'm trying to bring back into our style.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Nice.
Maxime Chouinard:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I'm curious, after you put, you said it took you about 10 years to really feel comfortable. You're about 15 years into this, have you had any further conversations with the gentleman who originally taught this to you?
Maxime Chouinard:
Yep. Yep.
Jeremy Lesniak:
What are his thoughts on what you've done with it?
Maxime Chouinard:
Wait, like I said, I actually met him last time, last spring when I went to Ireland.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Oh wait, I'm sorry. I'm sorry I missed that part. We've been all over the place on dates and places.
Maxime Chouinard:
No, sorry.
Jeremy Lesniak:
No, that was quite alright.
Maxime Chouinard:
Yeah, it's just, I think like when I mentioned you know, what I was doing, was saying like you know like not always very thankful for you to trusting me with this, you know, and we're trying to follow you know what you taught me and all this. And he, you know, first thing he said was good man. Yeah. I think he's...
Jeremy Lesniak:
I love it.
Maxime Chouinard:
Really very happy with what we've been doing with this. Like it doesn't seem to have any doubts or distress about where it's going. So I'm, you know, it's always you know with your martial arts teacher, it's always a little bit like your parents and wanna make them proud.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I understand. I understand. And then for some of us, not me, but for some of us, those are the same people.
Maxime Chouinard:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
So it can be really challenging.
Maxime Chouinard:
Oh yeah. Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
You mentioned that this is spreading and it, there are a bunch of groups. You mentioned one in Montreal and so, you know, I wanna explore that cuz you know, I'm not that far away. But where are these groups? Cause I bet there are a bunch of people who are tuned in and they're like, oh, I wanna, if this is near me, I wanna check it out so.
Maxime Chouinard:
Absolutely.
Jeremy Lesniak:
How would they do that?
Maxime Chouinard:
We have a website, if you search Antrim Bata or our alternate address is irishtech.com. Pretty simple find.
Jeremy Lesniak:
And you said that's websites for that so that should be in the shownotes when this goes last.
Maxime Chouinard:
Yes. And on the side you have a listing of all the clubs, schools that are currently teaching. We have a lot of, we call study groups because we're still, you know, it's been 15 years for me, but for a lot of our study group captains we call it or instructors, it's not been quite that long. So, you know, a lot of times people will email me saying, oh, you know, I don't have any group near me. And I was like, well, you know, some people in our groups do offer distance classes, but otherwise, not much I can do. I can't really tele forward to your place or make groups spring up from the air, you know. So it's not like karate or judo or you know, it's still fairly rare.
Jeremy Lesniak:
It's uncommon. Yeah. Yeah. Which for a lot of folks, I'm sure is the appeal. They wanna learn something different.
Maxime Chouinard:
Yeah. Yeah. And it's, I think a lot of people, you know, if you're coming for example, for boxing, I think you'd find that or many striking martial arts, I think you'd find Irish to be a really great compliment because of the mechanics. You know, I think, I've had boxers in my classes, you know, and they catch on very quickly once they understand how the stick works because the mechanics I think are easily translatable and yeah, and some of the tactics as well. So yeah, if you ever around one of our groups, I really encourage you to go in and have a look and if any anybody is ever interested in opening up a group, you know, we usually ask that they try to organize seminar of some kind with one of our instructors, could be be anybody else. And from then on we can start building that relationship, that group. Yeah, a lot of people do that and now we have lots of students and friends and the states and it's been impressive sometimes when I look back at this. Wow, this, I can't believe it.
Jeremy Lesniak:
And so if, you know here's one of my favorite questions you know, let's pretend we invent a time machine and you know, you can go back to, you said 11 when you started karate. 11-year-old you?
Maxime Chouinard:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
And you know, you only get a couple minutes, right? You're not sitting down forever, but you get a minute or two to say something to you all these years ago. What would you tell yourself?
Maxime Chouinard:
Oh yeah. I tried to imagine that a few times you know. What would I tell my younger self? I don't know if I could really say anything that would impact or change things, you know. When you're a teenager or pre-teenager, you know, it's...
Jeremy Lesniak:
That's so true.
Maxime Chouinard:
You know? Yeah. Things are difficult. You think you're all alone thinking the way you do and you know, nobody has been through that before and your future. I don't know if I'd be any better than my parents that's convincing me otherwise.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah.
Maxime Chouinard:
You know, I think maybe what I would try to do whether was try to stay would be, you know, it's maybe, yeah. Just it's gonna be alright. Gonna be all right. Just go for it, you know, keep going and you'll get there. I would probably respond like, oh, what's that? But yeah, it would probably what I would try to say.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah. You mentioned the website. Are there any other websites, social media, or anything that people should know about?
