Wen Hsiu Quan

One of the first differences between Kung Fu forms and those of Karate that I have noticed when I got into Kung Fu was the use of the palm. In Karate we have a descending hammer fist strike, an inward knife hand, knife hand thrust and a straight punch and of course a palm thrust or teisho tsuki. Go through the Kung Fu styles derived from Shaolin and Wudang and you find that they have a straight forward palm strike, a downward palm strike and an inward palm strike. I guess the palm of the hand is about as central in Kung Fu, especially Wudang Kungfu, as the fist is in Karate. Interesting to note- while the traditional fighting styles of the Ryukyu are known to have the te (hand)-  suffix Chinese martial arts can be found to have the suffix quan(fist) or zhang(palm). The most well-known palm style is Baguazhang (Eight Trigram Palm) of Wudang. Yes, Naruto fans- such a style really exists.... Also- while in Karate we have known tameshiwari (breaking) demonstratio...

Hi! Thanks to the good response last week's post had I am happy to give you the follow-up on that. Since I got a suggestion to start with hands I decided to break that up into three parts, being one for knuckles, one for the other parts of the hand that we use to strike and then lastly, developing the type of grip that is an attack in itself. Those of you who do boxing most likely know that the reason boxers wear gloves have nothing to do with hurting the other guy less. I mean come on! Get serious! Why would a sport where you can win by knocking the other guy out care at all about making punches less painful...? :D The reason why boxers wear gloves is that a person's skull is actually very hard and can actually break the bones of the hand when you hit it with your fist. Besides that, fighters in the China and Okinawa of old knew very well what the value was of having one's bones harder than those of your adversary. Sure- a punch in the chest can wind a guy,...

Hi, everyone. This week I have turned 40. This means that it would now be 25 years that I have been training, meditating and learning while I have been working, meeting people, saying goodbye to people, getting sick, getting well again, making money, losing money and living life in all other respects that may come to mind.   I have, of course, also been writing this blog.... I have taken a quick pause from typing this post to check my archive. The first post in this blog came out on 21 April 2011. Since then a lot has changed. I realise by now that there are a lot of people my age who say that they USED to study some martial art or the other when they were kids or perhaps when they were just "younger". There were enough times when I seriously thought about taking that very route. Still- I haven't... That in itself ought to tell you that I am not like any other person of my age, my race, my gender or whatever gr...

I loved learning Kung Fu. Having learnt Karate and Japanese martial arts before I got into Kung Fu I was very interested in seeing what made Kung Fu different from them. My chance came in 2002. While some may feel that it takes long enough to learn one style well enough to be able to fight with it  I was interested in knowing what approach the Chinese had to fighting and training. Well- apart from the Qigong and Force Training exercises I found these two training tools to be a very good way to see what basics Shaolin Kung Fu had. In Wong Kiew Kit's book on Shaolin Kung Fu you get introduced to some basic Shaolin techniques and given the tools with which to develop them for efficient use in combat. The first training tool is very familiar to a lot of us. A set, known in Chinese as taolu  is quite familiar with students of Karate and Taekwondo as well. In Karate these sets are called kata. In Taekwondo it is known as poomse.  The techniques in this basic form do not l...

For someone like me who loved reading up on martial arts in any good books that I can find I feel really spoiled to have the internet at my disposal. Where I used to have to buy a book and sometimes try to figure out what picture the typed words in it is painting I now have tons of Youtube videos to go through. Sure- we have to be careful with the information we find on the internet. That is certain... Then we also have to bear in mind that you can learn only so much from a video, but that a lot of videos, but not all, are actually intended to get you interested in the martial art the maker of the video is teaching and you get only shown enough to get you curious. Over the years, however, I have found some very generous Youtubers who share huge amounts of information. All of these people do an excellent job in promoting their art. Just to let you know who I am talking about- here are my favourite Martial Arts Youtubers up to before now: Jesse Enkamp- Karate Iain...

I don't know many others who like old, badly dubbed martial arts movies as much as I do. Watch enough of them and you sooner or later end up seeing the Snake Style or maybe just the Snake Fist featuring in one of the movies you are watching for the evening... The Snake Fist, and its companion move- "Snake Raises its Head" are quite real, though. WAIT! WAIT! I can't write a post about the Snake Fist without sharing this video! https://youtu.be/3eg3Z1Zyfk4 How beautiful is that?! Well- back to this post now... The Snake Fist in Shaolin Kung Fu strikes with the fingertips. While the eyes are probably the most likely target for most of us using this technique the fingers can be toughened to go for targets like the larynx and pressure points on the body. Personally, if my hand is facing palm down like this, I am going for the eye or the bottom of the larynx. In the case of going for the bottom of the larynx I would no...