51 Years Ago Tonight I Took My First Martial Arts Class

51 years ago this evening, I walked into my first martial arts class. I was 20 years old.

The teacher, "Grandmaster" Sin The, led us through high blocks, low blocks, stepping and punching. The room was bursting at the seams with young people inspired by the Bruce Lee craze. In fact, the class spilled outside of the dojo, which had a garage door for the side wall. They opened the door to accomodate all the new students and I stood with a group out in the parking lot.

Bruce had died one month before. I was inspired by his beautiful movement. Having defended myself successfully against bullies all my life, at age 20, kung-fu was very appealing. I wanted to learn how to fight better. I just had no idea how long I would keep practicing.

I have learned from several teachers since I left Sin The's school. When I discovered Chen style Taijiquan in 1998, it was what I had been searching for, and I am still studying, practicing, and teaching it.

This week I have practiced with students, I have taken two classes because I'm still studying, I held a live online class, and today I'm doing a private online class with a member of my website. 

Fifty-one years after I began, I still think kung-fu is cool and I want to learn more and keep improving. My goal is to help my students save time. It took me a couple of decades or more to find high-quality instruction. My students get the internal information I wish I had received 51 years ago. 

The real satisfaction of studying martial arts is not in reaching a destination, it's in enjoying every step of the learning process along the path. I'm still enjoying it more than five decades later. 

--by Ken Gullette

How Easy It Is To Close Your Mind Off to a Better Way of Martial Arts

This photo shows me (on the right) and my first Chen style Taijiquan teacher, Jim Criscimagna, about a year after I met him and began studying with him.

 

I had studied a version of Yang style for 11 years by the time I met him, but within one hour, as he explained Chen style and demonstrated some body mechanics to me, I knew I had to start over in Taijiquan. I had won medals with the Yang 24 in competition, but when I studied with Jim, new information about body mechanics and principles flew at me like from a firehose. It was overwhelming.

 

I was a "black sash," teaching the system I had learned, and now, I was learning just how empty my art was, and how little I knew about internal strength and internal movement. 

 

It would have been the easy thing to do, when faced with something of higher quality, to retreat back to what I was already doing. Wouldn't that have been easy? I could have said, "That's not my style," or, "I study a different frame." I saw this photo a couple of days ago and the memories came flooding back -- the feeling I had trying to understand these strange but sophisticated details -- a "black sash" feeling like a child, like a complete beginner. But I stayed with Jim (and Angie) and took one baby-step at a time. I'm so glad I did. Knowing them opened the door to a new world, a new depth of martial arts.

 

The moral of this story, boys and girls is this: Be open to new information and different (maybe better) ways of doing things, even if it isn't convenient, even if it is a different style, and even if it means starting over. Yes, it's the easy thing to do to ignore it. But it's a far more satisfying thing to change your course and travel a more complex, difficult, and higher-quality road.

 

--by Ken Gullette

 

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Stop the Exaggeration in Martial Arts -- Nobody Knocked Anyone Ten Feet Through the Air

I've always been an advocate of an important concept in the internal Chinese martial arts. That concept is simple:

Keep it real.

The first thing you might think of are the fraudulent claims about "qi powers" that some teachers claim to possess. That actually is a bunch of malarkey, but I'm talking about a different issue this time.

I've read it in books. I've heard it said in podcasts. I heard someone say it again just today when I listened to a podcast. You've probably read it or heard it, too. It goes something like this:

"This master (insert the name here) did push hands with a student (or hit the student) and sent him flying back THROUGH THE AIR TEN FEET!"

I have a simple answer for this claim: "No, he didn't."

We need to stop saying it. Why should we stop? Because it isn't true.

We tend to exaggerate. But our martial arts are pretty good. We don't need to exaggerate to make our art, our teacher, or ourselves look good.

Ten feet doesn't sound like much. Hell, I'm six feet tall myself. Ten feet is as tall as a basketball hoop. Measure it out on the floor, then try to generate the force to push a 175-pound person through the air that far.

After 51 years in martial arts (as of next month) I have never seen anyone knocked ten feet through the air. Nobody has ever done it to me, even members of the Chen family. Not even members of the Iowa State Boxing Team.

