Olaf Simon Karate

Many people started their martial arts careers in Karate. I also started my martial arts career in Karate if you don’t count my informal wrestling, when I was a kid.

Ray’s Karate Roots

My formal martial arts career started while I was studying mathematics at the University of Alberta. I joined the Calgary Karate club in the summer of 1967. Classes were held in the basement of a downtown office building. The club was run by Dr. Olaf Simon, who was a 7th degree blackbelt.  He personally led the class doing sit-ups, push ups and anything else that we did. Classes were well controlled, there was no idle chatter. The students worked hard to get good.

Discipline was very traditional and strict. I remember one day a blue belt asked Olaf Simon how long until he gets his black belt? Olaf immediately expelled the student for having the wrong attitude towards training. Our ranking system was white, yellow, orange, blue, brown and black. The blue belt was actually very good. I never could see any of his powerful and very fast kicks coming.

Olaf Simon put on many tournaments in those days. He would be the star attraction with impressive demonstrations of sparring against four good black belts at the same time, smashing 10 to 14 patio blocks with a hammer fist. The blocks had no spacers in between and were not baked in the over for hours to make them brittle. He kicked a board in two that was held as high as two students could hold it. He had beautiful form. Everything had speed , power,  precision and good control. His demonstrations also included a variety of empty hand defenses against various random knife and sword attacks. Nothing was pre-arranged because he said that one year he told the sword yielding student to hit him low and then high but in the heat of the moment, the student forgot the order of attack and so Olaf Simon almost got hurt.  After that, he never again pre-arranged anything for his safety.

 In a demonstration in Toronto once, someone from the audience yelled “Fake”. He came onto the floor and asked if he could attack Simon? Simon told him if he signed a waiver then OK. So this person did. A fast attack came in and Simon knocked him out with a single blow to the stomach.

On the subject of smashing blocks of ice and patio blocks and boards, Simon told me that it was no good to do that but he had to do it in order to promote the art because that was what impressed the crowds. Simon’s black belts were also good with their breaking ability. I witnessed that first hand when I stayed with one of his blackbelts at a Karate tournament in the middle of BC.

In one tournament the Winnipeg Karate club said the rules were not fair because strikes to the head were not allowed. So Olaf Simon made an exception for them and allowed them to strike to the head. None of them succeeded in beating any of Olaf Simon’s students anyway.

In my second year of practice Olaf Simon introduced what he said was a Northern style of Kung Fu which he called Moo style Kung Fu. I don’t know if that was his creation or whether he learned it somewhere but he did extensive research on all kinds of Kung Fu styles before Kung Fu was even very popular in the west.

This introduction may have been motivated by the Kung fu craze that had just started during the Bruce Lee Green Hornet TV series. Many students had become interested in Kung Fu in those days. Another reason may been the disappointment caused by one of Olaf Simon’s best students quitting after learning some Hung style Kung Fu from some Chinese that he had met. Up until that time no one knew that Olaf Simon knew anything about Chinese martial art. I remember that Olaf Simon was particularly adamant in those days to let people know that Karate also had Chinese roots.

One day his best student opened up a school of Chinese martial art right across the street from Simon’s Karate studio. The student said that Olaf’s art was not real Kung Fu. Real Kung Fu was the Hung style that he learned. A little later the student was bold enough to show up to Olaf Simon’s studio along with two of his Hung style friends. I know Simon was always on the ball and wasn’t born yesterday so be expected this to happen sooner or later. The three people said they came to do a little comparison. Immediately one of the Chinese people attempted some kind of kick on Simon. He instinctively evaded the attack and simultaneously smashed the kicker to the ground. The kicker got up trembling and shaking. He realized he was no match for Olaf Simon and the three of them left never to return. The school they ran also closed down the next day.

Olaf Simon had exchanged a lot of knowledge with a genuine Kung Fu master in Edmonton. Also he learned a lot of the Ed Parker Kenpo Karate system from his student Margitte Hilbig who used to go to Los Angeles on a regular basis for lessons. Margitte competed in Los Angeles against men twice her size. I remember she was a very high level blackbelt who I would judge was at least equivalent to a good 5th degree black belt.

Unfortunately while trying Olaf Simon’s Northern Chinese style of jumping and spinning kicks, I landed wrong and tore all the internal ligaments in my knee. In those days, they did not have the micro surgery to fix this and so this caused a life long injury for me. After that I moved to Toronto where because of Olaf Simon’s inspiration, I sought out the best Kung Fu club in Toronto. My stories of Olaf Simon got a Chinese classmate of mine also very excited about Chinese Kung Fu, so together we joined the Hung style club run by Master James Lore and Master Jack Chin.

Years later, maybe ten years later I saw some TV ads of Olaf Simon demonstrating things I never saw before. He called it Temple Kung Fu. I can’t really speak to that but I know in his Karate teaching days he generated some of Canada’s best.