Ken Gullette's Internal Fighting Arts

I'm editing the xingyi staff video that we shot on Saturday and breaking it down into video lessons for the online internal arts school.

One of the points I drove home during the teaching of the Hsing-I Staff form was the use of internal body mechanics. If you use the staff properly, with the right body mechanics, the form is very similar to the internal pole exercises that are included as a bonus on my Silk-Reeling DVD and in other video lessons on the website.

In the pole exercises (discussed in other posts on this blog) you take the arm and shoulder muscles out of the strike and use spiraling, ground path, whole-body movement and strong closing into the kua. When you do it right, the end of the pole shakes and whips with the energy that travels out through the staff.

Using a lighter staff--in the video I use a rattan staff--can give you a good idea if your body mechanics are correct.

--by Ken Gullette  

A group of students and I got together yesterday to work on the Hsing-I staff form. It's a form that is part of our Hsing-I curriculum.

I like the explosive nature of Hsing-I Chuan (also spelled xingyiquan) and this form embodies the qualities of the five fist postures--powerful techniques that drive through an opponent.

We worked on the movements of the form, including the body mechanics and dan t'ien rotation that is a vital part of any internal form. The dan t'ien moves with the staff just as it moves in an empty-hand form. The staff is an extension of your limbs. One of the challenges of Hsing-I students is to achieve relaxation in the movements, along with the explosive power during striking techniques.

After working on the form, we broke down each of the form's movements and practiced the fighting applications--blocks, deflecting techniques, sticking techniques, and strikes. I've known many martial artists who do brilliant staff forms but don't have experience with the fig...

Back in the late Nineties and the first couple of years of this century, I competed in several Gen-Ki tournaments in Chicago. They were big affairs, with hundreds of competitors. It was fun to go up against mainly karate people and win first place. My students and I brought home quite a few 6-foot trophies.

At that time, there were several really great tournaments in Chicago. One was a huge open tournament with internal arts divisions that attracted Hsing-I, Tai Chi, and Bagua competitors.

Gen-Ki was mostly devoted to karate but at the time, I was building a winning track record was felt that I needed to compete and win. One of the great things about Chicago tournaments is the contact that is required in sparring. In brown and black belt competition, you can't score a point unless you hit or kick your opponent. It isn't a game of "tag," like critics call tournament sparring. It gets rough and it's fun.

For the second time this year, I had a completely different reaction when I wen...

Four students and I attended a tournament in Moline, Illinois, yesterday, hosted by my friend John Morrow. I hadn't competed in over a year-and-a-half, and after two heart surgeries this summer, decided to just enter for forms and weapons and wait a little longer, maybe next spring, to enter sparring competition. Photo at left shows me, Chris Miller (standing), his daughter Roewyn, and Colin Frye. Kneeling are Kim Schaber and Kim Miller.

We had a good day. Chris Miller won first place in the brown belt empty-hand forms competition, second in sparring (he was a much better fighter but didn't get the calls), and third place in weapons. He ran a bagua form in empty-hand forms and ran the Chen straight sword in weapons.

Kim Miller won 1st place in women's sparring (under black belt) and 2nd place in brown belt forms. Kim ran the Chen 38 form.

Kim Schaber won 1st place in empty-hand forms and 1st place in weapons. She performed Hsing-I in both competitions.

Colin Frye won 1st place i...

I was reading an article in an ancient Tai Chi magazine about Zhu Tiancai, one of the "Four Buddha's Warriors" of the Chen Village. He was asked how masters at his level continue to learn.

He said that, since all his teachers are now dead, his progress is slow, but he continues to make progress by carefully analyzing his own movements and delving deeper into the possibilities of the movements, and the principles of tai chi.

My belief is that your best progress will come during solo practice. A lot of people go to class and get corrections, but they become too dependent on that. Some of them never go home and really analyze the movements slowly. They think too much about choreography.

Sometimes, your best practice would be to spend an hour on just a couple of movements, such as Buddha's Warrior Attendant Pounds Mortar and Lazy About Tying the Coat, watching and slowly going through each subtlety in the body mechanics until that light bulb turns on above your head as you try to sit back ...