I have never seen it done, either. Do you have video of someone being knocked back ten feet through the air? I'll save you some time searching through your DVDs and VHS tapes. No, you don't.

Is there a video on YouTube of someone being knocked in the air ten feet back? No, because even the frauds who make their students hop with just a touch don't have the magical power to send their students hopping ten feet back through the air.

Do you see the photo here above? We actually measured out ten feet on the training floor. From the edge of that red section back to the blue mat is ten feet.

The world record for the standing long jump -- jumping for distance from a standing position -- is 12 feet two inches. It takes a lot of exploding energy from a person's legs and body to jump 10 feet from a standing position, or even if they take a running start. When they jump from a standing position, they have to crouch down and explode with every bit of force they can use.

So that brings up a great question about a man who, in push hands or in hitting someone, knocks the person ten feet through the air. Here's the question:

Exactly where is the force being generated, and how is it being used, for someone doing push hands or hitting someone to send an adult man flying through the air ten feet?

What is the technique being used and how much force is being used?

Look at that distance. You think someone could knock a 175-pound man through the air ten feet? You can't even lift an adult with both arms and throw him that far. You can't pick up a 150-pound barbell and throw it that far. How do you expect to hit or push a man and cause him to fly back that far?

You say YOU have done it to someone? You say someone did it to you? You are either deceiving yourself or you are not telling the truth. Okay, I'll be generous. You're simply exaggerating. One of those three things is true. If you say you can do it, show us the video. We will make you famous.

In the meantime, let's stop exaggerating, okay? Nobody you know has knocked an adult human being through the air 10 feet and you haven't, either. Maybe you're using a "guy's measurement," but if you are, I have another news flash for you. What you have down there isn't really six inches, either. Your wife told me.

Don't check your brains at the door of a martial arts school. Don't believe what an instructor tells you on blind faith. And in the way you talk about and practice the internal arts -- keep it real, y'all.

--by Ken Gullette

A Great Contribution to the Internal Chinese Martial Arts: The Internal Fighting Arts Podcast Interview with the Publisher of the Pa Kua Chang Journal -- Dan Miller

Dan Miller

From 1990 to early 1997, Dan Miller published the Pa Kua Chang Journal. In my opinion, it provided the best information on Ba Gua Zhang of any martial arts publication. In the 76th edition of the Internal Fighting Arts Podcast, I interview Dan about publishing the Journal. We also talk about other issues related to Bagua, including the moving root, why Bagua practitioners walk the circle, the training concept of practicing techniques, why he likes Sun style Bagua and Taiji, created by Sun LuTang. I enjoy the story Dan tells about one of his favorite memories, meeting one of the old traditional Bagua teachers by knocking on the master's door, carrying a letter from a childhood friend.

Dan attended the United States Naval Academy and served 10 years as an officer in the Marine Corps. Besides teaching martial arts, Dan is a musician. He lives in the Columbia, Missouri area and holds workshops hosting various martial artists including Tom Bisio, Tim Cartmell and others.

The podcast runs one hour and 12 minutes. You can listen here or download the file.

 

From Xingyi and Bagua to Brazilian Jiu Jitsu: The Internal Fighting Arts Podcast Interview with Tim Cartmell.

Tim Cartmell

I've known of Tim Cartmell since the 1990s, when he wrote some articles for the Pa Kua Chang Journal. I've never talked with him until now.

Tim moved to Taiwan at the age of 22 to search for internal arts masters. He found some. He didn't just train in Xingyi and Bagua, he fought in a full-contact tournament (his Xingyi teacher signed him up for it). Later, he got into Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and now, he teaches BJJ and is a coach to MMA fighters.

This is the 75th edition of my Internal Fighting Arts podcast. One of the things we talk about in this interview is the subject of Qi, and how much his teachers in Taiwan and China talked about "cultivating Qi" or using it to give you special abilities. Tim says "people who talk about it in a mysterious way -- the less martial ability they have, the more they talk like that. The guys who could actually fight, hardly ever mentioned anything like that."

