gongfu

 People talk alot of Schlitz about lifting weights in kung fu. Almost everyone that isn’t x-military/boxing/police/actual hardass, will repeat the well known mantra “Lifting weights makes the muscles too tight to properly lead Qi”. Most of the people who actually use that saying, have an “idea” of this Chinese word “Qi” that changes everyday. Most of them, in reality, are people who are physically weak and lazy and like the excuse.

 Qigong feels good. Leading “Qi” or doing relaxed body work led by the breath really feels wonderful, and it’s good for you. People that have done Yoga for long enough to really start to get some results will attest. In fact, the real root of Chinese kung fu’s “internal” principles, is Indian Yoga. It’s just been refined into something else.

 Qigong, is important to gong fu, and if you lift weights and do hard conditioning drills, it’s even better for you and your gong fu skill. Without a body, where is the kung fu? That thinking should lead to the stronger and healthier the body, the better the gong fu/qigong. Really. No ifs ands or buts.

 Now in gong fu, there are so many different moves, so many different punches and blocks, paries, fingertip strikes, elbow attacks, shoulder bumps, palm pushes, palm strikes. Really, there are thousands of different techniques. But in it’s simplist form, it can all literally be quantified into a handful of movements. This might seem ridiculous, but I’m not the first person in the United States to realize this, in fact, among the people practicing real gong fu out there, it is quite well known. With the upper body, mechanically, every single striking technique can be called a variant of one of five core techniques found in the gong fu style “Xing Yi Quan”. Xing Yi has some sketchy origins, but it is a miraculously simple and brutal fighting system. In this system of gong fu, there are five basic techniques: Split, Cross, Crush, Pound and Drill. Really, they are each found in eachother to some degree.

 For strengthening the body with weights, an age old gong fu practice, there isn’t anything better to use as a simple pattern. Here it is. Be careful, doing xing yi correctly will make you unaturally advantaged at fighting to begin with. Haha. Comment if you accidentally knock some fools out after doing this routine.

  Start with two dumbells that you can only curl for 5-8 reps. For most adult males that are just starting thats 20-40#s. Noone cares if you can lift more or less.

 Lay on your back, on your bench, or the floor if you dont have a bench, with the dumbells out at your sides parallel to your body so that you can pick them up if your on the floor, or obviouslly, you can hold them to lie on you bench.

 Carefully lift them over your torso, making sure not to drop them on yourself which could send you do the hospital quite humiliated.

 The first exercise strengthens the “splitting” technique. Turn your fists, as if you just snapped a pencil in half, so that they are 45 degrees down towards your feet from horizontal. Try this now sitting at your computer. Point both fist at the screen, so that the line of nuckles is parallel to the floor, and the elbows point straight down. Now rotate both the fists and the elbows 45 degrees towards eachother, so that the fist slopes downward 45 degrees to the pinky knuckle and the elbow points at the floor diagonally outward. The elbows should stay bent throughout the lifting. Point the elbows in this form at half way between their rotations. In other words, you’ve got out, and down, for normal elbow rotations, rotate them to the middle. Keep your fists spaced just to the outside of your ribs. Now just bring the fists down as far as the ribs if your on a bench, and the floor if your not. Repeat as many times as you can, take a short break and repeat again, do that 3-5 times.

 Te next position is drilling. Start with both fists down at your waist palms facing your feet. Rotate them as you lift them up, so that the palms face the same direction of the top of the head. Your arms will still be pretty bent at the apex of the move, since the weights only should go straight up and down away and toward the body.

 Next is crush. Start with palms facing eachother, with the arms bent 90 degrees. If your on your bench, the weights will be at your floating ribs, if your on the floor the elbows will be. Dont bring your arms up, the fists/weights move in a straight line, just semi straighten the arms.

 The last one is Cross, with which you only use one weight, and you may have to use a lighter one. Lay on your side, and do flys. That is, lay on the left side proped up with your left arm, with the weight in your right hand, on the floor or hanging by the bench and lift it as if you were pulling the cord on an old lawnmower.

 Thats all of them. Why no pound? It isn’t necessary. Pounds force is derived from the other four.

Try adding them to your existing workout for a couple weeks and see what happens.

 Peace.

