Little chat about heritages and tradition

It is so sad many Kung-fu practitioners are more archeologists than fighters and they believe more into the novels and movies than real word situations. They are so possessed by the history and bloodline that they ignore plain facts and clear logic. They only seek the most "authentic" and "original" styles while they ignore the fact that there is no such thing as original and authentic in a ever changing and adopting system that means to keep people alive during brutal conflicts. Yes, I am saying there is no original forms that is the most authentic and true to the root because there is no such thing unless you want to find the first ever fight happened and the fighting styles the two people/parties used against each other. I think you will be very disappointed if you can find it.


I am not saying though there is no difference among kung fu styles, I am telling you a simple fact that all the styles are changing and evolving with time and those ones can't will be washed out by time eventually. You can learn the most authentic and original system and be proud of it but only if you can use it fight against other modern systems and make sure you can really use it to survive ugly conflicts or the only thing you can say about the style you are learning is a dying art which needs you to preserve it for archeology reasons. Or, you just like its beauty. But don't say it's a fighting skill.


The lost of traditional kung fu is inevitable since 90% of the kung fu practitioners are thinking the way I mentioned above and they are so happy to lie to themselves about the effectiveness and all kinds of tall tales that they just live in another world where real world situations are not considered. The teachers practice with students using unthinkable stupid and fake moves to pretend they know to deal with dangerous situations. And every time they face a well trained MMA fighter or boxer, they got their asses kicked. How sad and stupid. There is no surprise kung fu is more and more like a joke than something serious.


I am particularly upset about people talking kung fu as some kind of spiritual thing. It is total BS and if you are so much into spiritual stuff, go meditation or find yourself a waterfall and walk into it. Kung Fu means to save your own ass and kick the opponents ass hard. You can find great deal of spiritual thing here in kung fu, AFTER you can save your own ass.


Use common sense and solid logic. Learning Kung Fu is no different compare your driving lessons or swimming classes. Don't froze your brain just because it sounds "oriental" and "majestic", it will only make you look like a fool in front of other styles and get your ass kicked.

Ch.9 Relax

Now we are getting into a topic that really causes problems to kong fu students. When the word “relax” is used in English, it means relax. But when your Chinese Kong fu master tells you to relax it actually mean something much more complicated and elusive than merely “relax”. The better word for me to put it is "balanced". You need to be balanced in motion as well as in stillness. And once you achievied such balance, you are relaxed.

A lot of issues trouble foreign kong fu students are caused by the language and culture barrier. Actually, because China is such a vast and diversified country, many Chinese don’t fully understand the people who comes from remote areas are talking about.

So, what relax really means? You have to start learning the concept of Kong-Fu-Relax by ditching the idea of relax first and start evrything from scratch.

First, you need to know the real Chinese kong fu is based on the concept of “Dan-Tien”, the field of energy, which is located inside your belly and is not a tangible organ that you can touch or feel by hand. It is the root of everything you do in kong fu and you connect everything through it. Good kong fu build its system around the concept of Dan-Tien like a F1 race car build around its engine. I know, now you are getting confused more than ever, bear with me, I will get you out of here in later chapters.

Second, since we store and utilize the energy from Dan-Tien, all other parts of our body should follow its commend without putting any extra effort outside the energy flow of Dan-Tien to insure efficiency and avoid any waste of energy. As a result, your moves will be connected and supported by the energy flow of your body which uses Dan-Tien as the center hub instead of the partial muscular fixation of different areas. If you don’t, then you are not in the zone and it is not the kong fu relax we are talking about.

Now you may have found that the “Relax” is actually the tip of an ice burg that represents a lot of things in Kong Fu while most of the teachers include them in one word and create a lot of confusion and disputes. But we can easily categorize these problems into three major different areas. You should be able to recognize or ask your teacher to point it out for you exactly which area is the problem that causes the “unrelax” of yours. And of course, these three major areas are interconnected to each other but there will always be one that is responsible for causing your problem.