Tim teaches at Ace Jiu Jitsu in Fountain Valley, California. His martial arts website is www.shenwu.com. 

Listen to the interview here, or you can download the file. 

 

 

 

 

Why Do You Study Tai Chi, Xingyi or Bagua -- Peeling the Layers of the Onion

Leading a workshop on body mechanics.

When I teach, I try to give a lot of detail, especially about the body mechanics that make the internal arts so powerful. Sometimes, however, it's not good to overwhelm students who are just learning a form. We all occasionally need to take it one layer at a time when it comes to complexity.

I spent many years studying Taiji, Xingyi and Bagua without being taught some crucial details. The reason I wasn't taught it? Because my teacher didn't know the details. A lot of times, we think our teachers are masters because they say they are. Especially before the internet, there was no real way to know for sure. We just took a teacher at his word. That's not enough anymore.

The truth is, the internal arts can be as simple or as complex as you want them. If you want to do them for health and fitness, you can just learn the choreography and that might be enough for you.

I try to start every student's learning with the six key body mechanics that I identified after studying Yang style for more than a decade and then studying Chen style. In Yang style, there is a famous list of ten requirements for tai chi, but in my opinion, they are not the most important things at all. Let's face it, does it really matter if your head feels as if it is suspended on a string if you have no ground path or peng jin? It might be important in the overall scheme of things, but in my opinion, if you don't have ground and peng working together, it doesn't matter at all. But the ground path and peng jin are not included in the list of top ten things that are taught most often in Tai Chi.

I think at the bare minimum you need to know how these mechanics and principles are used in each movement:

1. The ground path
2. Peng jin
3. Opening and closing the kua
4. Dan T'ien rotation
5. Whole-body movement
6. Silk-reeling.

If you understand these six, you can begin doing quality internal arts. And you can step into any teacher's Taiji class and you might even know more than the teacher. But these six concepts are just part of the big picture. When you keep learning, you keep peeling back more layers of the onion. You learn how to be in a relaxed state of readiness. You learn to sink your "chi." You learn how to close the legs. You can also get deeper into the kua, and learn the subtleties of shifting weight. You learn how to lift the energy to the crown of the head.

Something might seem like a "small detail," but it could have a big difference on quality. For example, when you see someone shift their weight from one leg to the next, are their hips moving a lot in space, or are they using the kua to shift weight? The difference between those two concepts just might be a big difference between "external" and "internal" movement. Look at YouTube taiji videos and you see a lot of hips moving in space. You see hips turning in ways that throw you off-center. You see knees swimming in space, too, and knees collapsing during movements. You see stress being put into the knees when the person is stepping or shifting weight forward.

If you want to get deeper still, you can start thinking of the jin that is in each movement -- the "energy" and the intent that particular movement has. Within one movement, such as "Buddha's Warrior Attendant Pounds Mortar," many different "jin" can manifest from one part of the movement to the next.

That's one of the reasons I think it's important to learn the self-defense applications of movements. It's a great way to learn the true intent of a movement, and the energy and body method used.

"Flash the Back" from the Chen 19 is a movement we worked on in class yesterday. Now, if you just learn the choreography, you step the left foot back and chop the right hand down between your legs. But if you go a bit deeper, you feel the movement in the body, including the closing of the torso and ribs, that you would feel if you were doing a hip throw on an opponent.

Go a little deeper and you feel the legs closing and you connect the movement of the hand with the turning of the Dan T'ien with the closing of the torso and the spiraling/closing through to the foot.

So I tend to teach the movements first in a simple way, but soon I fill in details. I do this for two reasons. For one thing, I am interested in the detail, and when I teach, I'm also practicing.

Reason number two is because maybe a few months from now, you'll be working on a movement and suddenly "DING!" -- the lightbulb will turn on in your mind, and you'll think, "Oh, THAT's what he meant." And you will take another step forward in your insight. This has happened to me many times. The steps forward often happen when I am alone, practicing a movement and "feeling" through the body mechanics.

Actually, there is a third reason I teach the details: because it took so long for me to find teachers that knew those details. I want to save my students a little time and a lot of money.

