Ken Gullette's Internal Fighting Arts

Pete Rose was my hero. I began watching him play for the Reds when I was a kid. By the time I got to college in the early Seventies, he was at his peak. My buddies and I would gather at the TV, or we'd drive 90 minutes to Cincinnati from Lexington and watch a game in person. Anytime Pete came up to bat and the Reds desperately needed a hit, he got a hit. And he dove head first into second or third or home. He was the best player I've ever seen.

That doesn't mean Pete was the most gifted in the beginning. As a young man, no one would have guessed he would become the leading hitter in baseball history (I was there the night he broke Ty Cobb's record by the way).

What made him eventually the best was one quality: persistence.

He practiced when others didn't. He worked at hitting when others had gone home. He practiced fielding when others were done for the day. He kept at it with a passion that lifted him above most players.

I've seen a lot of kung-fu students begin classes with a pas...

The Noble Eightfold Path is a Buddhist concept that can be found in other religions as well, perhaps worded in different ways.

Isn't it a shame that so few of us practice these eight "golden rules?" When you think of the way martial artists treat each other, badmouth each other, when you see the way husbands and wives treat each other, when you look at the anger in drivers on the road, anger and lies on the campaign trail, attack ads on TV, it makes you wonder if anyone has ever heard of kindness, empathy or tolerance.

Try living all eight of these concepts for just one day and see what it does for you:

The Eightfold Path:

1.  Right View -- often called "right understanding." See life in its reality. Understand the nature of pain and sadness and their causes. Recognize how to prevent pain and sadness.

2. Right Intent -- Intend to do no harm to anyone, thus helping to prevent pain and sadness.

3. Right Speech -- Don't lie, don't be abusive, don't argue and don't chatter idly (sor...

Here are some oldies but goodies.

How many tai chi masters does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

Answer: Ten. One to screw it in and 9 to stand around and say his movements aren't right.

How many wing chun masters does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

Answer: Ten. One to screw it in and 9 to complain "that's not the way Yip Man would have done it."

My favorite:

How many zen masters does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

Answer: A green tree in a quiet forest.

This is a photo taken during a private lesson I had a few years ago with Grandmaster Chen Xiaowang. We did the lesson in the backyard of Jim and Angela Criscimagna in Rockford, Illinois.

I like to look over some of the notes I've taken over the years. It's hard to retain everything you're told during a martial arts lesson, so I try to write things down as soon as possible after leaving a class or workshop.

Chen Xiaowang says "natural is best." He also believes that until you learn proper structure, you shouldn't try to do tai chi movements in a very low stance. Form and balance are most important. Proper structure is more important than low stances. And it takes us years to get proper structure.

Good kung-fu, he says, is proper structure, not low stances.

There is one principle and three techniques involved in tai chi, according to Chen Xiaowang. He's worded it differently at different times, but the one principle boils down to "when one part moves, all parts move. When dan t'ien ...

Each time I've had the pleasure of learning from a teacher or a tai chi master, I've taken notes. It's hard to retain everything, so I try to write as much after each session or day as possible. I've been sorting through papers and tossing stuff, and I ran across a lot of notes that I hadn't seen in a while.

One of my favorite memories of Grandmaster Chen Xiaowang was at a workshop near Washington, D.C. sponsored by C.P. Ong. Nancy and I flew to D.C. so I could study at the workshop. The participants were doing standing stake and CXW was going around the room correcting everyone. When he came up to me I had my eyes closed and he moved my hands in just a little. I smiled, opened my eyes, and he was smiling at me, his face just inches away. He softly chuckled in a friendly way and went on to the next person.

CXW likes to compare tai chi to driving a car. He says if a wheel is broken you can't drive well. If your posture is broken, it's hard to do proper tai chi. That's why, when you be...

