Wen Hsiu Quan

Learning this form was not much fun as the first video that I have watched on this featured a woman doing the form at top speed. I have already accepted that the way your form looks depends partly on who you learn it from. Not much further away on the internet, I have found this variation: Nonetheless- I enjoy having this form in my program. I have always wanted a kata that features a hurricane kick. :) The number of katas I know now stands at 27. I have also created 8 forms of which I plan to keep 4. 3 of them got discussed in earlier blog posts. Even though I have gone and learnt this many katas I think that regularly practicing the katas that you know is more important than learning new ones. Sure- every once in a while you would pick up a new technique from a kata that you have not yet practiced. Still- it will only become of any use if you have practiced it enough. Well... there is only one more form that I would like to show you, but that will have to wait for next week. Now I ha...

My introduction to Kung Fu was the 48 Form Set of Taijiquan that was created in the 1950's. I have only gotten the feel of actually channeling qi into martial arts movements, though, when I learned Shaolin Kung Fu. That had led among other things to me creating a custom made Taijiquan form (The words "form" and "set" are sure to confuse a lot of people who do not study Kung Fu. Since Karate people call katas "forms", however, I also call Kung F sets "forms"). I was satisfied to have my Taijiquan form for practice of a Wudang based martial art and the 5 Ainimal Set as a faorm for practicing an art from Shaolin. Then- as you know- I have started writing my book on Kung Fu forms. So- I have looked through my collection of martial arts material and found this video from a while back.   Now... for a long time I was happy to practice my 20 katas from Karate, rotating them in groups of 2 to be practiced two days every week, but then I have decided t...

  Can you learn a form from a book? Well- I have tried. With interesting results.  The video below shows Sifu Wong Kiew Kit. He is doing a form that I have learnt from his book on Shaolin Kungfu. Below is a link to a video of me doing the same form.   The differences tell us that there has been a miscommunication about some parts of this form, don't they? Nonetheless- I am happy with the version that I am doing. After all- I have been practicing it for a long while now before I saw this video. No lightning came from the sky to punish those who have adapted traditional forms for the sport of Wushu during the 1960's. Nobody gets punished even for making up their own forms so- just relax...  Had I belonged to a Kungfu club or school, however, I would have taken care to do the form as it is taught by that school.  Changes in forms are actually a common occurrence in Asian martial arts and I have learnt at least two versions of a number of forms in one style of ...

Hello, everyone.  You see this list below? This is what I use to make sure that I practice all the katas that I have learnt. Saturdays are easy. On Saturdays I practice all 5 Heian katas and all 3 Tekki (Naihanchi) katas from Karate. On Sundays I practice Taijiquan and my kata and fighting practice is on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. It used to be two katas per morning just before I finish my workout, but- as you can see- the katas have now been put together in groups of 3.  3 of these katas are brand new to me and there are also some old katas of mine that I have decided to brush off and add to my list for regular practice. One kata that I have really enjoyed learning is Gekisai Ichi from Goju Ryu. I just list it as "Gekisai" in my Kata Rotator because it is the only Gekisai that I will be practicing- well... for now... The kata first came to my attention when Jesse taught it to another martial arts Youtuber in one of his videos. Then- when one of my martial artist friends ...

It has been a while since I have sat down to write any book. You may have noticed that I even neglect my blogging nowadays...  I have, however, had enough time to think about what to write about next. I have chosen to write about form practice in Kungfu. In our general language we use the term "forms" to refer to those sequences of movements that are performed without an opponent. Kungfu people, however, call these sequences "sets". The word "forms" are usually used by Karate people when they refer to kata. In Karate the Japanese term kata is used while the Chinese term taolu is used by Kungfu practitioners. Kungfu forms are generally longer than Karate forms, though. In Karate we find that the traditional styles follow a very conservative approach to teaching and practicing forms.    During the 80's some more progressive styles of Karate have appeared with acrobatic forms- performed to music, no less.....

Weird as this may sound these days- Judo was the not only the first martial art that I took up, but it was also the first "soft" martial art that I have learnt. With the standards of competitive grappling having gotten really high we hardly see anything that appears to be soft in Judo these days. Then I won't even mention anything about the Founder's maxim of minimum effort, maximum effect. Judo nowadays seems to be about: I was happy to learn my first throws and found that some worked even on people that were bigger than I was at the time. Still- I have found that I easily got toppled sometimes by a completely untrained person. Well... as you all know by now I have found the bugs, fixed it and wrote a book about it... The first major bug-fix came from Karate. And- it was not even Japanese Karate, but an Okinawan-based style, Shukokai (a style that was derived from Shito Ryu). Karate taught me the value of a good stance. Now... the stances that...

Hello, everyone. How are things in your country? Is your dojo open? Are you training at home? If you are a student living in a country under lockdown like ours, I am sure you have a lot that you can do. The number of things that you can practice at home is virtually unlimited with online classes and instructional videos abounding. I am also sure that if you are studying an art like Karate you have enough forms to practice anyway. Plus- many of those exercises that you normally have to do in the dojo can be done at home. If you are a teacher, however, you may feel derailed now. You had this or that competition lined up for the next month, maybe a grading around the corner... Now those plans have been derailed, right? So- what is left to do? Well... How about teaching martial arts? :) But- you may ask in disbelief- what have we been doing all this time? Sure- you have been teaching martial arts. Most likely it was the syl...