Ken Gullette's Internal Fighting Arts

One of the effective techniques used in Bagua and Taiji to unbalance an opponent occurs when the opponent steps toward you, or you step toward them.

In Bagua, this is called by some the "bagua foot." It's a hooking step that sets you up to apply pressure on your opponent's calf and cause them to lose their balance.

In the first photo, Kim Kruse (on the left) takes a step toward Colin Frye. She's stepping with her right foot. He hooks his left foot behind her right ankle.

In the second photo, Colin presses forward with his shin, applying pressure against Kim's calf. This causes her left shoulder to move backward and to the side.

In photo 3, Colin has taken advantage of the turning of the shoulder -- he pulls on the shoulder and Kim falls backward.

This is a great internal technique. Remember, the idea of internal kung-fu is to unbalance your opponent and take advantage of the window of opportunity that becomes available when they lose their balance.

You remain centered --...

What do we do about the image of Taijiquan when the world believes its a slow-motion exercise for health and meditation designed for the elderly?

How do we show it for what it is -- a powerful martial art?

One thing that would help is for Tai Chi teachers to stop pretending it's mystical -- that you can control a motivated, violent adult with your mind and with something vague called "intent."

Here is a video on YouTube showing Wang Peisheng, a famous (now deceased) Wu style Tai Chi master demonstrating push hands.

The principles he describes are great, but as he demonstrates, he uses a partner who is willing to fall in dramatic ways so the master looks good.

The problem is -- it doesn't work like this, and any decent martial artist who sees this knows it's a crock. Anyone who has ever fought another human being knows none of this works the way it does here. 

Here's another video that shows the fantasy of Tai Chi -- not the reality. It involves another famous Wu style master, ...

I love seeing the look in the eyes of new students who come in thinking of Tai Chi as a gentle means of "moving meditation" and then they find out what it really takes.

I have a couple of wonderful new students -- great young people -- who started two or three weeks ago. Last night we were working on the double-hand silk-reeling exercise, as I introduce them to the body mechanics required for taijiquan.

"You must have legs of steel," one student said after we had practiced a while and they were ready to stop and rest while I was still demonstrating and practicing with them.

Actually, I lost a lot of leg strength when I had my brush with death about 18 months ago and I'm still trying to regain it, but the comment last night made me laugh, and it also drove home just how difficult taiji really is.

When I've trained with my teachers and with members of the Chen family, as in the photo at the top of the page showing me training privately with Chen Xiaoxing, I've generally come close to...

Some people are living in the Twilight Zone.

I've been through a lot during the past three years. The onset of atrial fibrillation, three procedures to try to fix it, and the horrible side-effect, which was the closing of my left pulmonary veins.

No blood is going to my left lung. No blood is being oxygenated by the left lung because no blood can go from my left lung to the heart.

The same procedure that caused my pulmonary veins to shut down also paralyzed my right diaphragm. So I'm living -- and doing kung-fu -- with 2/3 of one lung.

It can be a challenge.

For over a week at Cleveland Clinic in late 2009, I was on a ventilator. The photo above is from that time. I nearly died twice. My weight dropped from 206 pounds to 157. I lost a lot of muscle. I looked like a concentration camp victim. I was determined to recover and to do kung-fu again -- tai chi, hsing-i and bagua. It has been a struggle. Even though I'll never be able to use my left lung, and the right diaphragm is stil...

A couple of cool things happened this week. On Monday, I drove to Rockford, Illinois to reconnect with my old instructors, Jim and Angela Criscimagna. Angela was visiting a friend, so Jim and I talked about taiji and he coached me through some Xinjia movements, giving me new insights into the body mechanics, the principles and the form.

I first met Jim and Angela in 1998. I was using a neijia listserve and seeing internal terms that I hadn't been taught -- terms like peng jin and ground path. I asked the list (Mike Sigman was one of the main contributors at that point) if there was anyone in the Chicago area that I could meet who could show me some of these concepts.

They directed me to Jim and Angela. I drove to their house one Saturday morning and within an hour, I realized that after spending over a decade studying tai chi, I was going to have to start over. I had really learned nothing about real taijiquan.

The best thing about a good teacher is this -- you should leave a class ...

In our practices in the Quad Cities, we enjoy doing the Circle of Death. Here's how it works.

One person gets in the center of the circle and ha so defend as the people on the rim of the

circle attack one-by-one. Sometimes we do it empty hand and the defender must defend with just Hsing-I, just Tai Chi, or just Bagua techniques.

Sometimes we do it with weapons, as we did tonight. We each took turns in the center (including me) and defended with one weapon as others attacked with different weapons, including staffs, broadswords, straight swords, and elk horn knives.

It's always fun, and it gives you a chance to think on your feet and learn how to respond to different attacks.

It's important for the instructor to watch carefully, and if a student doesn't get a reaction right, they should be asked to do it again. The importance of this drill isn't to humiliate the student -- the importance is to have them internalize the actions that it takes, and the techniques required, to defend...

The Chinese language is complex to Westerners, and some of the terms of the internal arts such as Tai Chi, Hsing-I and Bagua are misinterpreted because of the way the words are translated. As a result, the internal arts are often described as "mysterious" or "mystical." That makes them seem out of reach. It harms our practice and our understanding, and these injuries are self-inflicted.

In Taiji, there is a concept known as the "energies," that include peng (ward off), lu (roll back), ji (press), an (push), etc.

The most important of all these is peng jin -- peng energy. It is one of the key elements of every movement, even when you step. You should never lose peng, and that is something that I see missing when I meet Tai Chi students, particularly those who have not studied Chen style. If you have studied Taiji and your teacher hasn't stressed and shown you how to maintain peng in all movement, you should be asking some serious questions about the quality of what you're learning.

S...

There has always been a strange willingness in the national Tai Chi and Kung-Fu magazines to print fantasy as if it is fact. They have shown frauds and con artists posing as "chi masters" knocking people down without touching them. Anyone with an ounce of intelligence or reasoning skills understands that this can't happen. Yet the magazines allow almost anyone to claim the most miraculous of powers.

In the two recent issues of Tai Chi magazine, there have been photos that are absolutely impossible to achieve in real life unless you have a partner who is willing to bend the truth and play along on your behalf.

Anyone who has ever been in a real fight knows that another man who is motivated does not generally go down easily, and when adrenalin is flowing, sometimes he doesn't even feel pain as he normally would.

So the magazine prints articles written by students with photos showing their teachers demonstrating impossible feats of "chi." The student/writer plays along in the photograp...

In class the other night we were practicing Heng Chuan, Hsing-I's "Crossing Fist," against a roundhouse kick. The photos are shown here.

In photo one, the attacker (Leander Mohs) throws the kick.

In photo two, I absorb the kick with my left arm and cross my right arm under the attacker's calf.

In photo three, I apply pressure to the outside of his leg and push inward, bending it at the knee.

In photo four, I apply a paring, splitting palm to the knee and he goes down. He has to go down. He has no choice.

When you practice this, you realize that the application is the same as the opening for the Chen Tai Chi movement "Fair Lady Weaves at Shuttles."

And this is something we see across the three internal arts that we practice. Several of the principles and palms of Bagua are also in this application, including Blocking, Twining or Snaking, Upward Palm, Outward Palm and Splitting Palm. Dan T'ien rotation is always applied, regardless of the art, and when the kick comes in, ...

Okay, I had some fun on a snowy day. I took this very funny little song, sampled some Queen and threw in some of my tournament sparring clips. Here is the result.