Hi from the UK. I would just like to say congratulations to Sifu Ken on such a brilliant site. Please keep up the good work, as the material here is incredible and exactly what I have been seeking for a long time now. (and I guess there is a lot of people like me out there) I do not know the status-quo is the US, but where I am based it is nigh impossible to find quality teachers. (the old saga that 90% of tai chi teachers don't know what tai chi chuan is all about). Access to Bagua and Xingyi is very limited in the UK. So this website is perfect timing for me. The other thing that really impresses me Ken is your honesty. I listened to your last teleconference and was struck by your passion and sincerety for teaching and delivering quality knowledge, that unfortunately many kung fu teachers hold back on, whilst they are happy to charge top dollar. I will hopefully be learning from this site for a long time to come, so congratulations and I hope this venture succeeds for you. -- J.E.

One of my kung-fu friends, Eric Jones, came over last week to practice pole shaking.

Pole-shaking is a great exercise for the internal arts. I first heard about it from Mike Sigman, then learned it first-hand from Jim and Angela Criscimagna. Chen Zhenglei occasionally does a pole-shaking workshop and I've always wanted to attend one.

For this exercise, you can use a waxwood pole or an 8 or 9-foot section of PVC pipe. I even have a rattan staff--only 6 feet long--that I can do it with, although you don't get as much of a shake at the end of the staff.

The intent is to use the body--opening and closing, whole-body movement, dan t'ien rotation and spiraling--to whip the pole and cause the end to shake when the energy reaches it. And when I say energy, I mean nothing mystical--it's physics, and it works because you are relaxed and using good body mechanics.

Holding the pole as shown above, you hold it so that you don't use any arm and shoulder muscle. This photo shows me at the botto...

I'm throwing my trophies away. I've been carrying trophies around everywhere I've moved since 1974. This past move, from the Quad Cities to Tampa, included several boxes, some of them quite large, of trophies from martial arts tournaments. Some of the trophies are as tall as I am. Some are taller.

It's with mixed feelings that I do this. The trophies represent many years of hard work, realized by putting my skills on the line in front of a jury of black belts.

Although I competed in tournaments as far back as 1974, I didn't really get into the scene until 1988, and then I really began competing in earnest around 1996. Around the Midwest circuit at that time, no one knew who I was. First place wins were scarce. The longer I competed and the harder I practiced, the first place trophies began piling up.

My favorite accomplishments came in Chicago, where the competition was very tough. A lot of talented people in forms, and in black belt sparring injury was common and you couldn't even ...

A young man walked into my kung fu class one evening and wanted to take lessons. A couple of the guys knew him from high school so naturally, I welcomed him like any other student.

He claimed to have had other martial arts experience. He was slender, short, and very fast. He had a lot of potential.

But he had no respect.

Since he had experience, when the sparring part of the class began, I asked him to spar with me so I could see how advanced he was. This young kid began dancing around and trash-talking me, moving in and trying to hit me, taunting me. It was laughable, since he had no skill but plenty of speed. I was able to hit him at will, but I was astounded by the fact that he would taunt a teacher. I had never run into that type of attitude in a student.

Within a couple of classes, this lack of respect translated into behavior throughout the class. I pulled him into another room and told him to either show a little respect to the art and to the teacher or don't come back. He s...

The martial arts are full of legends--tales of masters who could fling a larger opponent across a room with the flick of a finger, or masters who could defeat a crowd of martial artists without being injured.

One legend tells of a young student who wanted to learn a form from a master. According to the legend, the master performed the sequence of movements one time, turned to the student and said, "I will be back in one year. You master this form!"

One year later, according to the legend, the master returned and the student had, in fact, mastered the movements. And he didn't even have a DVD player!

I'm a visual learner and I've studied martial arts since 1973, but I still can't memorize more than two or three moves in a row by just watching a performance once. In 1978, however, when I bought my first VCR, it opened up a new world of martial arts training for visual learners like me.

Imagine if you had videos of some of the great martial arts masters of the 19th Century. Imagine if you coul...