But it doesn't matter what depth you learn if you don't practice. All these mechanics are difficult because they disrupt the way we have learned to move. Of course it's difficult. As Chen Xiaowang says, "If Taiji were easy, everyone be master!"

It doesn't really matter why you study these arts. Fitness, self-defense, self-discipline, goal-setting, health -- there are plenty of reasons. And sometimes your reasons might change. I didn't realize Taiji was such a great fighting art when I first began studying. The more I learned, the more fascinated I was at the self-defense applications of these gentle movements.

But step one was simply learning the movements -- one by one, in order, and knowing where my hands go and where my feet go without messing up. Just practicing the movements can be good for your health, flexibility, leg strength and concentration.

And if you want to go forward after learning the basic movements, this is a pool that gets deeper the farther you dive down. I have been practicing Taiji, Xingyi and Bagua for 37 years and I'm still working, trying to learn more, and trying to improve as I practice and teach. And sometimes, when I learn something of higher quality, I change the way I have been doing things. It's what you have to do if you are going to develop your skills. It's all part of the process of peeling back the layers of this internal onion.

Contact me if you have any questions about practicing or about what you should study next.

--by Ken Gullette

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Are You a Failure at Martial Arts?

I received an email from one of my online members who said he hasn't been practicing much lately because of a busy work schedule. He felt like a failure as a martial artist.

The truth is, you should never feel like a failure at martial arts. Sometimes, life, work, family, and other important activities can get in the way of a regular practice schedule. It happens to all of us occasionally. It's okay.

I don't know why you got into martial arts, but I got into it for three reasons:

Reason 1 -- I wanted to learn how to fight more effectively, like Bruce Lee and Kwai Chang Caine.

Reason 2 -- I kung-fu is cool.

Reason 3 -- To impress women. Of course, this is why some of us guys do anything.

I might be in my 70s now, but I still like to impress Nancy. That's why every now and then, I whip out my broadsword. 

As Joe Biden would say, here's the deal. Don't get suckered by the tough keyboard warriors online who pretend you're not worthy if you aren't ready to enter an MMA ring. That isn't real life self-defense. I'm not ready to do an MMA match, but I'm also not ready to play an NBA game or play for the Chicago Cubs. I'm not a professional athlete. That is not real life for most of us.

Here's something else to think about: we all get busy. We all have responsibilities. And sometimes, we get tired.

Give yourself a break. Be good to yourself. 

Last week, I took a week off. Nancy and I flew to St. Petersburg, Florida on Sunday and flew back the next Sunday. For a week, I didn't practice, I didn't scribble ideas or plans, I didn't teach and I didn't study. I tried not to think of martial arts. It was wonderful to spend a week slacking off with the woman I love. The photo above was taken at John's Pass in St. Pete.

And guess what? I took a week off and nobody died.

To me, martial arts is fun. I love making progress, even taking a baby step forward. After 50 years, I still make progress in my understanding and my movement. That's exciting.

So here's my advice if you feel like a failure for not taking the time to practice as much as you want.

To be honest, you are a failure if you DON'T spend time with your family, your partner, your kids, instead of working out. On your death bed, you will not be saying, "Damn, I wish I could run through Laojia Yilu one more time." No, you'll be thinking, "I wish I had another day with my family."

Now, how do we strike a balance and work our way back to a more regular practice schedule?

If you have just five minutes a day to focus, practice a silk-reeling exercise, or one of the Xingyi fist postures, or the Bagua Basic Palms form; just five minutes a day and you can make progress.

If you have ten minutes, that may be all you have today, but you can make progress.

If you're a member of my website, log onto the site and practice to one of the videos that breaks down a movement in one of the forms. Whichever form you are working on, it doesn't matter. Take 10 minutes and try to gain a new insight into one movement.

If you do this each day, it might spark the excitement again and before long, you'll start finding the time.

Remember, you are not in a competition. Take the pressure off yourself. Very few of us are going to be Bruce Lee, or Chen Xiaowang, or even Jean-Claude Wham Bam Van Damme.

So train when you can, but don't think of yourself as a failure if you don't.

