“Little sparing was occurring at Hong Kong martial houses in 2019, not only among those who practiced kungfu, but also in martial houses which taught martial arts styles developed in non-Chinese cultures. Have a good read of the answers to questions 6 and 7. The lack of sparring in modern Kung Fu houses is of course a cause for concern, however he says he believes that the knowledge is still there in young practitioners, particularly the children of Kung Fu masters, and could easily be revived in the future. You spend time with a good boxing coach and get improved.īut, what do you think? Down, but not out? Kung Fu in Hong Kong People go to their Tai Chi teacher to get corrected. The language of internal arts is also based on the same ideas. I’m more inclined to think that obsessing over details of solo forms is a bit of a trait of internal arts and less valuable than seeing what a practitioner can do in application/sparring. In theory, there should be a standard set of rules, but in reality, different styles do things in different ways, and always will. The position of your elbow has a direct connection to whether you can produce whole body power or not.īut nobody has the same set of rules that these things are being judged by.
The amount of opening and closing of your kua dictates the amount of power you can produce, and the quality of your movements. Internal arts are obsessed over these details because they matter. The list goes on…īut ok, here’s my caveat. With internal arts it’s an endless debate on degree of uprightness, too much or not enough opening of the kua, level of relaxation, sinking enough or not enough, degree of the knee flextion, etc. Look at other martial arts – especially the ones that have a sporting side. The question I have is why did he make this? Why must internal arts people spend all their time criticising each other’s solo forms? Ok, he probably has a point, but you could easily turn this around and criticise all the mistakes that the tall skinny guy is making too. It’s essentially one Chinese martial artist ciricising another Chinese martial artists for the same thing over and over, which is sticking his elbow out a bit too much. It’s long, boring, petty and doesn’t display a particularly high level of etiquette or skill. In fact, I would say that it’s the majority of the discussion is of this nature. Visit Ken’s website at: Facebook page: Blog: Criticising solo forms – againĪs somebody who has been involved in discussing internal martial arts on the Internet since around the year 2000 I can attest that this happens all the time. In this episode we discuss the internal body mechanics of Tai Chi, training with disciples in the Chen family linage and there’s also a few stories of the times Ken has had to use his arts in real situations. In fact, he’s written an excellent book that’s available on Amazon – it’s called ‘Internal body mechanics for Tai Chi, Bagua and Xing Yi’, and I’d recommend you get a copy. Ken is quite famous for his focus on body mechanics, internal power and getting to the root of these arts in a non-mystical and no-nonsense way. Ken also runs a website called where he trains students from around the world in the three internal arts using a combination of recorded and live classes. In this episode Tai Chi Notebook podcast my guest is Ken Gullette, a native of Illinois, USA, where he trains in all three of the main internal arts – Tai Chi, Bagua and Xing Yi.