Graceful
Strikes
By, Sabrina KaLani Johnson
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straight sword is an old Wushu, martial arts, weapon, with a blade on each side and two tassels hung on the end. The tassels and movement make the sword beautiful and graceful, yet with the edges on either side it shows it can be fierce just as Emilia Niebylski. She is beautiful and graceful in her work, yet tough when needed. Emilia tries to teach martial arts in a fun way. Her smile shines the whole time, but at the end of the day she makes sure you get your work done. Coaching is a very demanding experience. It’s a lot of giving and if you want to do it right and you really care, then you want to share your experience. It’s a lot of effort, everyone has a different way of understanding things and you have to cater to every person. It’s a rewarding
experience at the end. I love doing it and I love teaching and I love sharing my experience with kids and when they get it and they actually blossom it’s this wonderful feeling of ‘Oh you got it!’ But, it’s very demanding and I do get tired” (Emilia). Emilia coaches martial arts, cardio, and kickboxing classes at Studio
with abs and strong arms until I asked her during this project finding out she is actually forty-two. According to the KAT website, martial arts can help your health with everything from increasing bone mass with things like resistance training to helping to “offset dementia and alzheimer’s later in life.” hose who know Emilia would think she’s a strong and confident woman who’s always up in the front of the class rather it’s warm ups or kicks. In our first interview I asked her what it was like to coach and she told me how, “when I first came to studio kicks I was very timid I would take classes and always be in the back of the line. I would be so afraid to be in the front but as time progressed Mr. Branden (the owner at the time) would push me towards the front. He would be
“Never give up. you always have to keep going.”
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Kicks. Emilia’s co-worker Cyrus talks about Emilias coaching: “Emilia is good at coaching the kids, because how I trained it was serious, but here you have to talk to them.” Wushu along with other martial arts help to keep someone in shape and healthy. When I first saw Emilia if I had to have guess, I’d say that she’s about thirty
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saying, ‘Well you’re going to start teaching class’ and I would say ‘No, I can barely speak English.’” When Emilia first came to Wushu she was a lot like most new students, shy and hidden. However why she came to Wushu is another story: “the reason that I came here was that I wanted to sign my son, Adam up for martial arts he was actually the first one that started it but then I looked at him and I was jealous, so I joined...” Emilia and her son have definitely connected through Wushu. Divorce can sometimes be hard on the relationship between parent and child, but Wushu gave them a place where they can bond with each other throughout a hard time. Emilia talked about how they connect through Wushu and said that “.... since then we’ve been side by side doing the same thing now that he’s an adult and we can do it together its a wonderful experience, we do argue about it a lot, correcting each other.”
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milia first came to America when she was nineteen, moving back to poland to finish her studies and ended up coming back and permanently residing here when she was twenty four. “When I first came to America I could ask for a glass of milk that’s about it.” Coming from another country is never easy for anyone at a young age, not knowing much English. “I would try to have conversations with people and started taking classes which helped me a lot.” very year, Studio Kicks hosts an annual black belt showcase, where students perform their forms (i.e. weapon, hand or sparring). Although showcases are fun, it comes with hard work as well. During my first showcase, I was
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backstage going over my hand form one last time as Emilia came rushing into the backstage in a blue and gold sleeveless silk talking about how she had six costume changes, she went from a lion to a black belt to a cardio instructor and everything in between. Emilia is always ready to step up. For example, during one of the shows, the person who was supposed to be the head of the lion didn’t show, Emilia stepped forward taking their place,
resulting in entranced looks and couple giggles from the audience members. She didn’t only help open the show but performed her own Wushu forms as well with the cardio kick boxing class, earning her second degree black belt certificate. Years from now Emilia hopes to be where she is. Moving ahead, she’s already been doing this for the past ten years. “Wushu and coaching is something I want to do for the rest of my life, ten,
fifteen,twenty years I hope I am where I am now, but it is hard. I could be working for corporate making millions, but this is what I love to do.” In the last interview I asked Emilia about her idol but instead of talking about a person, she talked about what she idolizes isn’t a someone but the ability to never give up, that is what she wants to accomplish with high hopes her son will do the same.
“Life is not easy and that you have to work really hard and that’s what I’ve learned from Richard Branden. You need to work really hard and you don’t give up and there’s something he use to say, ‘that even if you feel like the sand is moving out of from your feet you need to push through this and I think that’s what he taught me is to keep going even is your tired, if you’re gasping for air, but you just have to keep going’.”
Richard Branden 1963-2013