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His wrist hurt, his knees were sore, his body ached af­ter a long sea­son, and as Andre Fluellen sat in a chair at the barber shop in Jan­uary, football was the fur­thest thing from his mind.

So when the 60-some­thing guy in the light gray sweat suit opened his rolling duffel bag and offered Fluellen an unbeat­able deal -- three movies, a popcorn, can­dy and cold drink for $10 -- the fourth-year Li­ons defensive line­man fig­ured he might as well take it.

Fluellen picked out "Red" with Bruce Willis and "Salt" with An­gelina Jolie, then put "Salt" back when the Boot­leg Man mentioned he had kung fu movies "Ip Man" and "Ip Man 2."

A mar­tial-arts enthu­siast, Fluellen watched the first "Ip Man" in­stall­ment that night. The next day, he was scour­ing the Inter­net, trying to learn ev­ery­thing he could about Wing Chun, the Ch­inese art of boxing fea­tured in the movie.

Two weeks lat­er, while shopping for groceries at East­ern Mar­ket, Fluellen stumbled across a sandwich board for the Detroit Kung Fu Academy. He couldn't get kung fu out of his head.

He signed up for a class, found the par­al­lels to football striking and four months lat­er -- with the NFL lockout lim­iting what he can do on the field -- Fluellen said his chance encounter with Wing Chun has him poised for a breakout sea­son.

"The Boot­leg Man might get me eight sacks," Fluellen said.

Kung fu gives DT new out­look on football

The view from the Detroit Kung Fu Academy is im­pressive.

Hidden in the abandoned storefront of an old Rocky Peanut Co. ware­house in East­ern Mar­ket, the unmarked brick building looks out across the freeway at the Detroit sky­line.

There's the Renais­sance Center, the Penobscot Building and, out the door and to the right, Ford Field.

The first few times he showed up for Wing Chun classes this past winter, that's where Fluellen told people he worked. His story evolved through the weeks. He worked for Ford, not Ford Field, and when some­one asked what he did, Fluellen, trying to fit in, said, "I work on the line."

"They kind of fig­ured it out," Fluellen said over pizza last week. "I wasn't lying."

No, the Li­ons' fourth-year defensive tackle wasn't lying. He spends sev­eral Sundays each fall at Ford Field and works on one of the NFL's best defensive lines.

But at 6-feet-2 and 290 pounds, Fluellen stands out in a mar­tial-arts class designed for self-defense and populated by baristas, bail bonds­men, truck drivers and mu­sicians.

"The art is for self-defense," said Owen Mat­son, Fluellen's Sifu -- or in­structor -- and the academy's owner. "The re­al, prima­ry question of self-defense is fac­ing a larg­er, more aggressive attacker. So it's nuts, because how many times are there that a 300-pound guy is go­ing to be le­git­i­mately train­ing to defeat oppo­nents who are big­ger than he is? He's one of the only people I could imag­ine in that sit­uation."

While Fluellen's for­ay into mar­tial arts had lit­tle to do with football at first -- he watched the kung fu movie "Ip Man" earli­er this year and thought taking Wing Chun would be a fun, chal­leng­ing way to spend the off-sea­son -- it took one class to re­alize how much carryover there would be to the field.

The first time Fluellen walked into the academy's scant studio in Jan­uary, he no­ticed a "jong" hang­ing from the side wall. A 5-foot trop­ical hardwood post with three arms ex­tending from its front, Fluellen thought the cylinder looked like a more prim­itive ver­sion of the pass-rush dummies the Li­ons use in practice ev­ery day.

When Fluellen watched Ely Mat­son, the academy's program co­or­dinator, demonstrate some of Wing Chun's ba­sic forms, including a move called "gaun sau" in which both hands move si­multane­ously, one high and one low, he thought to him­self, "That's my bread-and-butter move right there."

And the more the Mat­son broth­ers talked about Wing Chun's principles, specif­ically the idea of dom­inating the space di­rectly in front of you, the more Fluellen thought they sounded like ev­ery coach he has ev­er had.

"A guy who coached me before, he calls it the power circle," Fluellen said. "Our defensive line coach (Kris Ko­curek) calls it your in­side number. The Wing Chun Sifu, he calls it your center­line. You can't let anybody invade the center­line, so at all cost, you've got to ei­ther use your hands or use your body to turn to ei­ther defeat the hands or get around the hands.

