Respect Your Weapons

Kung fu practitioners will learn weapons at some point in their training. This is always an exciting and fun time in a student's training, especially the first weapon. Something to keep in mind is the respect for your weapon. This is something that has become forgotten in some schools. A few hints when you are training:

• Always be aware of your surroundings - this helps avoid hitting your weapon on something (or someone)
• Don't throw your weapon around - when not using your weapon, put it down slowly
• A lesser known one for you that only more traditional Sifus would know - when standing holding your staff, don't place it on the ground but instead you should be resting it on your foot
• Respect also goes to other students' weapons - do not touch someone's weapon without asking for permission

It is important to have your own weapon because each weapon will feel a little bit different. Getting used to your weapon and the feel of it will improve your performance. For this reason, it is even more important to take care of your weapon.

Weapons Forms of Fut Gar Kung Fu

In Leung Tin Chiu's branch of Fut Gar Kung Fu there is a heavy focus on staff work. This agrees with the theory form my previous blog entry about the most important weapon in Martial Arts. Here is a list of the weapons forms as I was taught by Grandmaster Chen Rong En.

• Double-ended Staff
• Shooting Star Chasing the Moon Staff
• Tiger Taming Staff
• Left Handed Staff
• Flying Dragon Staff
• 2-Person Flying Dragon Staff
  
• Dragon Well Sword
  

There have been other forms that Grandmaster Chen has taught but they were not from this style. Years can be spent just training in the proper techniques and applications of these forms.

Commercial Schools

I have thought many times over the years about the commercialization of Martial Arts. There are a few things that I find to be quite frustrating.

The schools that pressure you into joining when you were there to ask about a few classes. The idea is to sign up a bunch of students who ideally do not continue to show up so the space is able to accept even more students. Yes, you are there because you are interested in joining a school but I believe it should be up to the student to ask to join. When asked about selecting a style, I normally suggest that the student should try a few different schools and styles to see which one is to their liking. This should be a combination of liking the instructor, their teaching style, the location, the other students and enjoyment of the lesson during the time you were trying the class. Don't get me wrong, I don't mean that the workout should be easy and therefore enjoyable, but more that the style of workout is what you are looking for.

The guarantee of attainment of the highest level within a certain amount of time is something else that I have heard of. I do not believe that it is possible to guarantee that someone will get their "black belt" in a certain amount of time.

I accept the existence of belt or ranking systems so people can see their progression within a style. I have also given into the need to show progression and gotten away from traditional style where all students were students, not a certain level of student. I do feel that some schools now are overdoing it with adding too many levels or levels within levels. In my opinion, it is a pure money grab because the school can charge for each grading,

Watered down systems due to the desire to generate instructors is a problem that I see in commercial schools. They want more instructors to spread the style but unfortunately, I have seen too many instructors teaching watered down versions of their style or not having time to mature before moving out to be an instructor on their own. I know that students are able to learn an entire style quickly if given the opportunity. Unfortunately these students have not been given the time to mature in the style and fully comprehend/practice the techniques. This leads to the situations I have seen where the instructor is not aware of why things are done a certain way. This knowledge becomes lost and as their students become instructors, even more knowledge is lost.

We have all seen schools display weapons on the walls or in a rack. Some of my students actually discovered a school that displayed swords and staves on the wall but upon asking discovered that the instructor did not actually know how to use the weapons and did not teach the weapons. Another one of those silly franchises that try to excite potential students by displaying "cool" weapons.

Grandmaster Chen Rong En and the Knife

Some of my students will remember this story if they were around 7 or 8 years ago. Back at that time Grandmaster Chen Rong En still had his own school and I brought my students there once a week to practice and get direct exposure to my Sifu. I thought it was important for the students to get as much time as possible with Sifu since he was always happy to help me by correcting techniques and explaining theories. In exchange for his help, I allowed any of his students that were interested to join our class without paying an extra fee. This was before I formed The National Fut Gar Kung Fu Training Centre as it exists today.

