Ken Gullette's Internal Fighting Arts

I was 20 years old on October 30, 1973, when I took my first promotion test in martial arts. I was tested by my teacher, Grandmaster Sin The in Lexington, Kentucky. I'm resisting the urge to put quotes around "Grandmaster." At the time, I really thought he was a Grandmaster.

I had enrolled in classes a little over a month earlier, on September 20th and I had trained my hiney off, punching and kicking up and down the hallways in Commonwealth Hall at Eastern Kentucky University. I practiced at least an hour a day. I was never very good at baseball or football. I high-jumped in high school but wasn't the fastest runner.

Martial arts clicked with me like nothing had before.

When the day of testing came, I was very nervous. But I got up with the other students and performed the following:

** 5 Short Kata

** 5 Sparring Techniques

** 10 Self-Defense Techniques

** 1 Long Kata: "Si Mu Tai Lai"

** One on One Sparring with another student

The short kata were pretty simple. Looking back, ...

Bruce Lee was the final spark that I needed in 1973. At age 20, I saw "The Chinese Connection" and then "Enter the Dragon" and decided that I had to begin studying kung-fu. I had been a fan of the Kung-Fu TV show, but it was Bruce Lee -- the beauty of his movement and the power of his techniques -- that made me enroll in a class.

Bruce Lee changed my life.

Bruce Lee said that forms are dead and classical styles are useless.

Bruce Lee was dead wrong.

He died at the age of 32. That's pretty young. When I was 32, I didn't like forms. I didn't want to practice them and focused on sparring and fighting techniques. As a result, I did very well in sparring but just couldn't see the point of forms. In fact, I went to several tournaments before the age of 32 and never competed in forms. 

Ken Gullette at age 30, sparring in a 1983 tournament in Cincinnati. He won first place.

So I can understand where Bruce was coming from. He was a young, opinionated guy -- extremely talented and a tr...

Practicing the "turning" principle in Bagua -- over and over and over.

A new member of my membership website was asking about fighting with Bagua. He is new to the art and wants more material on Bagua fighting.

I have been shooting videos recently to boost the online content in this area, but I reminded the young man that before he learns to fight with Bagua, there are many other things to practice -- namely, the basics.

Anyone can throw a palm technique or do a joint lock and takedown. Doing it properly according to the body mechanics of a particular art is the difficult part. You can't breeze through the basics and expect to use the art.

Interesting research on the brain shows that we develop habits when they become ingrained in our basal ganglia, a cluster of brain cells that stores habitual acts and behaviors. 

According to the book "The Power of Habit," you can put a mouse in a maze with a piece of cheese at the end. If you hook electrodes to the mouse's brain and wa...

I was sent a YouTube link a few weeks ago showing a Bagua instructor doing fighting applications against a student. The student stepped and punched, and the instructor did all sorts of fancy, twisting movements -- sometimes two or three techniques that included takedowns and joint locks -- all while the student didn't fight back. Usually the student did one punch and basically stood there.

Now, I've done a lot of fighting applications on video. Usually, they're done to instruct, so you slow it down and show how it's done. I'm also a fan of practicing principles of movement.

But most of the fighting applications I practice, and the ones I put on video, are applications that work in a real situation. It's NOT a real situation for an attacker to stand with his arm outstretched in a punch position while you do two or three techniques. I don't care if you're practicing TKD, Shotokan, Aikido, Tai Chi, or Bagua.

My students and I over the years have rejected techniques because -- even thou...

I've been involved in martial arts since 1973. I've worked on a lot of techniques and have done a lot of tournament sparring. Most of it has been "no-contact" or "light contact," although most of us who have done this know that there is a lot of contact, and it takes self-control to avoid excessive contact.

The skills that it takes to beat a black belt who is trying to punch and kick you are some of the same skills it takes to win on the street. I was in enough fights growing up to know. But at that time, I wasn't as knowledgeable as I became later. Fighting was always hard, but I always sort-of enjoyed it. I stood up to a lot of bullies over the years. Once a fight started, you never really knew what to expect. There was something I loved about that type of pressure. It was real life. And sometimes the smartest guy won, not just the toughest.

Traditional martial arts taught me a lot. In the beginning, I had the false confidence of a beginner, thinking I knew more than I did. As I go...

Today, Colin Frye came over to the Kung Fu Room and for one hour, we drilled three techniques over and over and over.

The techniques can be found in the Bagua Fighting Skills section of the website -- Bagua Keywords.

We practiced Threading, Hooking, and Turning.

First we practiced proper form, then one would throw multiple attacks in a realistic way and the other would use threading to deflect the attacks. After a while, we worked hooking in a similar way. Then we worked on turning, which is very effective up close.

This was a satisfying practice because we slowed down, selected three techniques and practiced them repeatedly. There are a lot of techniques on my website, and a lot of principles. But just seeing a video or learning a technique in class and practicing it a few times will not make you good at it. Practicing all the keyword techniques in an hour won't help you to improve.

The key to mastery is practicing each technique thousands of times, solitary and with a partner.

I'm a fir...

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...

I ran into a kung-fu guy that I hadn't seen in at least a year. He's young (around 30), strong -- and I asked where he had been. He moved to Chicago a while back and he told me he had started training with a martial artist who "trains real hard" with his students. He said that as if hardcore training was something to be proud of.

How's that going, I asked. He replied that they trained so hard, he had broken his foot and fractured several ribs.

He hasn't trained in over a year.

What? I mean, WHAT?????

There is a big segment of the population now -- the ones who would have been training in kung-fu, karate and TKD schools back in the 1970's -- who now believe that the only "real" martial arts are the MMA and UFC type.

Let me make a point that I've made many times. You don't have to hurt someone, or be hurt yourself, to learn how to be a good fighter. It's a myth fueled by youth, testosterone, and frankly, being a dumbass.

That doesn't mean there isn't a certain amount of pain you ha...

Nancy and I were invited to our friend John Morrow's house last night to have dinner with Bill "Superfoot" Wallace -- undefeated world full contact karate champion and trainer of both Elvis and John Belushi. I didn't realize until last night that Wallace is the person who found John Belushi dead, when he showed up at Belushi's room at an L.A. hotel for a morning workout.

Today, John hosted Wallace for a workshop at his Moline kung-fu school. It was a great workout -- stretching, kicking, punching, and combinations. I've gone over all this material with Wallace before, but refreshers are always a good idea.

Almost two months ago, I attended a Bill Wallace workshop in Las Vegas. It was the third or fourth time I've trained with him (if you Google Bill Superfoot Wallace, and click on the link that shows photos, the photo above of me and him in 2001 is among the photos that are shown). After discussing his stretching exercises on the online school, I was looking forward to asking him a q...

Bruce Lee said, "I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once. I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times."

This is a profound statement, but I don't know very many Americans who practice the principle behind it. I see it in my students, and I've seen it in myself -- the quest to learn more forms, thinking that it means we're good at what we do.

But learning more forms doesn't make you good.

Oh sure, we can win trophies at tournaments. We can put our art up against our peers and bring home some hardware. And tournaments are good for marketing, but you take a first place performance at most American tournaments to the Chen Village and you'd be considered a rank beginner. Let's not kid ourselves.

In the Chen Village, it is said that students may spend 10 years practicing only Laojia Yilu. Ten years before they are allowed to practice another empty hand or weapons form.

How well do you think they can perform Laojia Yilu at the end of that time?

A little over a ...