Ken Gullette's Internal Fighting Arts

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...

Today I'm announcing a new site for people who want to study Tai Chi, Hsing-I, and Bagua but don't have a lot of money for classes or don't have a teacher nearby. No matter where you live in the world -- no matter how remote -- you can study, receive feedback and guidance, and build friendships through a member discussion board and free weekly teleconferences that are part of membership.

The website is my online school for Internal Fighting Arts. I've put it together during the past 2 1/2 months. There is a ton of video and instruction on the site right now, with a lot more to be added. There are some blank pages but I'm shooting, editing, writing, and adding new lessons and e-books every day in all three arts. There are free sample lessons on the home page that the public can watch.

This is a site where you can learn a complete curriculum for the three arts that I've been teaching for 11 years and practicing for 21 years. It's a membership site that is perfect for:

• people wanting...

Our good buddy Evan Yeung suggested this book, and from what I've read about it, it's a winner. Today I ordered "Meditations on Violence" by Rory Miller. It's a real-life look at violence, and how the martial arts that we often study and practice don't really cut it in a real-life situation. Rory Miller knows violence first-hand.

A few years ago I had a dream that woke me up in a cold sweat. I was walking down the street. A car screeched to a stop next to the curb and four big guys got out and ran at me -- hard -- with the obvious purpose of violence. Just as the first one was reaching me, I woke up and realized that in a situation like that, most of the things we practiced in any of the schools I'd studied in were worthless. I considered it a wake-up call, that my inner consciousness was reminding me of something very important.

Now, I'm also one of those people who isn't about to throw away the "art" in my martial art and replace it with the type of brawling you see in mixed martia...

Nancy and I went to a driving range a few weeks ago to hit a bucket of golf balls. A golf pro was working there, and we found out that he charged just $25 an hour for private lessons. We took a lesson and got some pointers on driving the ball. Did it help? Not a lot -- yet. Like any sport, including tai chi, it takes practice for the body mechanics to sink in. But it was fun and I definitely learned some important points--intellectually if not physically.

I thought about this golf pro when I watched Tiger Woods win the US Open last week. Here's a guy working at a driving range in Tampa, giving golf lessons, but he probably couldn't even qualify as a caddy for Tiger Woods. If Tiger watched this golf pro swing a club, he would probably offer all kinds of advice. But the golf pro had a lot to teach me.

In the world of Tai Chi, people like Chen Xiaowang have the relative skills and position of Tiger Woods. Grandmaster Chen could look at almost anyone performing Chen tai chi and offer man...

I'm working on the new website (www.internalfightingarts.com), putting new DVD-quality video on it every day. It's an intense job to try to put all of our curriculum onto videos, into e-books, and get it up on a teaching site. The videos teach all the techniques, forms, and practice methods of the arts that I've been teaching for the past 11 years. I'm hoping to launch it to the world by July 1. In the meantime, there's SO much to do.

Today, I'm editing more video of basic chin-na and getting ready to put a 10-minute clip on the site. As I was editing, it struck me how easy self-defense can be if you can just switch to a different mindset. It struck me because I talk about it in the video that I'm placing on the new site today. :)

A lot of us, in the early years of our training, focus on techniques. For example, if he grabs me here, I should do this specific technique. Or if he pushes me here or punches there, I should do this or that.

The key to effective chin-na or any aspect ...

I'm enjoying the book American Shaolin more than any book in a long time. Matthew Polly spent two years at the Shaolin Temple as one of the only Westerners living at the Temple and practicing with the monks.

The book is a lesson in the Chinese culture--and an entertaining one. Among my favorite parts is when he's watching kung fu videos with the monks. In traditional Chinese kung-fu movies the hero always dies. Matthew brought some Seagal and VanDamme movies and showed them. The youngest monk asked at one point, "When is the hero going to die?" Matthew explained that VanDamme wasn't going to die because he's the hero.

The monks were confused. How can he be a hero if he doesn't die?

Matthew asked the young monk to explain why he felt that the hero had to die. An older monk spoke up and said (paraphrasing), "It doesn't take courage to fight when you know you can win. Real courage is when you fight on even though all hope is gone."

I thought that was really cool, and also an interesti...