 In external gong fu, the idea of “external” qigong is very important. The premise, is that you build Qi in the muscles/tendons and skin by deep physical conditioning, and when that qi accumulates, it is able to blast through blockages and open meridians, and natural accumulate at the dantiens as necessary. It is physically hard, but doesn’t require any special knowledge of internal theory to gain the same results as internal gong fu/qigong, over a shorter period of time in a young and dedicated student.

 Another benefit of external gong fu, that cannot be said for internal gong fu, is that the body is made very strong and flexible and able to be put to use martially years and years sooner. While the techniques may not be very complex in an intermediate student’s arsenal, there really isn’t any need for complexity. It is valid in all areas of Chinese MA and qigong, contrary to what many masters of qigong have said.

 I would say, one of the real reasons that internal arts like tai qi were taught in secret, is that their students would have been easily beaten before the ten or fifteen year mark. After the point when they had started to develop real internal strength they have already developed real skills, and according to legend, many high level gong fu masters were beaten to death and into the dirt by them. Obviously, Tai Qi and Bagua are quite merited, in proper context and Hsing Yi and Baji are both internal and external and yield martial prowess sooner.

 In external qigong practice, the body is built up muscularly, including the tendons and ligaments. By building strength and endurance in the physical body, and by understanding principle/core techniques, a person’s skill can become quite formidable. Without strength, in the muscles and bones, a person’s external gong fu is useless for most of their training, in some systems like “lohan” and “Mantis” probably forever. If you punch someone athletic, and you are physically weak, it won’t hurt them. Even if you punch some supposed “softspot” it won’t cause you to win a fight. Even with your crazy chain punching skillz or whatever.

 In gong fu, there is a basic formula to achieving a battle worthy body.

 1.) Flexible muscles are healthy muscles.

 2.) The entire body is a muscular network. We think of it as one muscle.

 3.) After the point of exhaustion, is when benefits are gained.

 4.) The harder you work, the more you get out of your work.

 It is a good idea to have a few tools at hand.

 1.) Free weights, or kettlebells.

 2.) A Chinup bar.

 3.)Pushup bars- pushups/chinups and dips will be the bulk of your upper body work. 

 4.)Enough space to work sequences.

 While you are developing muscular strength, it is important to be doing qigong sets and gong fu sequences immediatly after. This refines the muscles to specific tasks while they are still hot, and ensures that plenty of nurishment is going throughout the body to properly grow and heal. If you do your sequences at night, and your conditioning in the morning, which is a perfectly valid way to practice most gong fu, you should still do “martial” qigong sets immediatly after conditioning, even if you use medium depth stances and no jing.

 In the famous words on the now N.Y based Shaolin Monk- Shi Yan Ming- “More qi, train harder!”

 Wrestling is a very important part of kung fu. Most of the wrestling in kung fu, is designed to break brones, dislocate bones at the joints, destroy muscles/tendons and even to kill other people should the real need ever arrise in some practioners life in some generation. Contrary to the propaganda, it isn’t something new to kung fu, in fact, it is probably the oldest form of empty hand gong gu. What is new, is the idea of training wrestling against wrestlers of other styles. Which is a seperate topic. The joint locks of jiu jitsu and judo are derived almost directly from gong fu, as well as the throws and ground mechanics that were the original root of those arts. They are really something quite different today, but kung fu is still passing on those concepts.

  The first part of wrestling in gong fu is standup throwing. You should be able to knock someone down/throw someone, pretty easily without training specifically for wrestling if you really do gong fu. Not only are your legs hard to interupt in rooting, but the postural stances of gong fu are easily used in turning to overturn/toss/take someone to the ground. Once a person is on the ground, what comes next in gong fu, naturally is controlling them, by locking the joints. Once a person is face down, on the ground, and immobilized, they can be arrested, spoken to submission, or injured so that they are unable to present a threat. Many standup qin na techniques will take someone to te ground, making them less capable along the way and finally taking them out of service before, or immediatly after they hit the ground.

 This is important to note, since if you were to use kung fu wrestling as sport, it would immediatly lose it’s essense. Certain softcore techniques have been taken from gong fu, and added to the San Da arsenal. Why not the good ones?

 There are two reasons.

 Most people that really teach gong fu don’t teach competitive fighters.

 Most competitive fighters don’t use techniques that could easily damage a persons body permanently.

