Zachary Rawlins - The Academy

Michael appeared to be upside down, because Alex was standing on his hands. This was a newly acquired skill. His whole body shook as he attempted to straighten his legs and abdomen, trying to force himself into one firm vertical line. This was a skill he was still attempting to acquire, and as his arms trembled and his stomach cramped, Alex wondered how Yoga could possibly be so difficult.

He had spent the last three weeks almost solely in Michael’s care. Though his schedule listed four courses aside from homeroom, Alex couldn’t tell the difference between ‘Unarmed Combat’ and ‘Physical Conditioning’ and ‘Fundamentals of Self-Defense’. Michael was the instructor for all three of them, and they blended into a seamless flow of exhaustion, struggle and pain. The first day, when Michael had explained that he would be allowed to skip the first few weeks of homeroom, to give him time to get oriented and also to allow for his private tutoring, Alex had been happy. The less school, he figured, the better, and it wasn’t like he was in horrible shape. How bad could it possibly be?

When Michael arrived at six a.m. the next morning, dressed in running clothes and carrying a bag of the same in Alex’s size, and cheerfully battered his door until he was forced to acknowledge it, Alex had begun to reassess the situation. Four miles later, when Alex got his first leg cramp, he was bitter. After another three miles, Alex contemplated murdering Michael in between bouts of vomiting into a ditch on the side of the road. Michael appeared to be unshakable; he smiled throughout the run, and never appeared to be out of breath or tired. He wore a tight nylon top that made it very obvious that Michael was ridiculously built, with thick limbs wrapped in corded muscle and a barrel chest.

Their route that morning took them around the back of the Academy grounds, past some buildings Alex had never seen before (but he was too out of breath to ask about), and then through a series of low, grassy hills that eventually gave way to steeper elevations and evergreens. It was sunny but Alex suspected that if he hadn’t been running he would have found it cold. The path they ran along started out as sidewalk, but petered out gradually into an asphalt track, then loose gravel, and finally nothing more than a dirt rut running through the surrounding countryside. It was beautiful, in a late-fall way, but Alex had no eyes for it.

He was too busy trying to breathe.

Alex had been surprised to find himself still standing at the end of that first eight-mile run. He’d even felt pretty good, a bit proud of himself, and when he glanced over at Michael and saw the grin on his face, figured that he was too. Later, he would realize that the man was simply a sadist.

They ran two or three times a week, never less than five miles. At least twice a week, they visited the indoor pool at the fitness complex not far from Alex’s dorm, and swam for an hour or two. Michael set the pace and Alex struggled to keep up; more than once, Michael had to stop to teach Alex the stroke that he wanted him to use. Alex liked the way the sound of the water echoed in the tiled expanse of the gym, but he always found the water to be too cold. He’d enjoyed his occasional opportunities to swim when he’d been younger, but with Michael calling the shots, he came to hate the sight of his school-issued swimsuit much more than the sight of his school-issued running shoes.

After the first week, they didn’t start with cardio anymore; instead, Michael had begun to teach him yoga. Alex had always thought of it as something hippies did, some kind of pseudo spiritual meditative practice or something, but what he learned was profoundly different. If there were philosophical components to it, then Michael ignored them, instead focusing on body awareness, strengthening, flexibility, and breathe control. Michael was a patient teacher who never raised his voice, and seemed capable of all the various positions with a casual flair that made them look easy, though Alex rarely found them to be so. Nonetheless, after two weeks of daily practice, Alex found that he could support the weight of his body on his hands and bend over far enough to put his head flat on the ground while touching his toes.

That was his morning, for three weeks, six days a week. Five days a week, Alex came back to the fitness center in the afternoons. They never did the same thing two days in a row, except for the yoga, and he never had a day where he didn’t do either morning or afternoon training.

When it came to combat training, Michael never bothered to explain what discipline a technique came from. He never taught Alex any katas or forms, they did not wear a gi or a belt, and none of the techniques Alex learned seemed to have names or formal designations. But Alex found Michael to be a genuinely remarkable teacher, and himself to be a more receptive student than he had ever imagined possible.

He learned a variety of things in those few weeks; a dozen different ways to put his opponent on the ground without winding up there himself, a variety of techniques for controlling wrists and arms up close, how to strike with the elbow and forearm. But it went deeper than techniques, as the education Alex received from Michael was more a process of refinement than revelation.

Alex learned that the looping punches he favored he threw because they were powerful — but as Michael demonstrated by cheerfully jabbing Alex in the face until his nose bled, were also inaccurate, slow and left him wide open to anyone with a little bit of boxing ability. Along with a straightened punch, he learned that a few simple changes in his footwork could provide him with the same power that the looping punches had, without any of the disadvantages.

Michael taught Alex enough of the fundamentals of ju-jitsu that he could defend himself on the ground, but he also explained that weight and inexperience would work against him there, and spent much more time teaching him to sprawl, to drop his chest and splay his legs back to avoid being taken down in the first place. He learned a handful of trips and throws for dealing with running tackles and rushes, and a number of other ways to keep fights where Michael judged Alex to be most capable — standing and striking.

The first few afternoons were largely spent with Alex punching a heavy bag filled with water to mimic a human body, his hands taped and in lightweight half-gloves, while Michael watched and made adjustments. He seemed more concerned at first with Alex’s feet than anything he was doing with his hands, and after scolding Alex for making a less-than-tight fist and teaching him to square his shoulder and tuck his jaw, he turned his attention almost totally to stance and footwork. After a few days, he convinced Alex to stop punching off his back foot, and Alex noticed the bag reacting more dramatically to his strikes.

The second week was more freeform; much of it spent sparring with Michael in a boxing ring, with a mouthpiece and head guard. Some of the time he spent working a pair of pads that Michael held, shouting instructions, occasionally batting him about the head and body to remind him to guard. It started to feel more natural to use his forearms and elbows when he was close, and it got easier to use his long arms to jab and keep Michael at a somewhat more comfortable distance.

He learned not to throw kicks higher than the knee, because they were too risky to be effective. His own knees, he learned, were capable of delivering truly powerful blows, more than he could ever manage with his hands; like kicks, however, knees had drawbacks, namely that they tended to leave him off-balance and exposed. After Michael dumped him on his head a dozen times, Alex was effectively cured of the Hollywood-implanted urge to throw kicks to the head.