The DVDs were designed to complement one another. Each one builds on skills developed in the previous titles, creating a logical progression from fundamental body mechanics to forms, applications, push hands, self-defense, and traditional weapons. 

By following the complete curriculum, you'll gain a deeper understanding of how all the pieces fit together, while saving money compared to purchasing each title individually.

Ken also includes a document with your DVDs that charts a roadmap for your study and understanding, and anytime you have a question, his email and phone number will be on this document that will enable you to call him for an answer. He is available anytime.

Yes. 

Although the forms differ from style to style, many of the underlying principles are the same. Whole-body movement, relaxation, balance, efficient power, and effective body mechanics benefit practitioners of Chen, Yang, Wu, Sun, and other styles.

Ken's emphasis is on understanding why movements work, not simply memorizing choreography. Many movements from Chen style are part of other styles' forms, even if they don't look quite the same. 

But if you are mainly interested in the body mechanics, you can learn them from three DVD purchases -- Internal Strength, Silk-Reeling, and Tai Chi Fighting Applications (a 3-disc set). From those three purchases, you will learn the most important body mechanics and how they are used in fighting applications. That will help make your Tai Chi stronger regardless of what your style's performance looks like. 

If, however, you want to learn the Chen family style as it is taught in the Chen Xiaowang/Chen Xiaoxing lineage, this is the collection you need.

Not at all. The curriculum is organized to build your skills step by step, beginning with the fundamentals. You'll start by developing the body mechanics that make Chen Taijiquan work—whole-body connection, the ground path, peng jin, silk-reeling, the kua, and dantian movement—before moving into forms, push hands, self-defense, and traditional weapons. 

Whether you're new to Chen style or already have experience, you'll develop a deeper understanding of how the art works.

This is not just an outstanding training tool, as if you are working with Ken and his students, but it is also an outstanding reference tool in case you forget things later.

And if you are a collector of martial arts DVDs, it is perhaps the best collection on the market that explains Chen Taiji as in-depth as this, and in a way westerners can understand it, without the mystical mumbo-jumbo. With most DVDs, you are supposed to copy the movement. In Ken's DVDs, he wants you to understand details of the movement and how to use it in self-defense.

People accuse Ken of being a master all the time, but he just laughs. "I tried to get my wife Nancy to call me master, and she slapped me."

Ken has trained with some wonderful instructors that he considers masters: Chen Xiaowang, Chen Xiaoxing, Chen Huixian, Ren Guangyi, Chen Bing, Chen Ziqiang, and his American Chen teachers, Jim and Angela Criscimagna, who call themselves "hobbyists" but are disciples of Chen Xiaowang, and Ken studied with the late Mark Wasson, who was a disciple of Chen Xiaowang and very close with the Chen family.

But in Ken's opinion, who wants to be considered a master? It's perhaps more an ego thing and a status thing. Ken wants his students to push him around and he continues to grow by doing real training with his students. 

"When you are a master," Ken says, "there's a lot of pressure on you to be perfect. So if someone scores on you or takes you down in practice, you lose face. Your students don't want that to happen. So the "master" no longer grows in the most fun way to grow -- by testing your skills against partners who are not cooperating, and investing in loss so you continue learning and addressing your own weaknesses. There is nobody perfect. And anytime you see a teacher who is never hit by his students, you see a teacher and students in a situation where an important factor of grown on both sides is not happening. Avoid that school."

Ken creates video lessons to teach the way he wished his teachers had taught him, and to save people a lot of time and thousands of dollars they would spend finding this information and seeing it in a way that puts the pieces together for them. He teaches in plain language that cuts through the mystical mumbo-jumbo and vague metaphors and shows you the true art underneath.