"That's pretty much re­ally what's go­ing on (on the defensive line). It's just trying to defeat the hands and get into the oth­er per­son's center."

Bridging the gap

Fluellen isn't the first football player to use nontra­ditional train­ing meth­ods to improve.

Chike Okeafor, who played 10 NFL seasons with the 49ers, Seahawks and Car­dinals, saw a dramat­ic rise in production af­ter he started do­ing Wing Chun.

More re­cently, MMA has become popular with players, including defensive stars Jared Allen and Clay Matthews. Last year, Li­ons coach Jim Schwartz brought in two pro­fes­sion­al boxers -- Mary Jo Sanders and Luigi Gjokaj -- to work with his defensive line.

Fluellen took part in those ses­sions, usu­ally once a week for two hours dur­ing off-sea­son train­ing activ­ities. He hit speed bags and heavy bags, did hand-mitt combinations and said he walked away with faster reflexes and better hand-eye co­or­dination.

"You always had to have your hands up. That's the whole thing with boxing: You don't drop your hands. You drop your hands, you're go­ing to get hit," Fluellen said. "That's kind of the same thing with pass rush­ing and defensive line play: You've got to have your hands up to pro­tect your chest, your center­line."

With no formal off-sea­son program this spring because of the lockout, it's tough to pin­point how much Wing Chun will help Fluellen on the field. But four months af­ter he started at­tending classes -- usu­ally four times a week -- he sees differ­ences in his body.

The sprained wrist he dealt with the final eight weeks last sea­son disappeared. His hands and fore­arms have hard­ened into cinder blocks from bang­ing on the wood­en jong and a sand punch­ing bag that hangs on a brick wall at the academy. And in player-run workouts at Birm­ing­ham Detroit Country Day earli­er this month, Fluellen said he felt crisper and more powerful than ev­er dur­ing line drills.

"Because of the lockout, we can't do any­thing with offensive linemen ... so I can't re­ally get handwork like that, like I like to do," Fluellen said. "So this re­ally helps. It kind of bridges that gap to where, ev­ery day, you seen it, I might throw 10,000 punches dur­ing a whole day, and that's 10,000 blocks.

"That's ev­ery­thing to keep your hands up. That's ev­ery­thing to defend a hand com­ing against you. So it's just been good to actually work on my craft out­side of football, kind of get a differ­ent perspective of ev­ery­thing."

X-factor in train­ing

That perspective could come in handy this year as Fluellen vies for playing time on a crowded defensive line.

The Li­ons drafted Nick Fairley in the first round and already had Ndamukong Suh, Corey Williams and Sammie Hill in the rotation at tackle.

Despite that depth, Fluellen, who has 2 1/2 sacks in his first three NFL seasons, said he's poised for a breakout year.

"More than any­thing, I just want to be more flu­id as a football player -- more flu­id as an athlete, in general," Fluellen said. "Your first couple years, it's all about go­ing fast and do­ing ev­ery­thing as hard as you can pos­sibly do it. Well, that's not always the best method of attacking ev­ery­thing. There's always got to be an an­gle and a way."

In Wing Chun, Fluellen said he has found a way to get the most out of his ca­reer.

He said he plans on con­tin­u­ing kung fu for the foreseeable fu­ture, eventually sharing what he has learned with young linemen and maybe discovering a new technique or two along the way.

"If I can learn how to con­trol people's minds, be like an X-Man or some­thing like that ... " Fluellen said. "I don't know what's next, but that's the great thing about it is that you nev­er know where ideas are go­ing to come from. This came from me watch­ing a movie. I did some research on it, next idea might come from a bum on the street. You nev­er know what ideas and influ­ences are go­ing to come from, and that's why I'm always open to ev­ery out­let. I'll lis­ten to ev­erybody. I might not agree with ev­erybody, but I'll lis­ten to ev­erybody, and if I feel like it's rel­evant for me, I'll try it."

Con­tact Dave Bir­kett: 313-222-8831 or dbir­kett@free­press.com. Fol­low him on Twitter @freeplions.