Wen Hsiu Quan

So we have reached the end of another year. To me this has been an exciting year as a fledgling lawyer and as a martial artist. Approaching the age of 40 I can confirm that, although you may acquire a lot of knowledge over time, you never reach a point where you stop learning. I have indeed learnt a lot this year. Before I go on to wish everyone a blessed festive season I first want to thank all my friends in the online martial arts communities who share lots of interesting stuff and who give people like us a place on the web where we can feel we belong. This year I have seen a lot of posts from Karate people. This says a lot for a time when arts like Jujitsu, Krav Maga and the sport of MMA dominates martial arts posts. One of the most awesome new Karate people that we have met on Facebook is Samir Berardo of the Muidokan school of Karate. His bunkai driven style is doing a lot to preserve the valuable teachings that are embedded in t...

Who of you has seen Game of Death? I think Bruce Lee's fight scene with basket ball player Kareem Abdul Jabbar is one of the most memorable fight scenes in all of his movies. (An all-time favourite of mine is the fight with Chuck Norris in Way of the Dragon). Kareem's obvious advantage in the fight was the length of his limbs. We saw Bruce Lee getting kicked this way and that until he figured out a way to beat his tall adversary. In training we find that our basics and forms involve techniques that are meant for someone the same height as ours and whose limbs are the same length as ours. Under these circumstances one can block and counter without having to move at all- except for the instance where kicks are involved, because either the defense and counterattack or only the counterattack shall always require some body movement.  When your partner or opponent becomes taller than you, you realise that avoiding his attacks come a...

I am starting with this photo of me with the bokken today as my first guideline on what fighting stance to use came from Musashi Miyamoto's Book of Five Rings. I realise, though that we have students and instructors of different disciplines and that we do not all look at fighting stances the same way. Boxers want to cover up. I, on the other hand like opening up. Some prefer an offensive stance. Some purely defensive.  Today's post is not meant to be informative at all. It is meant to invite comments and get a discussion going. This is the kind of stuff we like talking about, right? The Zanshindo Kamae Now before you get a chance to comment I get to fill an entire blog post with my view on the matter... Also a Zanshindo kamae. The hands follow the opponent's hands in the same way that football players stick to their numbers on the field. My Jeet Kune Do stance Before I have named my style Wenhsiuquan (Wenhsiu's Fist)...

While a lot of the people I know are on about what is happening in some show called Game of Thrones or Riverdale or the like my series that I follow without fail is this- Dragonball Super Since the first appearance of Dragonball in a Japanese weekly magazine we have first gotten to know the main character Goku as the fearless young boy with amazing strength, a magical fighting staff, a cloud on which to ride and of course- martial arts skills. Dragonball Z showed us the adult Goku- married and well on his way to achieve a transformation that existed only in the legends of his native people, the Saiyans. Dragonball GT is not going to be mentioned in this post. Dragonball and Dragonball Z saw Goku surviving one physical ordeal after the other. Being beaten up, having to train on a planet with 10 times the Earth's gravity and many more challenges. These challenges were all overcome and as they got overcome Goku emerged with some new power level which had greatly enh...

Not so long ago, in a Karate class, one of our Senseis said after a really good class: "This is an art- let's make it look beautiful." We have also heard a reference to "artistic fighters" in other classes. Apparently I, with my love for unorthodox (yet classical) attack and defense patterns and spinning techniques, am labelled as such an "artistic fighter". Is this what being a martial artist is about? Taking a fight and making it look beautiful? I must confess that in my vanity I have often endeavoured to make my sparring matches worth looking at, but that is hardly the main objective of what I practice and what I have learned.    That is also not why any martial art, be it Karate, Kungfu, Judo or anything else is called a "martial art" instead of just a "combat science", "fighting method" or "fighting system". At the moment, for instance, I'd say ...