Lama Training In Class

We are at an interesting time in our class where a group of the students are learning Lama forms. We do this for fun and as a break from the core training in Fut Gar. For those that are not familiar with how I ended up learning from multiple instructors, I wrote about it in a past post.

I thought I would take some time to point out some differences from Fut Gar that should be kept in mind during the training:

1. There are points in Lama forms where you will be leaning. In Fut Gar we are always keeping our body straight with no lean.
2. You need to be in a Gung Bo for many moves. Although this is not used in Fut Gar hand forms for reasons we have discussed in class, there are reasons to use the stance in Lama.
3. Your back hand will be extended during many techniques in Lama. In Fut Gar, we are typically pulling back to an elbow directly opposite of the attack.
4. In Fut Gar we generate power mainly from the turning of the waist but in Lama you will notice that we will discuss other methods.
5. We will be using a wider Ma Bo in Lama than we do in Fut Gar.
6. You will likely find that you are burning out of energy. This is common whenever you try to do a different style because your body has not adjusted to the new way of moving.

There are some things that don't change:

1. You should be looking at your opponent during the techniques. Of course I mean at their shoulders and head, not at their feet.
2. You should continue to think of why you are executing techniques.
3. Your striking and blocking surfaces will remain the same.
4. You will still be told to lower your stances.
5. Have fun with the training.

10 Thoughts About Tournament Competition

Many students of Martial Arts will become involved in tournaments at some point in their training career. I have competed quite a bit and trained many competitors over the years. I think it is important to understand some important things about tournaments as you enter into competition:

1. Tournaments are a great way to see other styles and schools as a comparison to your school. Tournaments are not an absolute indication of how good schools are but are a good way to see what techniques are done by other styles and enjoy the differences in forms.
2. Winning a tournament is something to be proud of because it is an indication that within the rules of the tournament, you were the top performer. You are also representing your instructor and school successfully.
   
3. Losing a tournament is not the end of the world. Remember that tournaments are designed with a set of rules and therefore there are some judgments used to determine winners. Do not be discouraged if you do not do well within the defined set of rules.
   
4. Go to tournaments with the goal of experiencing the atmosphere. Tournaments should be more about the experience and less about the result.
5. Try to make friends. As you compete you will start to recognize other regular competitors. Martial Artists are all practicing for similar reasons. You will likely find others that are like minded at tournaments.
6. Cheer for your classmates. Attendance at tournaments is also a way to support other students from your school that are in the tournament.
7. Gain experience performing in front of a crowd. Tournaments are a great way to get used to the fear of performing in front of an audience. This confidence can carry on into your everyday lives.
8. Gain experience performing under the pressure of being judged. Once again, this can carry on into your everyday lives.
9. Gain experience fighting with unfamiliar partners. As you practice fighting, you will become comfortable with the techniques used in your style as well as the fighting styles of your classmates. Tournaments are a good way to practice fighting in situations where you do not know what techniques to expect.
10. Gauge your performance. You have an opportunity to analyze your performance after a tournament to determine if you know your forms well (did you freeze or perform without hesitation), how comfortable you are with your techniques (did you throw a variety of techniques during fighting or rely on a few techniques) and how comfortable you were walking up and executing in front of a group of judges.

I believe that every student should compete at some point in their training career for the experience. This should be done with the clear understanding that you do not need to win to be proud of yourself.

A Day in the Life of a Kung Fu Student

This was an article that was written back in the late 1980's that described my time training with Grandmaster Chan Tai San. This was taken from a Chinese/English newspaper called the Connection.

Chinese New Year Demo

Our school performed at the Hainan Association's Chinese New Year dinner this past Saturday. Unfortunately, due to video camera difficulties, we were unable to get the first 2 performances in our demo. It is too bad because it is always nice to have some footage of the newer members of our demo group. Here is a video with a a mix of the forms we were able to capture on video. Unfortunately, the video quality was not great because it was with our backup camera.



For those that were not filmed, here are a couple of pics that at least prove that you were on stage.



Here is a nice picture at the end of our part of the show.



Thanks again for everyone that helped out and Michael for his guest appearance. You all did a great job!!!

