Black-belt attorney
learns skill, finds humility
| Black-belt attorney |
|
|
By Dan Sheridan ©
Listen to black-belt Brian Plunkett teach a class at the New England Small Circle Jujitsu Academy. He's intense. He's focused. He might remind you of a freckle-faced drill sergeant.
He says the most important thing he has learned as a black belt is humility. "The more I learn, the more vulnerable I feel and the more motivated I am to train. "While knowledge gives me a certain confidence, it also leads to humility. You know you can be taken by surprise at any time," he said. Plunkett shattered his nose in a 1993 grappling accident. He's had surgery, called rhinoplasty, but jokes that his therapist wife, Laura, says it still isn't right. Some day
The 1980 graduate of Newton North High School wrestled in high school, was captain of the Brown University wrestling team and a judo brown belt when he graduated in 1984. He came home before law school and went to judo and jujitsu school at the Newton YMCA under Professor Dave Castoldi.
Now a partner at the Boston firm of Bartlett, Hackett, Feinberg, the 5-foot 11-inch Plunkett received his law degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1988. Today he helps people buy and sell companies. The majority of his work is bank representation in commercial loan transactions ranging anywhere from $100,000 to $20 million. During law school, he worked out with Castoldi and his student, Ed Melaugh, summers and on vacations. Melaugh tested Plunkett in Newton in 1990 for his first black belt. "I remember this moment of terror," he says and smiles. "We'd face the wall and be attacked from behind. I turned to defend and Eddie attacked me with a samurai sword. I pretty much shrank into a ball in terror." Plunkett trained with Castoldi untill 1993, but had been splitting his time between Newton and Stoneham when Melaugh opened the New England Small Circle Jujitsu Academy there in May of 1990. When the N.E.S.C.J.A. moved to nearby Woburn, Plunkett came along. Last summer, during a training session at Prof. Wally Jay's dojo in California, Plunkett was awarded his second-degree black belt.
Advice to a younger student
"Don't give up. Keep working at it. It only gets better as you get older," said the 38-year-old black belt. "Look at Wally Jay, he's been doing it his whole life. You're never too old to do jujitsu. They say that one out of ten students will get their yellow belt. Then one out of those ten gets their black belt. Most people give up or take on other interests. "Those kids feel like they've done it. I'd rather you go once a week and keep at it and just make jujitsu a regular part of their life. That's kind of how I've done it. "I used to do jujitsu three or four times a week... But I've had children and moved to the north shore. With six job changes and three moves and several operations, there are a lot of things that can crop up to prevent you from training. But I've been pretty consistently a once- or twice-a-week guy. "You might not be able to reach your level starting out with once or twice a week, but once you've reached a certain level, don't give it up. I train really hard when I'm in class. I'm not there to kill time. I'm there to train." Valued readingfor black belts
"It’s a wonderful, short book. I like it so much because it talks about the mental aspects of training. "It doesn't matter what art you're training; the same issues come up -- fear, trying too hard, lack of focus. The book addresses how to deal with those issues in a simple and anecdotal method." Plunkett said he first read the book, by author Joe Hyam, some 15 years ago. Hyam was a student of Bruce Lee. "I had to deal most with fear," Plunkett said. "What to do with fear. Where to put it. How to turn fear into an asset. I take the nervous energy that is the result of fear and try to turn it into energy in the explosiveness of my attack. I also try to calm the nervous energy by acknowledging my fear, recognizing my fear and then saying that fear is OK. And [by] trying to appreciate the fear and what it will do for me." |
| To return to N.E.S.C.J.A. main page, click here. | 
|
Brian Plunkett says his favorite martial arts book is Zen and the Marital Arts.