The Way of Least Resistance

Over the years, I have often written about basics but I don't think I've ever talked about them more broadly - in particular about their importance. Recently I have been watching excerpts of David Carradine in the television series "Kung Fu" (my YouTube feed has assumed I'm a huge fan and this is inevitably reinforced every time I watch another video). One thing I notice is just how bad Carradine's technique is. It's downright awful. In a way, it reminds me of young Ralph Macchio in The Karate Kid: as the movie series progressed I kept expecting him to get better. I thought: "Surely he's been training in the meantime?" Only he didn't get better. Ditto Carradine. With the latter in mind, rather than show you a bit of the series, I thought it would be more illustrative to show you David Carradine demonstrating martial arts  after  he finished the series and had (apparently) undergone much, much more training. It's hard to explain exact...

I had a university student interview me today for the purposes of a paper he was writing.  These were my responses: 1. How long have you been practicing martial arts? I have been training for 33 years (just coming up to 34!). 2. What has your experience in practicing martial arts been like? Mostly my experience of martial arts has been a very positive one.  Occasionally it has involved some rather unsavoury characters, some bruises, bleeding and broken bones, some disappointment, some lack of enthusiasm and sense of resentment and some feelings of inadequacy.  But for the majority of the time I’ve been training, martial arts practice has given me a great deal of satisfaction, sense of achievement and focus. 3. Describe what happens during each of the classes you teach (What is the basic structure)? Each class begins with what the Okinawans call “junbi undo” – warm up and conditioning exercises.  I go through my set almost religiously.  In fact, if I ...

Occasionally folks who come to try out my taijiquan (t'ai chi ch'uan) class will "turn up their noses". "It's too complicated," they say in an accusing manner, as if I've deliberately tried to make them look stupid by giving them an impossible task or required an "anal" level of detail. They want to "flow" or "move their spirit" or "be one with their mind and body" or some other vague new-age concept. They identify taijiquan with such concepts and they expect to be "naturally good at it". Experts even. All without having tried it before. After all, they might have gone to some qi gong (breathing exercise) classes, meditation courses or something similar, where all they had to do was sit or stand, “breathe”, chant mantras and maybe do some basic macro body movements like swing their arms loosely. And that was all "natural". Or maybe they went to a yoga class where their genetic flexibilit...

Some of you might have heard about a martial arts school that teaches “secret techniques” or has “secret training methods”. Something about this might intrigue you. Perhaps they guard their secrets so obsessively that you might wonder whether they do indeed have some methodology that makes them “superior” to all other arts/styles/schools... In my school of martial art we have certain techniques that I’ve found to be very effective from my personal physical experience. However these techniques and methods are largely misunderstood today - particularly in the sports arena where issues such as glove dynamics and rules affect their use. Although they are classical techniques they are even forgotten among traditional martial artists who are increasingly adopting boxing and other modern sports alternatives (see for example my article " Faux boxing "). These include our use of "blocks" in sparring (especially with our use of "tenshin" or evasion), our "...