Before I moved back to the Quad Cities from Tampa a few weeks ago, I sent a message to my core group of students. I was signalling a new approach to training, or, if not completely new, a determination to take our practices up a notch.

When Nancy and I owned a "school" that we closed when we moved to Tampa, all types of people were students--older people who only wanted the exercise type of tai chi, younger people who missed classes and obviously didn't practice--and you had to accept everyone if you wanted to pay the school's bills.

The effect was a watering down of practice. I wasn't happy about it, and the more I taught, the less satisfied I was as a martial artist.

My intent upon returning was to maintain a small group of core students who could step up and tolerate more physically demanding workouts. Although I made good friends among other students, including the older ones, my main goal has always been to be the best martial artist that I can be. I'm no longer interested in ...

One of my favorite internal arts principles is "leading into emptiness." It's a good concept not only for physical self-defense but also for emotional and verbal self-defense.

In push hands practice, one of your primary goals is to soften, change, and counter when force is coming at you. By leading the force into emptiness, you set up your opponent for a counter.

So when force is coming straight in toward you, roll it to the side. If the attack is low, keep it moving lower. If it's a high attack, move it higher. If it is aimed at your chest, "pocket" it. Lead it into emptiness. Move it to where it won't find a target.

Sometimes, someone pushes on you. Using "empty force," or "Kong Jin" in Chinese terminology, you would give your opponent's push some resistance, but then you suddenly release your tension and "empty." It's like pulling the floor out from under your opponent. By leading them into emptiness, they go totally off-balance, giving you a chance to counter.

Sometimes, leadin...

We had a great push hands workshop on Saturday in Davenport, Iowa. About 7 or 8 members of the online internal arts school were there. The workshop was videotaped for other members. I started putting it on the school's website today.

We went over 6 patterns of Chen tai chi push hands, starting with single hand push hands.

Push hands has several benefits; it helps develop sensitivity, it shows you the weaknesses in your form, and it teaches you to change in response to an opponent. It involves joint locks, strikes, and takedowns.

According to Grandmaster Chen Xiaowang, push hands can help you discover the weaknesses in your movement that put you in a vulnerable position. You learn how to soften and deflect and how to exert force at the right opportunity. You learn how to remain in a strong position relative to your opponent.

All of the internal strength skills apply to push hands -- using the ground path, maintaining peng jin, using whole-body movement and silk-reeling. Push hand...

I'm reading an interesting book, Chinese Martial Arts Training Manuals, by Brian Kennedy and Elizabeth Guo. One chapter discusses a martial arts historian named Matsuda Ryuchi. He once described the "thousands of books written on the Chinese martial arts" and said that "ninety percent of them are not accurate."

According to this book, Ryuchi learned karate and other Japanese arts when he was young, then later studied Chen tai chi, Baji, Mantis, Bagua, and Yen Ching Boxing. He became a Buddhist monk, doing research and writing about both Buddhism and martial arts. His books include An Illustrated History of Chinese Martial Arts, which was published in 1979.

According to Ryuchi, authors of martial arts books want to make their teacher and their style look good. Stories are embellished and even completely made up. Some authors created founders for their styles and made up fantastic tales of the founder's abilities. It's a practice that continues to this day.

When I hear of a master who...

On September 20, 1973, I took my first martial arts class. It was 35 years ago today. Grandmaster Sin The was teaching Shaolin Karate-Do (kung fu) out of a converted garage in the back of a shopping strip mall. Because of Bruce Lee's impact that year, the first class was overflowing with students, and some of us stood outside.

Out of all the students who took up martial arts because of Bruce Lee in Lexington, Kentucky at that time, I wonder how many are still at it? A handful maybe. The photo at left is the proud green belt several months later in 1974. I still use the staff I'm holding (it's moved with me everywhere). It was the old fashioned kind--much heavier than modern staffs. I call it the "Staff of Death."

I was drawn to the martial arts for the self-defense and the philosophy. I had to study philosophy on my own, since few teachers included it in their art. But with that first class I was hooked, and over time, kung-fu became part of my life.

This anniversary comes at an int...