The first category is the structure of your outside frame; the stances, the elbow or shoulder positions, the back arch, the chest and waist positions…etc. Most of the relax problems are caused by the wrong positions of your body. And when your body positions are not aligned with your internal energy flow, you are going to be stiff and not “relaxed”. So it is important for your teacher to spot your structure problems and it is even more important for you to learn your own body and can correct yourself. You need to lay the rail well for the train of energy to come by.

The second category is the internal structure of your energy flow. Well, if your master doesn’t tell you much about it, you have to wait for next chapter. The only thing I can tell you now is that we need to lay out a clear path for your internal energy to flow without obstruction; in the mean time we want the flow to be steady, strong and smooth so that it can align with the outside form of your body parts to exert the force we want efficiently and strongly.

The third category is the mental structure of yours. When you have a correct frame outside, a smooth energy flow inside, you need the right mind set to make things happen. This is the most difficult part of kong fu(or any human endeavor) but it is also the most important one. Again, I will talk about this later, for now, you need to know that a right mind set is the key to continuous and stable control of the body structure and internal energy flow. If you have problems here, none of the first two categories matters since you will lose the balance sooner or later.

All three areas together balances you inside out, as you can see, if you are a man/woman who is balanced inside out, you will be relaxed…Next time, when your master tells you that you are not relaxed enough, ask him exactly where and how you need to change to be right. Now you know what to ask and help yourself.

Coming up next: Ch.10 CHI???

Ch.8 Circles

It is the circles you make that create power for the moves. Punch, Kick, Wrestle, Grapple, move, and everything you do in Kong Fu, you need to identify the circle(s) you are making.

Generally speaking, the major circle that you use the most is the movements of your waist, it is a horizontal circle that you are making every time you move your waist around. Then there are the most obvious circles: your shoulders, elbows, wrists, pelvis (hip bone), knees and ankles. Together they can make very complicated circles within circles and generate very strong power that a straight line move can never compare to. But there are some more subtle circles you need to learn to leverage if you really want to know the secrets of your masters. The circles made by your ribcage and shoulder blades.

Start learning the tiny movements that you can do with your chest, feel how it can affect your upper-body and how it connects your waist and hips. If you take time and feel it, you can learn how the force is transmitted from the foot to the hands and how it works when you throw a punch and pull the hands back. And you will find there is a circle you can leverage from your ribcage to dissipate excess forces and direct necessary power to where you want it to go.

Then there is the shoulder blades, if you try to extend them as long as possible or retract them as much as you can, there will be at least 30 cm of distance you can maneuver without moving other upper limb joints, and that is a huge difference between hit or miss in a real combat situation! Now, try to make vertical circles with the shoulder blades and you will see how much more maneuverability you gain from it! If you leverage the circles correctly, you can throw punches at your opponents and they will never see them coming.

These two extra parts of your body and how to leverage them are overlooked by most of the fighting systems while some oriental martial arts treat them as big secrets that will give them major advantage either in offensive moves or defensive ones, for example, Systema in Russia and Xing-Yi Quan in northern China are good examples of how to leverage the chest area and shoulder blades to the extreme. And don’t ask me any more detail about these two, there are Google and YouTube.

Now we have talked about all the major circles you should know to leverage in your body, the next step is to know how to leverage them in coherence and coordinate them in a good manner.

Each of your major joints of the limbs has it corresponding partner joint. The ankles are paired with the wrists; the knees are paired with elbows; the shoulders are paired with the pelvis. You will always connect the moves with corresponding joints or you will lose the leverage and coherence of your overall balance. In the meantime, since you drive 90% of the moves from your waist and the power generated by the waist movements will go to both the upper and lower limbs, the connected ways of movements will minimize the loss of energy that generate from the waist thus maximize efficiency.

Take an easy example and you will see why do we need to coordinate the upper and lower limbs: Stand loosely and let your foot point outwards then throw a straight right punch. First you spin your waist to the left, the power goes up through the torso and you relax the shoulder blade and let the power go and move your elbow forward, then you twist the shoulder a little and immediately your elbow and wrist follow through with the twist and complete the punch.

