Ken Gullette's Internal Fighting Arts

Workshop Training in Davenport

We had a great turnout of around 14 people at our two-day training workshop in Davenport, Iowa. It was great to see everyone and we spent about 5 hours training on Day One. We worked body mechanics, Hsing-I fist postures, a couple of Chen tai chi movements with a focus on body mechanics, and we finished shooting the next DVD on the fighting applications of the Five Fist Postures. Not pictured here is Chad Steinke.

The workshop started with standing and corrections on posture. We then took Buddha's Warrior and each person demonstrated it in front of the group and received feedback. Everyone seemed to learn by seeing other people move and seeing the corrections they received. We also worked Single Whip, focusing on whole-body movement and silk-reeling.

This workshop was intended to focus on fundamentals because when you learn the principles and you can apply them to one movement, you can then apply them to all movements. Often, we try to learn a lot of forms before we're able to move properly.

The challenge in being Americans (and teaching Americans) is to get ourselves to slow down and be patient, working one form, one movement, a thousand times and trying to get the movement right. It takes so much time to develop these skills, that few of us have the patience to work hard enough in the tedious task of developing the skill.

Learning the choreography is easy, but we often get deluded into thinking that just because we know a form, we're doing Tai Chi (or Hsing-I or Bagua). Without the internal body mechanics that come from years of practice, however, we're just dancing around.

One of the important basic skills you can achieve is to keep your internal strength from "breaking" as you move. Some people pick up bad habits over time. They go way too fast. Everyone needs to slow down. Also, you can tend to exaggerate movements, lift shoulders, insert little jerks and wiggles into movements that break the "chi flow", use shoulder and arm muscle and that sort of thing rather than letting the power come from the ground, through the body, using spiralling, without letting it break. This is one of the skills we worked the most in Day One of the workshop. It's one of the skills we go over in the Internal Strength DVD.

Day One focused a lot on the principles of movement. I could see improvement by the end of the day.

On Day Two, Feb. 3, we trained for over 6 hours and it felt good. Students said they weren't quite as tired at the end of the day as they were after the Chen Xiaoxing weekend, so I'll have to push them a little harder next time. :)

We started with a couple of Tai Chi movements and silk-reeling, driving home again some of the body mechanics needed for performing the internal arts properly. Throughout the weekend, I showed how the same mechanics are used in Hsing-I (we didn't devote any time to bagua). The photo above shows Rich Coulter (left) and Chris Miller working a chin-na application from "Lazy About Tying the Coat."

One of the biggest habits to overcome when training in these arts is the habit of striking by using arm and shoulder muscle rather than transmitting power through the body. The arm and shoulder muscles do very little of the work. And this was one of my goals for the weekend--drilling on whole-body movement and silk-reeling, where the power begins with the ground and flows, spiraling through the leg, directed by the dan tien and manifest in the hands (or whatever part of the body is striking).

We did some push hands, focusing on spiraling and slowing it down to feel the body mechanics.

I opened it up for requests, and by popular demand we worked on staff fighting techniques and then sparred with staffs. My philosophy has always been that if you work on a form, whether empty-hand or weapons, you should be able to use it in a self-defense situation. So I teach fighting techniques for each weapon we practice. It was fun to practice some of the blocks and strikes and then put them into practice by sparring.

I watched the students doing different forms and then offered a critique, pointing out things to improve on. One of the tendencies is to rush some movements, particularly in Tai Chi. It takes so much patience to slow it down and really get satisfaction from doing a movement well. Too often bad habits develop and you don't realize that you're rushing a movement, cutting part of it off, and not realizing all the body mechanics involved.

We called it quits at around 4:30. The time went by too fast this weekend. It was wonderful seeing everyone.

--by Ken Gullette