Wen Hsiu Quan

So we have arrived at December... The closing time for my office is near, I am looking forward to some time off and for once- we as a family can get together for Christmas and put the work and issues aside. I was actually wondering what I was going to write about. This week, however, one martial artist has gotten a lot of attention from me. Meet Chintya Candranaya! Now- I know I always said that I prefer Kung Fu and Karate, but this lady has just managed to get me sold on Pencak Silat. Where with Taekwondo I often looked and said "That looks so much like Karate..." I have come to see a huge amount of similarities between Kung Fu and Silat. One of the internal exercises that Chintya does in her video on shin conditioning actually looks like an exercise from Shaolin. I don't know about Chintya's healing factor, but she seems to have an adamantium skeleton. She bends blades, roundhouse kicks really hard objects with her shins and strikes metal poles...

Hi, everyone Recently I have made the fat gathering around my waist my enemy and have kicked my training into high gear to burn as much of it as possible. That is one of the things for which a style with punches and kicks is good for. Personal trainers tell us that to burn fat we have to use as many muscles as we can and focus on large muscles rather than just the limbs. Well- those high kicks don't just come from the legs... In fact- even a simple punch involves the use of other muscles than those of the arm. It was in this heightened enthusiasm that I have decided to shift my focus away from things like turning my leg so that my roundhouse kick hits with the flat part of my instep rather than the edge of the foot on the big toe's side and move it towards hitting and kicking hard and on time. Well- one of the main effects of doing that is that you get faster and strike harder, but the other is that one's technique just does not look as beautiful. This seems ...

"He who knows how to live can walk abroad Without fear of rhinocerous or tiger. He will not be wounded in battle. For in him rhinoceroses can find no place to thrust their horn, Tigers can find no place to use their claws, And weapons no place to pierce. Why is this so? Because he has no place for death to enter." -Tao Te Ching- Chapter 50 In all forms of conditioning in Chinese martial arts the Iron Shirt is at the core.  Body conditioning in boxing and Western Karate is what we regard as external exercises. To the monks of Shaolin and the priests of Mount Wudang, however, the Iron Shirt is an internal skill. This means that in the old traditions toughening the body to fight was not just a matter of doing a specific set of physical exercises, but it is also a matter of cultivating the right state of mind and spirit in order to take blows in a fight without being impeded. The physical exercise itself can take a couple of different forms. In Shaolin Kun...

Some of the benefits of martial arts training remain hidden until that moment when something unexpected happens and you find yourself handling it much better than how you used to in the distant past. One such benefit revealed itself to me when my shin bumped against a chair in the dark one night and the chair said "ow!". Okay! Okay! :D The chair did not say anything. It just moved a bit, but I was fine. This- however- did not come cheap and there is no shortcut to it, I am afraid. If you are considering starting with this type of training when you are 40 I'd say you will find yourself disappointed. The conditioning of my shins was an investment I have started making back in my early 20's and the actual toughness, which amongst others include the ability to kick a broomstick in two, only showed up during my mid 30's. That's not all, though. Who's ever blocked a mae geri (front kick) with gedan barai (lower parry) during Karate class and had your train...

Hi, everyone! I am back and ready to give you my latest blog post. We are still on conditioning and this is the last part of the hands that I am going to discuss, namely the fingers. Kung fu seems to take unarmed fighting really really far in that its techniques do not only include punching, striking, kicking and throwing, but also grabbing and tearing. Techniques like Tiger Claw and Eagle Claw are known to rip chunks of flesh from an opponent. In less extreme cases a limb gets rendered useless due to the damage it does to muscles. What Kung Fu and Karate have in common where fingers are concerned is that both these martial arts have in their arsenals techniques that involve striking or thrusting with the fingers. This is just about the point where I sometimes think that these martial arts may be taking things too far. One would think that having fists, palms and elbows to strike with would be enough, but fingers...? Nonetheless- the striking of vital points on the body with ...

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,...