One night I was teaching a regular class at Sifu's school. There was a group of people that had asked Sifu to borrow the back room of his school to get together to play cards. Sifu was talking to me as the students trained when suddenly we heard yelling coming from the back room. We looked over and one older gentleman came running out and said someone pulled out a knife due to an argument. We all knew that there was no back door so everyone could only come through us. Sifu told me to close the door behind him...when I tried to argue, he told me not to worry and just to make sure that my students were OK. I quickly asked the younger students and female student (I believe there was only one present at that class) to go in the change room and close the door until we told them it was OK. Sifu had already gone into the back room and closed the door. I instinctively grabbed my sword and my senior students grabbed their staves. Here is the funny part....we looked over and the older gentleman that had come out of the back room was holding a mop!!! We all waited....silence. We continued to wait.....still nothing. Finally Sifu came out of the back room and said don't worry, everything is OK. We watched the guy that was holding the knife leave...without his knife. Once everything seemed OK we got the students back and finished the class.

I later asked Grandmaster Chen if he had to fight the guy. He said no. I clarified...so he just put down his knife? Yes. Finally Sifu explained to me what happened. He walked in and the guy was very angry. He had pulled his knife because he had gotten into a dispute with one of the people in the room. Apparently he was not a person that knew them very well but was brought by one of them. When he walked in the room and closed the door, he asked the guy if he realized where he was. He said "you are pulling a weapon on my friends inside my Kung Fu school. You are giving me no choice but to kill you." The guy put down his knife and apologized. Sifu told him he should leave. That was the end of the conflict and we never saw the guy again.

Leung Tin Chiu in Competition

If you try to find out about Leung Tin Chiu (Chee) you will find a variety of stories about his technique, fighting, form and how good he was. A common story is about his participation in a national Martial Arts tournament set up by the Chinese government. The tournament was set up with the best Kung Fu practitioners from across China competing. There were supposedly over 2000 competitors at the tournament. Competitors were ranked on a variety of categories including fighting, forms, technique and weapons. It is clear that Leung Tin Chiu did very well in the tournament but the final results have been reported in several ways. My understanding of the final results is that the overall winner was not clearly identified (possibly due to political reasons) but that Leung Tin Chiu was one of the top three. Other stories have him listed as 3rd overall, 1st overall, 1st in fighting, etc. What is clear is no matter where he finished, it was a great accomplishment in a tournament of this stature.

Our school is proud to be teaching Leung Tin Chiu's style as taught to his disciple, Chen Rong En. I am one of the original 9 disciples of Chen Rong En and unfortunately the only one of the original disciples that is still teaching Fut Gar Kung Fu. We have a sister school in China now which has been in operation for about 3 years.

The Most Important Weapon in Martial Arts

Martial Arts, especially Chinese Kung Fu contains many types of weapons. There can be much debate over which is the strongest weapon or the most useful weapon but it is clear that one weapon is the most important weapon to be taught in a school. That weapon is the staff or stick.

The main reasons that this is the most important weapon are:

• It is the base weapon for all weapons. This is the reason it is known as the "Father (or Grandfather) of all Weapons" in Chinese Martial Arts. This means that staff techniques are the foundation for forms with other weapons.
• If a school is going to teach weapons, staff is likely the one that is taught. It is unlikely that you would find a school that only teaches one weapon and have it be something other than staff.
• For the above reason, schools can be judged on their staff forms by other schools. Not all schools teach another weapon outside of staff so it would be impossible for those schools to compare with other schools.
• For beginning weapons practitioners, it requires the least amount of precision as they are learning to use the weapon. Although you learn to strike towards the end of the staff, you would still do damage with a proper strike that is further down the shaft. Being round, it also eliminates the need to know where the cutting edge of the weapon is such as when using sword.It is the most accessible weapon in surprise combat situations. You are more likely to find a stick on the ground than a sword.

Staff is one of four weapons that are considered foundation weapons in Kung Fu. These are the foundation weapons because all other weapons techniques can relate back to these four weapons. Although the staff is the base, there are some more specialized techniques taught in the other foundation weapons. The others are:

• Broadsword (Dao) known as the "Marshall or General of all Weapons"
• Straight Sword (Gim) known as the "Gentleman or Prince of all Weapons"
• Spear (Cheung) known as the "King of all Weapons"

To further classify the weapons into weapon types you will often see a generalization of weapon types. The members of my school use the breakdown of Long Weapon, Short Weapon and Flexible Weapon. I have seen other classifications such as medium weapon or special weapon but do not believe these are necessary.