Grandmaster Chan Tai San and the Tough Guy

I was passing on this story to one of the students tonight and remembered that it is actually a very funny story about Grandmaster Chan Tai San that should be told.

I was practicing a form in my normal spot, the park across the street from the apartment where Sifu was staying. It was convenient because he could watch me from the kitchen and if needed yell instructions at me from the window. I remember that I was practicing a broadsword form. This was back in the days when people carried around ghetto blasters on their shoulders. This guy was walking down the street and decided to stop and watch me. As usual when people stopped to watch me, I just kept on practicing and ignored the guy. He turned up his music on his ghetto blaster....I continued to ignore him. He started saying something but being the bright guy he was, didn't realize that I couldn't hear him over his music so I kept ignoring him. By that time Sifu had noticed him and come down to the park. Mr. tough guy looked at Sifu and said something like "what do you want, old man?" Sifu smiles at him and waves him closer. The guy walks up to Sifu and Sifu does a series of actions to his arm....really innocent looking stuff like pull his arm, squeeze a few spots, pat his shoulder, etc. Then Sifu walks away. The guy is confused and goes away and I return to my form....about 5-10 minutes later the guy comes back and starts yelling at me...."What did he do to my arm? He better tell me or else!!!" Trying not to laugh, I asked what was wrong. He said his arm was in a lot of pain and the old man better fix it. I yelled for Sifu to come down and told him that the guy wants his arm fixed. This is where it gets really funny....

Sifu goes through a series of interesting motions....poking the guy, touching the guy's nose, pulling his ears, rubbing his head, rubbing his shoulders...all of it with a big grin on his face. Then he walks away. The guy says tell him that it still hurts....all of that did nothing!!! I translated and Sifu says tell him it will feel better later. The guy goes away and returns about half an hour later. Still trying to be a tough guy, he explains to me that the old man was lucky because his arm feels better now.

Chan Tai San at the Temple

This is a clip that originally came from a documentary about Chi Gung/Chi Kung/Hei Gung...depending on your dialect. The video quality is horrible but it is still fun to watch. Grandmaster Chan Tai San is doing his trick where he snaps wires with his chest...I am not sure when this video is shot but he looks to be in his late 30's or early 40's? He shows up about 55 seconds in so be patient.

***** Clarification: Thanks to Michael Parrella in New York!!! He is actually about 60 in this video. Wow, quite bit off in my original guess.******

The Art of Losing a Fight

In Martial Arts, we train to defend ourselves. We train to win a fight against an untrained fighter. We train harder to win a fight against a trained fighter. We train to defend ourselves against multiple attackers. We train to be the best fighter that we can be so we can win in as many situations as possible. The bad news is no matter how good you are, there is always someone better. There will always be a situation that you cannot win and there is always a chance that you make a mistake during a fight. What then?

Is it a negative approach to believe that you could lose a fight even with years of training? No, I believe it is a naive approach to believe that you will win every fight. My instructors Chan Tai San and Chen Rong En could defeat me even though they were much older than I was. In fact, Grandmaster Chen Rong En still likes to prove it today with myself and other instructors in the city. I am sure he would tell you that his instructor, Leung Tin Chiu could defeat him.

Remembering that you cannot win every fight in every situation will prepare your mind for what to do next:

• The first goal is to survive. Do not give up, keep fighting.
• Do damage. You do not need to win a fight but you do want to make your opponent hesitate to come back again.
• Get out of a losing situation. Find an escape as soon as possible once it is clear you will not win.
• When in doubt, cheat. In a real life fighting situation, there are no referees...do what you are not allowed to do in class....these are the things that will likely be most damaging.
  

Get The Facts Straight - Or Don't Try to be a Kung Fu Historian!!!

It's finally time for me to rant about this website in Australia which is magically making up some details about the Fut Gar Style. This guy would have had the same degree of accuracy if he went on YouTube and randomly chose some forms and listed them as forms taught in the Fut Gar style.

