gongfu

 Gong li, or training strength, is at the core of all good martial arts foundations. Picture a boxer, that never worked out, and then went into a match outweighted and overreached. Surely, gong fu isn’t about a series of blows exchanged in a ring in the spirit of agressive albeit “friendly” competition like boxing. It is mostly about proper technique, refining techniques that win and using the least amount of strength so that you always have plenty left. That doesn’t imply that you shouldn’t train like Mohammed Ali.

 One of the least respected people in Gong Fu is Bruce Lee. He rewrote the schlitz, and was one of the only people willing to teach non-Chinese actual kung fu… without any BS or outdated, primitive spiritual mysticism attatched. People say things like “What he did wasn’t kung fu”, or “He only learned half of the Wing Chun system.” and the most commonly said I think “He was a good self promoter, buit nothing special.”.  All of it is redicilous nonsense I think. Bruce Lee really had it pretty well figured out.

 The best systems of gong fu, are the systems that put a huge emphasis on gong li. Why? Because their players can easily beat most players from significantly better systems that don’t train gong li. With or without gloves. How can a small child fight a grown man and win? Even with some crazy crane beak skills, a child is going to get hurt. It is the same logic. How can a scrawny Bagua gong fu master with no real significant speed or strength stand up against a completely ripped Tiger (lesser) style master? Unless the Tiger stylist is significantly mentally slow, he’ll win, his physical power ensures it.

 The internal arts proliferate the BS. We won’t get into though. Here are the basics, that you can take anywhere. A hotel room chair, a dry floor and almost anything heavy will be your perfect gym.

 First, is the big five. With these five exercises, you can get consistently stronger throughout your life, and all of them can train different aspects of your Li- or physical strength by being still at different intervals, being done fast, or being done slow, even by slowly doing half the form, and suddenly and explosively doing the other half for striking power.

 1.)Pushups

 2.)Pullups

 3.)Dips

 4.)Squats

 5.)Crunches/Situps.

 Now for dips, you just use a chair. For pullups, a bar or a door frame if you need some arthritus, and pushups can be done on the knucles or palms, flat on the floor, or with inexpensive pushup bars.

 Now, to target specific muscles, and thereby enhance your traveling strength training, you can use weights. You can use dumbells, should you have packed, or milkjugs filled with clay/sand. You can even fill a 40 oz malt bottle with sand and use that for a little resistance and just do huge numbers of reps.

 Here are my favorite dumbell lifts for gong fu:

1.)Bicep curls

2.)Wrist curls

3.)Standing rows

4.)Overhead presses/squat presses.

5.)Shoulder shrugs, but when your shoulders come up, roll the weights up onto your palms with the wirst bent all the way up, and when your shoulders come down, let the weights roll down onto the second knuckles of the fingers. If you have dumbells the is.

6.) Standing tricep extentions. Put the weights behind your head with your elbows pointing at the ceiling, then, without moving your elbows, extend your arms and retract.

 Mess with it. Try everything, and see what makes your gong fu better. But lifting weights and doing isometrics makes the bones denser. That’s medically proven. Not only will you thank yourself as you get along in years, but what fighter doesn’t want dense bones?

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