Staffs

Kung fu has several different weapons styles. It my art we begin with the staff in my art. The basic spins are started at yellow belt and the first form is taught at the very next level, which in our art is blue belt. The staff is a brutal weapon and one of the favorites of the Shao Lin monks. The monks liked them because they could be a non lethal way to beat people who were causing troubles. I got my first staff when I was 14 years old. The staff was made of rattan. Rattan is very flexible and it will absorb a lot of the force that would be transferred into your hands. I took my new staff outside when I got it. I found a tree and I hit the tree with my new staff. What happened when I hit the tree was awesome. The staff bent as I hit the tree. As I followed through the staff continued to bend and then it whipped forward ripping the bark off of the tree! The staff is a great weapon for beginners it allows for them to be able to use a weapon with out getting hurt. Weapons like sword can injure even an experienced user when done without care. With a staff it is unlikely that you'll ever get much more than a splinter. That is until you move to the 3 sectional staff. We joke in my school that the best way to use that weapon is to give it to your opponent and stand back. There are a few different types of staffs. I mention above the rattan staff. There are also white wax wood staffs. These staffs are generally used more like a spear. They are tapered and will slide easily through your hand without giving you the splinters I referred to above. The smaller end is thrust into the opponent. They smaller end is also usually cut at an angle which allows the staff to be that much more devastating when thrust into the opponents chest or face. I briefly mentioned 3 sectional staffs above. These staffs can be made of rattan or white wax wood. They have 3 sections of wood connected by chains. Some of them use ball bearings and some don't. 3 sectional staffs can be used like a staff, nunchucku,and a short stick. They are a very diverse weapons but should only be used by people who know what they are doing. There are many people who I've known over the years who have been training with the three sectional staff who have beat themselves with it, thrown it down and never picked it up again. If you are interested in using a 3 sectional staff seek out a qualified instructor who can teach you how to use it and minimized bruising :)

What does kung fu mean?

Kung fu is actually means time and effort. It is about the time and effort it takes to master anything. You could have kung fu in your job, your parenting skills, your martial arts and even in washing the dishes. So really all of life can be put into the label of kung fu. Shao lin is young forest. It refers to the forest where the Shao Lin temple was built, a forest. The monks at the temple trained in kung fu in all the areas of their lives. They trained to a ridiculous extent and to train children the way they did then now would be considered child abuse. I will talk some about the training that I know about later. Jackie Chan said in his autobiography I am Jackie Chan that when he was a boy training for opera that he had to be up at 4 in the morning and that he was not allowed to use the bathroom until lunch time. The teachers thought on the matter was if the students weren't sweating out the urine they weren't working hard enough. He was also beaten with rattan if he was to go to the bathroom before lunch time. Now I am clear that Jackie Chan is in no way a Shao lin monk however I tell this story to illustrate the intensity of the training in China even outside of the Shao Lin temple and if the training was that intense outside of the temple for something such as opera you can imagine how intense it was inside of the temple when their lives and spiritual beliefs on the line. So I am inviting you to take on practicing kung fu in your life. Imagine what it would be like if you were simply committed to doing whatever it took to master those things that are important to you. What if you were masterful at your job? What if you were masterful at listening to your spouse/significant other. Of course this line of thought applies to the martial arts as well and that is a great place to begin your journey in kung fu, even if your art isn't "kung fu"

Pa Kua Chang

Pa kua is an interesting form in the Shao lin art. It has many health benefits and a ton of cool fighting applications. I used to practice my pa kua foot work in sparring by using only foot work to evade my sparring partners attacks. Using your foot work as your only defense is a great way to learn to get out of the way of a strike. One of the huge benefits of doing this is that if you don't use your hands to block it keeps them open to strike or grab an opponent. The best thing that can happen in my mind is to use your footwork to step behind your opponent and have that opponent looking around for where you went. You know your foot work is doing well when your opponent experiences you simply disappearing! When I have practiced Pa kua in the past I would hold both of my hands out to the side. As my sparring partner would throw a punch or kick I would draw my lead leg back. This would effectively get me out of the way of the punch or kick that was headed my way. Then they would likely follow up with another strike. I would step to the out side of the person I was sparring. I was now behind my opponent and it allowed me to be able to strike the kidneys, back of the neck and even the front of the body as well with ridge hand strikes and other strikes that come around "corners". At one point I was sparring a black belt in my class. We are very close in sparring. I am not entirely sure what happened but all of a sudden neither of us can move our hands because they have gotten tangled up and we were grabbing each others arms. All of a sudden my feet start to walk. It was if I was simply watching the action happen. I couldn't intentionally reproduce what happened even if I tried. My legs start to walk. I took 3 steps and my sparring partner fell to the ground. He was uninjured but he and I were equally surprised when it happened. I had no intentional thought of doing what happened. My legs simply started walk on their own. I believe this is the benefit of training in the martial arts and practicing so much that it literally becomes a subconscious form of fighting. Your body will simply react to the way that it has been trained for so many years when threatened. Pa kua is a somewhat rare fighting art. It is not easy to find a good instructor in many areas of the United States. Pa Kua has many variations and includes weapons such as the spear, sun and moon forks, pa kua broad sword and staff. Pa kua is based on walking a circle. It is a form that has mostly palm strikes and works on directing the bodies internal energy or "Chi". There are many different styles of Pa Kua Chang. There is original or temple style pa kua, 8 animal style pa kua, snake pa kua, dragon pa kua and many others. I will leave it to you to find a school to learn pa kua at. If there is a Chinese Shao-Lin Center in your area or a Shao lin do association I can highly recommend these schools. You will need to get to black belt in the Chinese Shao lin centers before they will teach you Pa Kua Chang however the additional training on the way to black belt is awesome in these schools as well. Here are a couple of great books that you can read if you are interested in learning more about Pa Kua Chang.

Laziness and it's benefits

So today I want to talk about being lazy with your kung fu. I am not saying that you shouldn't practice. I am saying that you actually should be lazy while yo9u practice. What I mean by that is don't move any more than you have to while you practice. Taking out any and all excess movement will make you faster and more efficient. If you practice every day but you practice with excessive movements your forms will be sloppy. If you throw a strike that is ineffficient you'll easily become tired, your strikes will be slow,and sloppy. It's not how hard you strike that matters so much as the efficiency in which the strike can land. A really hard strike that is seen a mile away isn't even worth throwing. I have thrown punches where I have done little more than extend my fist with the right timing and people have run their faces into my fist really hard. I wasn't about throwing a hard sloppy punch. It was simply about extending a lazy efficient fist with great timing. I'm by no means saying that I am great at this I am simply looking from my experience to see what has worked for me. There is nothing funnier that having someone else run their face into your fist with no real effort on your part. All there is to doing this type of training is to practice the forms you are already practicing just do them slowly and examine the movements your doing. Look for where you can refine the movements that you are doing. Where are you adding extra tiny little movements to your punches? Kicks?etc. When blocking are you only need to get the fist of your opponent just outside of your body. If your opponent is throwing a punch at your face and you block it so effectively that it almost grazes your cheek then that is a high level of efficiency and will almost make your opponent feel that he is winning even when he hasn't touched you. Practice a ton of Tai Chi push hands training. This type of training is irreplaceable. Your Tai Chi training will give you the sensitivity so that you'll be able to feel when people are coming close to striking you. You'll be able to avoid being hit and stick to your opponent and never be hit even inches away from your opponent.