Their site says:

There are now ten empty-hand forms starting with a hard, almost karate-like form, all the way to an internal form similar to taiji quan. The forms are:
· Seah Ying Diu Sau (Snake Form)
· Tai Ji Kuen (Prince's Form)
· Bak Mok (White Hair)
· Lohan Kuen (Monk's Fist)
· Dai Lin Wan (Large Connection)
· Dai Gum Gong (Big Solid Body)
· Chut Yup Bo (Out In Step)
· Maang Fu Ha San (Fierce Tiger Descending the Mountain)
· Tien Jaang (Complete Elbow)

First of all this guy can't count....he has listed 9 forms when he says there are ten. Secondly there are 11 hand forms in the Fut Gar system but the last form was traditionally only taught to the most senior, loyal students of the style...don't worry, all my students will have the opportunity to learn the form at some time :) Thirdly only 4 of the forms listed were actually Fut Gar forms.

So...why do I care?
Reason #1: As someone that has been asked to continue the lineage of Leung Tin Chiu's Fut Gar Kung Fu, I like to see as much information as possible available to the world but it would be nice if the information were correct.

Reason #2: This person basically scraped my school's website for any mention of form names and included them in his site...it is clear from our website that although we focus on Fut Gar, we also teach Lama and Choy Li Fut at our school so we list some of those forms on our site. The list of forms are all forms that are listed on my site and definitely are not a combination of forms that are taught anywhere else...it is impossible to "acquire" the list from anywhere else.

Reason #3: No attempt was made to contact us for clarification that the information they were quoting was correct. I am happy to help with appropriate information when asked and would definitely have clarified.

How do I know that the information was scraped from my site? Since he linked to my site, I know he has read my site.

So then they talk about weapons:

The nine original weapons were staff, spear, straight sword, broadsword, butterfly swords, kwan do, tiger fork, three-sectional staff, and the monk's spade. Some of Fut Gar weapons’ forms include:
· Hak Loong Dao (Black Dragon Broadsword)
· Fook Fu Gwun (Tiger Taming Staff)
· Ng Ma Quite Show (Five Horses Returning to the Feeding Post Staff)
· Loong Chien Gim (Dragon Well Sword)

Nice try again.....but only 2 of the forms listed are Fut Gar forms. Once again, these forms are taken off of my site and an assumption was made that they are Fut Gar. On top of that, in our branch Fut Gar Kung Fu there were not nine original weapons. Not sure where this information came from....could it be from some pictures on the website? To be clear, Fut Gar focuses on hand forms, staff forms and has one straight sword form....that is it.

To be fair, they did includes some other information that seems correct and I appreciate the attempt by this person/people to create some sort of background on Fut Gar for the benefit of their students but truly believe that they would have been better off telling the truth when it came to some of the things I have mentioned....they just don't know!!!

Chan Tai San and Chen Rong En - What Is the Connection?

Students of my school are aware that the curriculum taught in the school came from two sources, Grandmaster Chan Tai San and Grandmaster Chen Rong En. Students are extremely fortunate when they are able to train under a Sifu with great knowledge but to have the opportunity twice is unheard of. To be clear, I am not the luckiest person in the Martial Arts world...there was actually a connection between my Sifus (is that the proper pluralization?....Steve, Jackie help me out here). My time training with Chan Tai San was extremely important to my development and I was happy to spend the rest of my time training in Choy Li Fut (the style in which Chan Tai San named me an instructor) and Lama (the style that was taught to my brother Chow Wun Dak...for my students that is your Si Bak). Then one day in 1992 or 1993 my brother called me and said that Sifu has asked us to take up the Fut Gar style of Kung Fu with his friend Chen Rong En. Sifu had officially introduced Wun Dak (see picture above) and myself as good students that would be excellent candidates to carry on his style.

So how did they know each other? My Sifus were instructors in the same region of China at one point and happened to become friends. Below is a photo taken of instructors in the region...not sure how or why the instructors were brought together for a photo but you will see Chan Tai San (bottom row 2nd from the right) and Chen Rong En (middle row, middle). When Grandmaster Chen Rong En moved to Canada, he mentioned to Grandmaster Chan Tai San that he is looking for a few students to carry on the Fut Gar style and was promptly directed to my brother and I. I feel fortunate that Sifu would recommend me as a person that he felt highly of and with good character to carry on a style. I have done my best to ensure that the style survives as a whole style instead of in pieces as it is taught in many schools worldwide. My Sifus continued to stay in touch over the years and actually participated in an event together in 1995 (see photo below).