Life is busy. Go with the flow. Thinking of yourself as a failure isn't fun. Don't forget to have fun.

--by Ken Gullette 

Internal Arts Teacher and DAOI Podcast Host William Bentley is Guest on the 74th Internal Fighting Arts Podcast

I met Bill Bentley when he hosted me on the DAOI Talks podcast. He is involved with the Daoist Arts Organization International (hence the name DAOI Talks). Bill is a good man who teaches Xingyi through daoistgatecenter.org, and privately he teaches Xingyi, Bagua, Wudang style sword, and self-defense. He began his martial arts training at the age of 10 in a Shaolin-based family style of kung-fu (the same school I started in way back in 1973), and since then, Bill has studied Wing Chun, Jeet Kune Do concepts (including Filipino martial arts), and the Kendo and Aikido. Later, after a serious injury, Bill practiced qigong and developed an interest in the Wudang arts. He now studies with Master Zhou Xuan Yun, training with him in the arts of Xingyi Quan and Taiyi Xuan Men Jian sword practice, as well as Taiji and Bagua. He has also studied the Wudang Taiji 108 with Rosie Segil and Qigong with Anita Eredics. He also lives in my hometown, Lexington, Kentucky. The podcast runs an hour and four minutes. You can listen through the player below or you can download the podcast. Enjoy!

 

A Lack of Motivation to Practice Martial Arts and a Change of Perspective

One of my online members asked a question in an email last night. He asked how I would respond to a student (himself) who found it difficult to motivate himself to practice.

I smiled when I read it, because I can't count the number of people who swore they would be my best student but dropped out quickly when they realized how difficult it is to learn martial arts. 

I replied, "I would tell him that even 10 or 15 minutes a day can help you move forward. But what teachers THINK is that it's a lot easier to think about being a martial artist than it is to actually do the work to develop skill."

He thanked me for my fast reply, but I realized he had bought his first DVDs from me in 2016. So I replied back and asked him how I could help him.

What he told me next caused a real shift in perspective.

He told me he was so far along in kidney failure that he found it difficult to practice. He also let me know that he has diabetic neuropathy in his feet, making him unable to feel the floor.

Isn't it interesting how we don't know what people are going through unless they tell us? Here he is, fighting kidney failure and other problems, and he still has a desire to practice martial arts. That is truly inspiring.

I know the feeling. Losing a lung, coughing up blood off and on for years, developing exercise-related asthma -- I know first-hand how much motivation it takes to practice despite the punches we take from life -- to practice even when we're gasping for air -- to practice even when we don't feel like it.

So this guy is my kind of person. And I gave him a message that I would give anyone. That message is:

Take care of yourself.

In the final moments of your life, if you are fortunate enough to realize it is your final moment, you will not be wishing you could practice Laojia Yilu again, or hit the punching bag, or do some sparring.

You will be wishing you had one more moment to spend with your loved ones.

I love many things in my life. I love to write. I love good rock 'n roll. I love martial arts.

But there are things more important than any of that: my wife, my children, my grandchildren.

Practice hard if you can. Find 10 minutes a day if that's what will get you moving and practicing. Then maybe add another five minutes here and there until you are practicing 30 minutes a day. Then add more time if you can. If you have issues that can cause you to lose your mental balance, spend five minutes a day -- or more if you can -- practicing qigong. Calm your mind and body.

But don't beat yourself up about it. Martial arts should be fun. There's a serious intent behind learning to defend yourself, but I believe you should have a good time doing it, and not make it so painful an experience that you avoid it.

Practice hard if you can. Remain centered at all times. Enjoy every moment you can. And be good to yourself.

--by Ken Gullette

Song Style Xingyiquan and the Chen Taijiquan Practical Method -- the Internal Fighting Arts Podcast Interview with Raphael Smith

In the 73rd edition of my Internal Fighting Arts podcast, I interview Raphael Smith. He is a disciple of Song Style Xingyquan Master Li Yujie and he teaches Xingyiquan and Chen Taijiquan Practical Method, among other combat-related arts, in Sacramento, California.

Check out the interview or download it here.