Now, in a coordinated manner, you keep everything the same for the upper body movement, in the meantime, you place your foot a little bit inward and when you swing the waist to initiate the punch, utilize the momentum to slightly tighten your knee and ankle as your elbow and wrist start to twist. Do it slow then increase the speed, I believe you will see my point and take your punch to a new level.

The same concept applies to all your moves and since you utilize the most out of every move you initiate, it actually saves your energy and keep you from exhausted by moving every body parts with separated maneuver. If you make this connection between joints a second nature, you will be swift, agile and unpredictable to the opponent’s eyes. Good luck!

Coming up next Ch9. Relax

Ch.7 Get start

It always starts from the stances and it is always the stances that screw people up. Once you screw up in the very beginning, the rest is a waste of time. I will not explain each of the stances and posting pictures or videos here, without face to face instruction and hands on adjustment to your body, pictures and videos only screw you up more. What I will share with you is the reasoning behind the stances and what should you feel when you get it right. Ask your master if you don’t feel what I am telling you and if you still don’t get it, ask yourself what is the problem, either me, you or your teacher, one of us has to be wrong.

Why do we need these stances? Why do we need to invest time keep the stances for a long time while they are simply different ways of spreading your legs open and create pain and sour?

I don’t care how many basic stances you have there in your system, but none of them should be just making bigger leg muscle by pushing you lower and lower towards the ground. You see, in Chinese kung fu, it’s all about balance. Your stances’ sole purpose is to help you understand your own body better and gain real balance. If you do them right, there is actually not so much sour and there shouldn’t be any pain. The sour tells you where to adjust to gain better balance, and it helps your body to build more muscle to maintain the ideal, balanced positions. So you need time to do each of the stances so that you can listen to your body and learn where to adjust. You want to make each of them smooth and confortable, and when you do it right on spot, you can sense a true balance that keeps you calm but vigilant and you can breathe deep easily.

A Kong Fu system is like building things up with your own body, you need start with the most basic blocks. The stances are the most basic building blocks. They serve as the basic elements of a stable weapon platform for you to launch the punches, kicks, to shoot out the wrestle or grapple, to make swift advance or retreat. You need them to be strong, stable and with right shapes. However, unlike bricks or steel bars, the stances should be easy to transition to one another and keep your body maneuverable any time you want to. So, if any of your stances locks your legs together, ask you to drop down dead on the floor and you need spend quite some energy to transfer it to another stance, it is wrong.

Ask your partner to press hard on the both sides of your shoulders when practicing the stances, if you do them correctly, the down force from your partner will directly transfer to the floor and you will not feel stressed or need to use leg muscle to fight the weight back. And When your partner suddenly retracts his/her hand, you will not feeling the pulse to jump or thrust up. That is what will happen when you gain the real balance of your body structure.

To sum it up, your stances are aim to help you to find and keep the true balance of your body, when practicing, you shouldn’t feel any pain with the joints and the sour will tell you where to adjust and gain more muscle to reinforce the ideal structure of your body. You should remain calm and can breathe deeply and freely when you do these stances while you can easily make the transitions between them. No lock up dead ones and your upper body should always be relaxed and ready to launch.

Coming up next Ch8. Circles

Ch6. MMA?

Oh, I love MMA! I still remember the first time watching Royce Gracie got his opponents down and put them into submission, it was awesome!  And the first time when I encountered a MMA fighter was fun, an opponent talked no rules and no boundaries! Finally I met someone spoke the same language as Kong Fu guys did! 


Wait! you must say now. MMA is very different from Kong Fu! You don't see ground fighting in Kong Fu and you don't believe in big muscle and hard, rough punches! Well, you don't see ground fighting probably because they don't teach you that and you guys don't really play it out, and you do need good muscle to carry out powerful punches and good defenses. It is very clear that the traditional kong fu is made up with Punches, Kicks, Grapples and Wrestles. So the right question is, why don't you learned them all?


