About this ebook
About the author
Hello
My name is Scott Bolinger, founder of the Warrior Rage Kickboxing Style and author of this book. I’ll start off this book with an introduction of myself, my experiences and hopefully you’ll have a better understanding of what it takes to be a successful fighter and/or coach whether it be for karate, tae kwon do , kickboxing, boxing MMA or inhancing other sports. A lot of the explanations or examples in this book is in a fashion of a coach talking to a student.
While I was growing up, as a kid I did have many interests in different sports. My first sport was baseball and gymnastics. About 7th grade I got into weight lifting. My father who was the 1965 Mr. Nebraska taught me the proper way to lift weights. Then 8th and 9th grade I participated in wrestling. I started using martial arts weapons when I was 15. Mainly messing around with throwing stars and nunchakus. But I didn’t get enrolled in a martial arts school until I was 16 years old. And martial arts came very natural to me. With the combination of weight lifting and martial arts, it made me a faster and more powerful fighter. I was able to see a punch beginning to happen and pop up a sidekick or roundhouse kick faster than most people can throw a punch. The first art I studied was Shotokan Karate. I studied that for about 7 months, then went to just training myself for quite a while. I also studied Tae-kwon-Do, Kenpo, Jukaido, Boxing and Chinese KickBoxing from various schools. But my primary art was always Shotokan.
I started competing in point tournament fights after I received my orange belt in Shotokan. I did try a few tournaments competing with weapons, kata and kumite, but I just found for myself that the Kumite was my expertise. I was more comfortable with kumite, because I was able to be zoned out so the crowd never bothered me, but when I did weapons or form I was always a little nervous. One of the things that helped me in my fighting skills is that I had 5 buddies that I always trained and sparred with about every day. I believe in your development as a fighter, having one or more training partners would be a big help. That way you’re not just doing the standard 2-day work out per week. To be better than the best, you have to go above and beyond your standard workout.
In 1987 I won one of my better tournaments in the men’s advanced class at the Paha Sapa Championships. Which back then was a pretty big tournament. Also in 1987 I went on to win an open Tae Kwan Do tournament in Scottsbluff, then shortly after that I joined the Airforce and spent some time in Germany and competed in a few tournaments there. When I competed in Germany, that was the first time I ever lost a match. I lost 2 matches over there. But it was in 1988 that I eventually started writing this book. Jotting down what I learned, what extra training I did to make me such a good fighter. Basically going through my personal inventory of what I did to become a good fighter and what I was missing in my training then and worked on getting back on tract. And also I would have a reference guide to fall back on so I didn’t forget training techniques. I was honorably discharged from the AirForce in 1990. Then I decide to do a try one in the Army National Guards. After that I got a job working at a manufacturing plant, which was pretty much a dead end job for about 9 years. In that time frame, I hardly ever trained.
In the year of 2000 I had a change in jobs and started working for the YMCA and at that time I started back into training regularly as well as getting back to writing in my book. Working at the YMCA, I supervised basketball and volleyball. I started getting into shape again and eventually took on a couple of students to train in karate. With the extra time on my hands I also diversified some income investing into stocks and rental property. The rental property did all right for a couple of years in helping support some of my training needs. The stocks, most of them did so bad I’d rather not talk about that..lol… But sometimes you gotta have a sense of humor about investments.
In 2002 I expanded my training and had my training sessions more open rather than just personal training. That kicked up my students to about 20 kids. And at that time we were training outdoors. So when it started getting into winter I had to shut down. Having to do that, I started on my quest to learn how to start up a Boxing and Kickboxing school. And also to learn how to raise money to buy a building. I went through a controversy on weather filing for for-profit or non-profit. I finally decided to go with the non-profit organization and got my non-profit status in Dec 2002 and reopened to start training in January 2003 and created the boxing and kickboxing school called the “Warrior Rage Civic Center,” with my style of fighting called “Warrior Rage KickBoxing”. During that break time I also started the katas to fit my own personal style of fighting. As a rule of thumb, practicing your katas on a daily bases will create better focus and enhance your fighting ability. Through a persistent effort I found someone to donate the use of their building and I also took on 2 volunteer coaches and we set up a training schedule for the boxers and kickboxers. At that time I found a pretty big interest in the boxing techniques and training and started incorporating that into my kickboxing style and it worked extremely well. And I got a real kick out of seeing my fighters change, and grow into mature respectable fighters.
Looking back at the two losses in German, I guess I’m still a little pissed about that. But I also think, if I wouldn’t have had the loss, that maybe I wouldn’t have wrote this book and maybe I wouldn’t of grown into such a good coach. But, I’m not saying I wouldn’t mind competing against those guys again. I wouldn’t mind that at all.
The school I ran on 1st in Box Butte in Alliance , ran for about 6 or 7 months, and then I closed it down do to , the owner of the building wasn’t someone I’d have associate with the kids I train. But, I continued training out of my home, then in January 2003, opened up a gym in Chadron with some help from Joe Simmons, who also runs the Native American Center in Chadron. In which I met him when I was on the board for a youth club and also campaigning for City Council. Then also expanded the school and started teaching at the Pine Ridge Job Corps. Ran that for about a year, then when the Job Corps changed the athletics coordinator position, got rid of the boxing program. I then moved to 507 Niobrara in Alliance and from there, I was able to set up a better training program there. So the business started expanding well there. Also set up a website at warriorrage.com. I also started getting requests to help fighters get ready to compete in MMA . But also continued teaching boxing and Kickboxing.
In August 2006 I started up a KickBoxing federation called the WarriorRage KickBoxing federation and had my first fight in February 2007. Did a exhibition match between me and Matt Golding out of McCook NE, who also took 2nd in the Cornhusker state games that year. . The style of competition that I wrote up for the WRKF is set up as a continuous point sparring competition. Would be similar to international rules, but as a point system. I also expanded another website that describes in details of my federation at website: wrkf.us. I’m still trying to expand that and eventually have a state and regional meet.
Roughly 2006, I did invest into a larger home. A 8 bedroom home, which gave me enough space to devote rooms for a weight lifting room, bag room and sparring room. As well as able to rent rooms out to athletes that want to live at my facility and training every day. This is good for people that want to step up their game and create a future in fighting. And also expand on WRKF products. And it 2008 I changed the name of my fighting style to Bolinger Kick-Boxing and Bolinger Boxing, but will keep the federation name the same.
The main thing about building a martial arts career is to be persistent and stay consistent in your efforts and eventually things will come together.