 Forcing someone to go down involuntarily isn’t particularly hard. The problem is, if they struggle, they will be injured badly.

 Here are some examples of very basic, simple standup techniques in Chinese martial arts that employ “grappling” skills.

 Hopefully I can figure out how to transfer video from my camera into a readable format to post on this blog soon!

 Person dressed in white, and person dressed in black. We will use this simple system for the sake of illustration.

 Person dressed in black, puts arms on white’s shoulders and gets in close to prevent him from striking and presses forward to off balance him, which he is about to follow up. White feels his hands under blacks arms, while stepping into black and “locking” his legs to root. White continues his hands behind black’s shoulders and around to the front of his throat, locking them. He forces his hip into black’s pelvis below the center of gravity, if heights permit, and turns his body, to fold black backward while pressing his hands forward on black’s throat. All happening simultaneously, and almost impercievably fast. Black’s neck/back could be broken, if something went slightly wrong.

 Black grabs whites shirt in the center of his chest. White grabs black’s hand whith his left, and steps outside of black’s right foot, while knocking his elbow towards white’s right in with the right arm from underneath and continues  the motion to grab the his face, and turning the entire body at the hips, and folding down at the waist to the left, planting him on the ground, on his back, and probably the back of his head/shoulders first while wrenching the arm, so quickly, he cannot defend once he is locked and so that he cannot adjust himself in the air.

 Two examples of simple gong fu wrestling that cannot be used in any type of freefighting situation except a real fight.

 Qigong, is usually concidered to be of immense importance to real martial arts. Part of gong fu is fighting. Another part is achieving longevity. Another part is possesing a body that recovers quickly from hard labor. The real aim of gong fu, while sometimes concidered “spiritual enlightenment”, is usually really concidered self preservation in a total sense. Part of what self preservation entails, is being healthy, which is something that gong fu develops naturally through whole body fitness.

 Many people who teach gong fu, place a great emphasis on medical qigong. The reason, is probably that if the body is strengthened internally, or the tendons, ligaments, lung capacity and blood flow are strengthened, our gong fu is enhanced. Some medical qigong sets, have other martial merits as well.

 One very famous set, called BaDuanJian, or the “eight brocade sections” or “eight strands of silk brocade”, is something that I have been practicing in depth as of late, and I would like to offer some of what I have noticed about the sets obvious martial origins. Now, this set is usually concidered medical qigong, and often taught in it’s softest variety to elderly and sickly people on account of it’s simple, easy to perform sets. The thing is, I was taught that this set was created by Marshal Yue Fei, and used to strengthen his troops for battle. I have learned it several ways, and when done for martial arts, it can be demanding to the begining and intermediate student.

 The first set, holding up heaven and earth, is an ancient asian folk exercise posture, common from India across the East even reaching Japan. This exercise has the martial merit of strengthening “lifting” Jin, but also improves the strength deep in the shoulder for punching out. Double dragon’s Play With Pearl, the reverse punch, and other techniques common to many systems, can be greatly enhanced by doing this exercise. It is also a good precursor to tumbling, and handstands.

 Seperate heaven and earth. One hand presses up, the other hand presses down. This exercise not only helps the upper body get used to directing the two arms independently in opposing directions, it also strengthens each arms full rotation, which increases the speed of our punching techniques.

 Look left, look right, also called Wise Owl Turns His Head. This one helps us to better coordinate the movement of our head with our intention, and obviously thus our eyes. This is important. If you ever spar lightly with a friend that never played sports as a kid, you might notice that their ability to watch your movements is usually pretty much non-existant. Several of the sections will help with this if done right. This is one of the better ones directly relating to it, I think.

 Toes lift the body. Again, this should be obvious. By lifting your body with only the ankles, you are developing/refining the gracefulness in which you step, since you are learning to control the whole body from the root in a very strong and balanced way.

 The rest of them should be pretty obvious.

 The point is, medical qigong is not simply an innocuous part of the cirriculum, it is really a quite valuable one. My report, of doing the eight strands in significant quantity as of late, is that they are of immense value to our craft. Don’t toss them out, make sure you really get the movements, then do large numbers of reps every day to see some results. Eight strands of precious silk. Haha. Like that really means anything to us today. The name should be changed to like, “The Eight Great Exercises”.

 Peace.