In fact, all Kong Fu styles are MMA, Mixed Martial Arts. For example, Mantis style, it is documented by its founder Master Lan Wang in the late 16th century that he integrated 18 different kong fu styles and mimicked the posture of mantis to create his unique kong fu system. Tai-Chi, another super famous kong fu style, is a combination of the traditional northern long fist styles and the Chen family's own style which, few people know, emphasis on wrestling and grappling skills. And in some systems, the names of the styles clearly state the mixed heritage of their system, such as the famous and powerful southern style , the Choy-Lee-Fut system, says clearly about its three different origins.


Like all great human creations, Kong Fu is a living thing and an evolving skill set that adopts to its time. And like all other human knowledge, it needs all sorts of inputs, for trail and error, corrections and integration to keep it alive and useful. Good systems learn from the past and open their eyes to the modern time, and good masters integrate what they have learned, experienced into their own styles. That is evolution. Not some exclusive daddy to son stuff. 

Coming up next: Ch7. Getting Start.

Ch.5 Kong Fu Legends and The Grand Heritage.

About 1,500 years ago the Emperor of the Great Tong Dynasty sent monks of Shaolin temple which is believed to be the origin or birth place of the Chinese Kong fu to travel to the south-east part of main land China to build a branch of the Famous Southern Shaolin Temple and train local people with the secrets of Shaolin Kong Fu to fight the pirates who were harassing the coast line, ever since then, the secrets of Chinese martial arts has rooted in the Southern part of China and trained many of the martial artists who were later famous for their animal mimicking styles. However, in the late 17 century, the southern Shaolin Temple was oppressed by the authority because it didn’t recognize the ruling emperor of the Ching Dynasty and out of rage, the emperor sent out an army to destroy it. After a ferocious fight, only five masters fled and they guarded the secrets of Kong Fu with them. Later they changed their names and hind in secrecy, the masters taught their Shaolin Kong fu to few chosen ones in the hope to rebel someday and rebuild the Great Shaolin Temple. And the Founding Master of my system was the direct descent of one of the five masters who fled the destruction of the Temple. And I am the certified master of the Seventh generation of our system. We have the most authentic secrets of Kong fu and we are the one true way for you to become a master.

Kinda cool! right?

There are a few questions I would like to encourage you to ask me though. The first one is, despite being a foreigner and don’t know much about the Chinese history, still you might happen to know that China has a much longer history than 1,500 years and what were the skills the people use to fight each other before the establishment of Shaolin Temple? Hmmm…probably not Shaolin Kong Fu. And the second question is that since the Chinese people in the north has been fighting the people in the south since very much the beginning of time, you should really wonder how could people in the south defend themselves from the northern army before the Shaolin temple decided to franchise it in the south?

But if you keep asking questions like these and Google a little more about Chinese history, I assume you will get your ass kicked by your master soon.

Chinese people have been doing a lot of fighting since very long time ago (Most of the Chinese Historian will agree that there was one hell of war in about 4,200 years ago when the southern tribal leader raged his army thousands of kilometers across China to the north for the control of China). The recent archeology excavation showed an ancient well balanced double edged bronze sword dated almost 2,200 years ago, still sharp and has elegant markings on it.

And throughout the history, The kings and emperors of China kept fighting to each other, The fighters, warriors and solders actually mixed each other’s styles and make it more suitable for their own preferences when they found anything useful. If you can recognize this fact, you will see that there is no pure breed of fighting style and anyone claims to be the pure descendant of some system is very suspicious. He or She is either weak like most of the pure breeds do or just being naïve.

Kong Fu is a living thing, not some archeology subject that the older is the better. You do not see a scientist hold on to the ancient Greeks’ theories and refuse to explore; you do not see a sprint runner refuse to adopt the latest training program and diet; you do not see an army general refuse to equip his men with better and innovative gears. Why would you insist on finding the most ancient and old heritage of Kong Fu if you want to learn it and use it?

