In February 2017, the Annual Sports Gala in the Sobrarbe recognized the excellence and dedication of the taekwondo teacher Alfred Zirkel, who has been carrying out this function in Aínsa since 1987. Alfred is also co-founder –together with his partner, the architect Petra Jebens– of the Spanish Baubiologie Institute (IEB) in Oncins, a district of El Pueyo de Araguás, where they have both resided for three decades. . Alfred comes from Germany, sport is an essential part of his philosophy of life and sharing the accumulated knowledge, a natural impulse for him. Love moves him in the sports field, and it is also the pivot of the other aspects of his life, especially the one he has shared with Petra for almost 40 years.
“I was born in 1954 – reveals Alfred – and at 16 I was small and skinny; a friend of mine had started practicing jiu-jitsu, which mixes judo, aikido, karate and taekwondo, all oriented to self-defense. Its origin dates back to hundreds , thousands of years ago, but the Japanese collected those techniques and turned them into several of the specialties that we know in martial arts. I started jiu-jitsu in Germany in 1971, near Frankfurt, and I have never stopped. Two years later I focused on taekwondo, where physical contact is minimized in relation to arts more focused on grip, such as judo. “
Taekwondo got him. “I continued until 83 with my colleague practicing a lot and progressing with the belts until I reached the first day in black; I reached the second still in Germany. There he distributed my time: jiu-jitsu Monday and Friday, taekwondo Tuesday and Thursday, Wednesday yoga and weekend courses and seminars “.
Alfred also practiced those early years ‘full contact’, a specialty that he describes as “a kind of boxing with kicks, but without elbows or knees, it is not like ‘thai boxing’. Then I moved for four years to a Tibetan center. There. I did not have a partner to practice judo or aikido, so having already made some progress in taekwondo I focused on it, because I could do it alone. My world was martial arts; With yoga I had built a bridge towards Zen Buddhism, and I also met Petra, my life changed radically. In 1987 we came to Spain in a Land Rover, from Germany to Graus, then Fueva and Oncins, where we continue “.
Opening roads
The couple arrived in May of that year, and they found there was no rental housing. They left the old school in Fosado, a district of La Fueva located very close to Aínsa; the building was in a very bad condition to be inhabited, but they temporarily fixed it. “In September we went to the Aínsa high school at the beginning of the school year, and we volunteered as sports instructors. At the end, Petra ended up teaching German and English, and I did maintenance gymnastics. for women in general and pregnant women in particular, plus a first taekwondo group with 15 adults “.
Alfred remembers that “there was no taekwondo in Aínsa then; judo yes, thanks to a teacher from Barbastro, Antonio. We shared a small room; then we went to a better one thanks to the Intersport store and later we were located in the sports center; currently we have there with a yoga, judo and taekwondo room, and I am 34 years old of uninterrupted classes. There is another colleague with a black belt who started teaching judo in 1990, Jesús Perosanz, and he continues to do so, we work together. We don’t handle a large group, and it’s better this way. “
“Lung capacity doubles with simple breathing practice”
Alfred Zirkel’s concept of sports teaching is much more related to introspection and therapeutic vision than competitive. “I believe in traditional techniques within taekwondo, which is applied in five elements: technique, self-defense, combat, forms and breaking. Of the five, classical techniques are for me the essence of taekwondo; in combat they are not necessarily used. “
Just as many chess players cannot help but see the world as a grand chessboard, in which the movements of the pieces are applicable to many everyday realities, the veteran German professor believes that his beloved discipline has a constant presence in his life. “For me, all movement is a derivation of taekwondo, from going down or up a ladder to a twist or a way of sitting. Having practiced yoga with great pranayama teachers, who teach you to manage your breathing and elasticity, you feel empowered to extend that knowledge. Young children between 8 and 14 years old breathe badly, and do not take sufficient care of their elasticity. Lung capacity doubles with simple breathing practice. In addition, it also improves circulation “. Thus, Alfred abounds in a special way in his classes about the benefits of applying the aforementioned pranayama, which in short is the set of breathing techniques framed in the practice of yoga.
Harmony and balance
The very expression of the forms in a taekwondo routine has to do with the way of expelling the air that is stored in the lungs: an energetic gesture, accompanied by the movement of the whole body and the figures drawn by the hands. Alfred does a practical demonstration in front of the woodshed at the Oncins house: in one minute he executes a combined series of movements with astonishing harmony and agility for a 67-year-old man. Inside his office you can breathe pure air: the presence of a large ficus and a special variety of cacti are not accidental, since, according to the athlete himself, they are plants that help respiratory balance and air purification. “In the classes I try to explain the fundamental concepts clearly. It is true that many of the students, big or small, come with the desire to deal blows, to vent, and I do not restrict them, but fighting is not part of my specific teaching. “
What the Teuton does teach is how to walk towards respect and balance through martial arts, and how to ensure that the rest of the training routine that he teaches on very specific days in Aínsa is transferred to the personal practice of his students. week. The 2017 gala had a very curious effect on Aínsa; Many children and young people began to come to Alfred’s classes, when until then his disciples had been mostly adults.
Article included in the series ‘Aragón es Extraordinario’.
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