March 20, 2017

Meet Matthew Osborne of National Wushu Training Center in Downtown

Local Stories

Today we’d like to introduce you to Matthew Osborne.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Matthew. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I started my Wushu life at the age of 18 after being inspired by the popular video game, Soul Caliber II. I knew the animations within the game were captured from real people and I desperately wanted to learn. In August of 2005 I took my first class and was immediately hooked! The workouts were punishing, I had little flexibility and I couldn’t tell my right hand from my left leg but I persevered. It was the art I dreamed about and there were people teaching me very thoroughly from the ground up.

Within my first 6 months my teacher, Eric Chen, asked if I wanted to teach alongside him and I jumped at the chance. I had a very cushy job at Universal Studios as Spider-Man but once the Marvel license disappeared I completely quit Universal to work full time at the National Wushu Training Center. Coach Eric (the founding teacher of NWTC) became like a father to me and I followed him around day in and day out learning almost everything our rich curriculum had to offer. As the years went on I would earn my 1st degree black belt in 2009 and it’s still one of the highlights of my life! Eventually I would make my way up to my 3rd degree black belt in 2011. Throughout all this time because of Wushu I met the woman who would eventually be my wife, I found my long lost biological father (not even joking) and turned everything we had going with wushu into my career. It all seems happy go lucky with nothing but sunshine but there were plenty of dark times. Growing up in Chinese martial arts culture can be mentally taxing. Not to mention a really bad guy swindled my teacher out of hundreds of thousands of dollars and that eventually caught up to us. July 5th 2011, we were evicted from the massive property we once owned completely and had nowhere to go.

Coach Eric’s life from that point on was just in shambles, just one misfortune after another. After losing his home as well, Coach Eric moved back to China to try and rebuild his empire by leveraging his strengths over there. We always joked that I would inherit the school but certainly not like that. We were one of the most revered wushu schools in the entire United States and in an instant down to almost nothing.

I felt responsible for the students left hanging so I did my best to continue everyone’s learning by renting from various places around LA. It was an extremely difficult time in my life but I kept going in hopes that eventually things would settle down. We moved to 3 different locations in 3 years until we were finally booted from our first location in China Town. I finally had nowhere else to go and Feb 1st 2015 I had to cease all classes.

Luckily my reputation had still been growing and I got a job offer to teach in Beijing! With nowhere else to go, every student encouraged me to go out there and take the opportunity! It was a wonderful time! It almost felt like a paid vacation and I loved the reactions of people wondering why I went to China to teach them Chinese martial arts. Though I couldn’t commit to the full 3 years that my employers wanted I returned home at the end of 2015.

For the first half of 2016 I taught private lessons, did a few acting and stunt gigs here and there but things were very slow. By June of 2016 I met another martial arts teacher who had a very open schedule. We decided to team up and teach different styles on opposite days of one another and it has been working fantastically since! Many of my older students had fallen victim to the great evils of wushu, college, marriage, jobs! So I opened the doors of the National Wushu Training Center once more but there were only about 3 students for the first 3 months.

For whatever reason October just exploded with opportunity! A large part of it I believe does come from the fact that I have been following the advice of my students and leveraging social media. My stunt and acting career really started to take off and most importantly students were coming in left and right! It seemed like every day since October new students would sign up and there was an instant turn around! The facility isn’t as massive is it once was back when I was first learning but the curriculum is exactly the same and classes are full and vibrant! Coach Eric is very happy to see his legacy continued and I could not be more grateful for the dozens and dozens of wonderful people who have recently come to learn from me!

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
As I mentioned before it was so difficult having to move from place to place in the earlier days. Wushu is a tough sport to maintain as a business. If I’m being honest it really is a fool’s goal. The space necessary, the amount of people who practice it and even the name itself prevent it from becoming as popular or profitable as things that are more mainstream like Tai Kwon Do or Karate. There were some months where I would barely make $300 a month in profit. For almost a year I just kept eating the cost and eating the cost just hoping that something would give. For the most part it did not. Just when one new student would join another one would leave. By the end of 2014 things really started to fall into place with about 30 or so dedicated students but by Feb 2015 that’s when the property owners kicked us out and we finally had nowhere else to go.

After I returned from China I searched LA and made calls constantly to see what was available and within my budget. In March 2016 I completely gave up and decided to focus on acting and stunts. I would just hang on to all of my resources on the off chance that I would stumble upon a reasonably priced facility someday.

Then there is the fact that I am not Chinese. My teacher is Chinese, my wife is Chinese, my kids are Chinese, and I was hired to teach Chinese martial arts in China! But I am not Chinese and sometimes there is a stigma that goes along with a non-Asian teaching martial arts. What can I say? That’s just the reality of it so I somewhat understand. I remember a guy walking through the door one day and he was taken by surprise. He says “are you black?” I say “why yes I am!” I think people in the class were offended for me, hahaha, but it didn’t bother me at all. It was pretty funny honestly. Though I’ve found out through the grape vine on several occasions that others didn’t train with me because well to put it lightly I didn’t appear authentic. What can you do? Oddly enough it has always been my Chinese friends who live and breathe wushu in China who would vouch for my authenticity.

Probably the worst thing though was having a chronic injury for years. It happened the week after we lost our original school and it stayed with me up until 2015. I was doing the splits and pushed it way too far. I tore a muscle in my glutes. Nothing doctors did or prescribed worked and it was extremely depressing for a long time. During class I would have to hold back so much and completely avoid certain movements or risk making the injury worse. My kicks suffered for years and even fighting on camera scared me. Every time I thought I was healed it would tear again. For a long time I kept thinking to myself maybe it’s the universe constantly telling me to get out of wushu and stunts all together. Now though I discovered something that completely saved my life! You reading this right now, do you have some awful pain that just won’t go away? Tell me about it and I think there is a good chance I can help you. Won’t cost you a dime and it’s not some weird medicine, voodoo or magic either. I know this will sound corny but I know I’m healed mentally and physically because my pain is now my wisdom.

Please tell us about National Wushu Training Center.
I do everything within the company myself! But mainly I teach Wushu, Chinese martial arts! Our school is known for having extremely solid basics! With a solid foundation it is so easy to grasp higher level routines and movements. Often times, schools will teach aerial maneuvers and international routines right off the bat and while it’s cool to learn so much so quickly it usually results in stunted growth and injuries.

After the rules of modern wushu competition changed it has been much easier for everyone to just teach acrobatics and tricks. What happens when you turn 60 though? If all you have is flips and tricks you are left with nothing in your older years. Acrobatics should complement the martial arts skill, not be its focus. We no longer look like great martial artists, Wushu as a whole is starting to look like bad gymnastics.

I’m very proud that my teacher and I never gave into the pressures of today’s teaching. It isolates anyone over the age of 25 and even then only a very small percentage of the population can perform such techniques.

Jet Li’s teacher, Wu Bin, lived in our school for a few months one year. After watching our classes he said “It’s like I’m back in 1985!” which is a huge compliment that I will never forget!

If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
If I could start over I would be less hesitant to take chances. The things that I was most hesitant about, Groupon, Social Media, filming pieces of our routines and putting them online have all contributed to the schools growth. I had to go into each one of them kicking and screaming but sure enough my students were right.

I was also far too humble and self-depreciating once I had to teach on my own. All I did was paint a negative picture about myself when I knew clearly that my teaching and skill was very valuable.

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