The recent Chinese history is chaotic and tragic, two world wars killed almost 70 million people in China and the consequent famine and civil war killed even more. Many kong fu masters were killed, or lost in the long line of the refugee camps. Whoever survived were not necessarily the best masters but merely the luckiest ones. The China government seized all martial arts during the Culture Revolution in the 1970’s, it search and killed the remaining masters as many as it could. The modern day Shaolin Temple is only a tool of getting tourist money and satisfying the shallow curiosity towards the Ancient Orient. And just in case you don’t know, The Shaolin Temple is going to have an IPO in the stock market and welcome for franchise.

Being a kong fu instructor, I have no interest at the tall tells and heritages that may make me more presentable or prestigious. I am more concerned about the reasons and logics of the moves I learned from my master and how should I pass them to my students. I am devoting my time to make them more powerful and efficient. And I study other styles, practice with different doctrines such as Ju-Do, Brazilian Jit Jusu, boxing…etc and I respect all the people who are committed in all kinds of martial arts. I want to restore the glory of Kong Fu not by telling you fancy stories of the past but by showing you the punches and kicks that works now.  

Being a Kong Fu student, I urge you to do the same.

Coming up next: Ch.6 MMA?

Ch.4 What Kong Fu System Should I Choose?

Now you have made up your mind and prepared to launch yourself into the world of ancient Chinese martial arts, but what is the one true way for you? Just like purchasing your new MP3 player: Ask, compare and weigh your own needs.

When it comes to buy a MP3, you won’t miss too much if you just jump in an APPLE store or buy a SONY. But Kong Fu as a product is not a well evaluated and marketed commodity like the consumer electronics. You need to be a savvy buyer before you invest your time and money. Because in the Kong fu market, the brand name kong fu school can screw you up quite a bit and make you a total loser when you need it.

Ask questions to the master whose style that you are interested in, but please do not focus on the history and heritage stuff, I have to be honest with you, most of the amazing history and grand heritage you heard are pretty much as real as The Lord of The Rings. I too have an amazing one for you if you insist but this is the part I will explain more to you later but I need you to learn the right questions first.

First of all, ask (politely, or you will be deemed as a challenger…or if you want to challenge, you know what to do.) for a typical training sequence and wish to learn the ideas of:

1.     The desired effects of the moves.

2.     The right way of body movements for the moves to be effective.

3.     The logic and reasoning behind effective moves.

4.     The philosophy behind the design of the moves.

Yes, I mentioned them before, and now you need them for the baseline evaluation. And if you find the answers are clear and explain each other perfectly, you can move on.

Now, you have to learn the master’s attitude towards other styles. You see, a Ju-Do master will never dismiss a Karate master while a boxing instructor will not mock a fencing teacher because they have each of their own doctrine and profession. And among the Ju-Do or Karate masters, they don’t criticize each other as false or fake because they each have their own methods to build up the skills and they believe that who wins the competitions is a better fighter so there is no need to argue over the style, history and heritage.

So it is very important to know if your future master has an open heart and confidence to prepare his/her students for the real world where the real testing ground for a kong fu fighter.

Just like a Porsche or Ferrari salesman won’t sell his cars by dismissing the BMWs or Mercedes, the real master would willing to show you the essence of his/her style and be confident about it and willing to give you a test drive (demonstrations).

Compare the different kong fu styles you have encounter, and see which master communicates with you better and shows you clear ideas and solid training programs rather than showing off fancy, confusing stuffs. Remember, you want to be a student, not an audience. You want to do what your master can do one day, not watching him do it all day.

Finally, you need to make an honest self-evaluation and ask yourself again about why do you want to learn kong fu and what do you expect from studying it? Some systems are more into the routines, sequences and forms while some others are into the real applications and have a lot of harsh training and sparring sessions. Choosing the right kong fu system for you is like any other smart purchases in your life, ask, compare and weigh your own needs.

Coming up next: Ch5. Kong Fu Legends and The Grand Heritage.