A Message from the United Kingdom about My Online School
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.
More Kung-Fu Fun Than You Can Shake A Stick At
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...
Learning the Internal Arts through Video
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...
Author - Instructor
Ken Gullette
I have practiced martial arts since 1973 and began studying the internal arts in 1987. My goal is to cut years off your development time by coaching you in the real skills for high-quality Tai Chi, Xingyi, Bagua. To see more about my bio, click the "About Ken" link on the menu at the top of this page.
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