Maxime Chouinard:
Absolutely. Like, so I've got, maybe too many things going on.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I'm not gonna say you have too many things. Others might, but...
Maxime Chouinard:
Well, if you wanna follow our style, we have Antrim Bata. We have a Facebook page and Instagram account I think. Just let me check, yeah. Got other people sometimes looking into that, but yeah. Also, I've got this school going on. So it's Bataireacht and Historical Fencing. We're in Ottawa, so you can also check us. So it's BAHFF a little bit easier to spell out if you're looking for that online. And also got this blog I called hemamisfits and it's where I publish a lot of my other research into martial arts history, sociology. So in there I've got, you know, we've talked a lot about Irish stick and Japanese martial arts, but I, you know, I've been also teaching Hema Circle, saber mostly from doing that since 2002 now. And so we, there's a lot of things I wrote about in this blog that at some point I'd like to just put on writing and on paper. But you know, there's been a lot of, I've done on different subjects, but namely, I think things that resonated with people were research I did on the origin of the term martial arts and how it came to hold the meaning it has today. Or another one which is kinda related to a book project I'm slowly working on, but it's on the history of, there used to be a curator from Medical Museum and that got me into kind of this side project. But history of the treatment of blade wounds. Sounds extremely obscure and weird from, when said like that. But it's extremely interesting subject, you know, to look into and see how certain people in the past that were seeing a lot more bladed wounds than any guarantee, any trauma surgeon today like probably would never see as many blade wounds as some of these guys in the 16, 18th century battlefields in Europe you know. And you know, the accounts they give us sometimes can even help to understand some of the techniques you see in martial arts today. Anyway, so I've got a lot of, I think interesting articles down there if people wanna peruse it, so hemamisfits. Also, nickname this book I don't do long sword cause I dunno if you know anything about HEMA but yeah. A long sword is kind of the big, big thing in HEMA and I've been interested in that whenever good to fans, I've gotta explain to people that now don't do long sword. So I've became kind of a, this theme behind that blog of mine.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Nice.
Maxime Chouinard:
Yeah. So yeah, that's probably how you can read a little bit more about what I do on those pages and I've got this book coming up and I'm also working another one, our Style of Irish Stick Fighting which maybe one or two books, I'm not quite decided yet. But there's gonna be a big technical part to it and the history part to it of course. So that's also coming up down the drain.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Great. Well, when that stuff comes out, please send us links and we'll drop that in social media and share that off to people. All the things that you mentioned today, they're available, we'll put in the shownotes. So yeah, I think it's cool. You got a lot of good stuff going on. We need more people doing lots of things out there. Makes me look less crazy.
Maxime Chouinard:
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
So I appreciate that.
Maxime Chouinard:
Me and you, both. Yeah. Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Well, we're just about at the end. So one more thing and that's how do you wanna close up? What are your final words to this audience today?
Maxime Chouinard:
Well, I guess final words would be, you know, if you're doing martial arts and you know, you, you ever thought about doing weapon martial arts, you know what you think like, oh, you know, what am I gonna get out of this? Do it. Go do it. You know, find a club somewhere, whatever it is, go try it. I think whatever you're doing right now will, I think, will benefit your overall training and experience. And you'll find some new concepts, new understanding in there and Irish stick of course, whatever rocks you both. But yeah, I think we need more people deeply involved and interested in weapon martial arts. It's a lot of value, a game changer I think in many ways. Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Hey, thanks for sticking around Max. Thanks for coming on, sharing your time and your stories. Audience, some cool stuff today and I hope you will check out everything that Max has going on, give his group a follow and let's all learn a little bit more about Irish stick fighting. I'm super pumped. I think this stuff is awesome. If you wanna go deeper on the episode, go to whistlekickmartialartsradio.com. If you wanna go deeper on all the other stuff we do, go to whistlekick.com. If you want your martial arts school to have the best year it ever has, reach out and talk to us about our consulting offerings. You can get ahold of me directly or you can find out more. Fill out the inquiry form at whistlekick.com under the school section. We also offer seminars. We have a lot of fun in our seminars. We make students better by bringing in expert qualified alternate ways of teaching, not teaching them how to do stuff differently. Teaching them how to do stuff in a different way, right? We're not gonna change what your students do. Keep that in mind. Our social media is @whistlekick everywhere and my personal email, jeremy@whistlekick.com. Until next time, train hard, smile, and have a great day.