Wen Hsiu Quan

Hi! I am glad to say that I have successfully developed the ability to kick my own head height with roundhouse and reverse roundhouse kicks at any time of day without warming up. It took a whole lot of training to get there, though. For years I have been unable to kick high without warming up first. Well... when I was 17 I had no trouble doing it, but then I had to grow older. Still- I have decided that as long as I am training- I can keep pushing until I get it back and I am happy to say that it is back and better than ever, because now I can also HOLD the kick at head height. That is the thing with anyone still actively practicing martial arts- we just have so many more tools available to help us in fights than a person who has just attended a self defense class or two. During my early karate years I have been warned by my Sensei that high kicks are really not suitable for self defence and that we should rather stick to low kicks whenever we have to fight for real...

I have obtained my law degree by studying at home. It is not so strange as the university with which I have studied is known for its long distance learning facilities. My first steps toward learning martial arts were also taken at home when I started reading book after book on the arts that I wanted to learn.  As can be expected- I was told that you can not learn this kind of thing from books and I believed it. Well... to a certain extent I still do, because I don't think I would have been able to get where I am without having studied at the dojos that I have joined. Thing with martial arts is, as we know by now, that it is not something that you just study by taking in information. It is something with which skills and abilities get developed by training. Much of what you get taught in a book or in a martial arts class is useless if you just commit it to memory. It is usually something hat has to be practiced over and over again or an exercise that has to be done on a regu...

My first two years of high school were not anything I'd like to remember. Kids loved picking on me and luck had it that I was stuck in a class with a large group of kids who threw stuff at me, stole my book case and had tons of negative remark to make about me. Also- because I was afraid of heights it was lots of fun to grab hold of me and dangle me over great heights as I screamed for dear life. Yes- that is how I met humanity during my formative years and I have survived it. For the record- I LOVE saying that none of those kids were Chinese or Black- so SUCK ON THAT anyone who  looks at me funny for having friends in these two ethnic groups... But I digress. What I have experienced in High School is what my generation knew as bullying. We of course had no cellphones and social media did not exist. You did not dare sass any adults in their face, because you would get the living daylights smacked out of you if you dared and if you wanted to insult a peer you f...

You know- I don't want to start trouble- especially not with my post about respecting other styles, but I have found that my time being absorbed in Karate has made my kicks feel all stiff and without power. Really- no offence meant against Karate. I just like my techniques to feel a certain way just as I love the smell of ginger and something else I cannot yet name in a Chinese kitchen. Few things in the world feel as satisfying to me as a Chinese Kung Fu workout. So- I have started to focus on the Kungfu component of Wenshiuquan. To explain briefly what the Kungfu component of my style entails might reveal that it is actually a most crucial component as it concerns the generation of speed and power. It is really funny that I have been able to grade all the way to 1st Kyu Brown in Karate, but had never really been able to punch powerfully. My kicks had stopping power, but that was only because legs are inherently strong limbs. The moment I have learnt developing the e...