Chinese martial arts, thoughts after 20 years

 Each person's perspective is shaped by their unique journey through life, informed by experiences both aligning with and diverging from those of their peers.  This is how we gain an understanding of any discipline or practice and how we root those disciplines in the world around us.  Martial arts are no different and how we inform and develop that discipline is a reflection of our personal journey.  

I was drawn to Traditional Chinese Martial Arts (TCMA) or kung fu because of the beauty and complexity of its movements.  Few movement arts rival the Northern Chinese styles for the sheer diversity of the movements incorporated in the practice.  This emphasis on movement complexity and diversity invites comparison to modern dance and other very broad styles of movement.   For many,  TCMA has become a danceform devoid of any combat context.  For myself, my experience in weapon based competition before TCMA gave me an early desire to see how the movements I was learning could be used under pressure in combat.  

Fighting is a form of serious play with structure and rules like any game.  The exception is when individuals seek to use violence against others but don’t want to engage in the game of fighting at all, instead using some hidden advantage or surprise to get what they want.   The world of ‘self-defense’ is attempting to prepare people for these surprise violent encounters.  In contrast, ritualised combat as we find in sports and even ‘street fights’ are games with some measure of rules and specific contexts which determine what will be effective or will not.  There is social expectation and pressure on how to act and what to do.  If someone tries to get into a street fight with you and you drop your trousers and wave your hands in the air as though you’re not in your right mind, they probably won’t want to play with you .  The context in which you are playing this game will decide what movements are favoured by the rules, the environment, or the physicality of the fighters.

  In any fighting discipline, there is a balance being found between the advantage gained by being really good at a few techniques, specialising in strategies for how to use them, and the advantage gained by doing diverse techniques the opponent is not prepared for, expecting, or experienced with.  Should I have a huge list of options that keep the opponent guessing? Or should I just master a few techniques, improve my tactics with them, and focus on getting as fast and as strong as possible.  This is not a new question and martial artists have always grappled with this.  There are hundreds of TCMA styles and they all answered these questions differently as well.  The Northern Shaolin style I have dedicated myself to chose diversity over specialisation.

Sport Combat traditionally limited the number of techniques a person could use (ie. only certain punches, kicks, or throws), simplifying that aspect of the game so that physical ability, tactics, and willpower became the clear source of success.  Creativity occasionally finds ways to challenge this formula but that is not the norm.  These games are the best way to get really good at a subset of techniques.  Boxers will be the best at using the handful of techniques allowed in boxing.  Taekwondo competitors will be the best at using their subset of kicks.  In the modern era, mixed martial arts competition typically take the limited technique subsets from these sports and add them together into larger subsets for a more complex game.  Thanks to flexible rules, movements beyond the classical sport systems (boxing, wrestling, jiu jitsu, judo, k-1 kickboxing, muay thai, taekwondo, karate point fighting) do occasionally find their way into the mix. However, generally everyone has a handful of techniques taken from the styles they or their coaches have had the most experience with putting into practice in other games.  No one practices every judo throw or kickboxing attack; instead, fighters focus on moves they trust will work for them within the complexity of the game.

Few would dispute that modern MMA's repertoire of techniques continues to expand.  At some point in the near future, if you took all the moves used by all the fighters in MMA I think it will be as diverse and complex a library of movements and techniques as you typically find in TCMA.  Most traditional martial arts are mixed martial arts, involving all the types of fighting ‘games’ you might encounter.  The fact that you might kill or be killed didn’t stop these from being games in my perspective.  You  needed to be ready for whatever the other person tried to do and you had to be good enough at some of those games that you were likely to be able to outsmart or overwhelm your opponent in that way.  

Additionally, training involved the entire physical culture of preparation.  This included all the training and conditioning necessary to get the body to be able to both perform desired techniques and avoid being overwhelmed by the techniques of others.  Before modern workout methods, Kung fu styles were famous for their intense strength, flexibility, and toughness training.  Long hours in challenging positions built isometric strength, vital for strengthening tendons and ligaments.  Iron body skills, a form of conditioning to develop the body’s capacity to withstand impact, thickened bones, skin and connective tissue.  Training TCMA in a traditional way requires a lot of time spent pursuing these methods, although they may be derided for being outdated or suboptimal.  My own experience has shown these traditional techniques to be effective for all the needs of my own training.  Additionally, this sort of training prioritises moderation and longevity, with a cultural focus on being capable and strong for as many years as possible.

Along with the development of martial skills, importance was given to the development of an individual’s sense of virtue.  Especially given the ties between martial arts and the religious movements in China, a responsibility of any teacher was to imbue a sense of ethic in their students, known as Wǔdé. This is a focus of TCMA which is somewhat underappreciated or missing in modern sport styles.  Understanding how to choose the appropriate and minimal amount of force for any encounter was one key, while seeking the best and often non-violent way to protect those in danger was another.  This ethic of minimising violence has sometimes become a justification for those who do not wish to engage in fighting games at all, and has lead to TCMA moving further and further from combat efficacy over time.

Unlike most people who love fighting and competition, I love forms.  Forms, or tàolù, are central to many TCMA systems.  These are choreographed sequences done alone or in pairs.  These do not teach you how to fight and they were never intended to.  They teach you principles of movement, good mechanics of force generation, posture and footwork.  They are not sufficient for any of these skills either however.  Subjectively my body loves practicing them, and I feel great doing them.  Having choreographies passed down to me that I keep with me everywhere I go and that keep my body feeling capable and strong are a tremendous gift.  They are a storehouse of techniques, practices, and ideas influenced by all the teachers who knew the form before me.  Whether a given form is a few centuries old or a few decades old does not change this embodiment of knowledge and experience.  As a practitioner you have to trust that each teacher included the techniques they personally had the most experience with while preserving the techniques of other teachers, even when those techniques didn’t work as well for themselves.  This leads to a comprehensive library of possible techniques, combinations of techniques, and hints to the strategies for applying them.  Coding the knowledge of the system in this way makes the tradition much more resilient than memory would otherwise allow.  Also, even movements I do not find personally useful might be ideal for my students with different body types or dispositions and this prevents me from only showing those techniques I favour.

My journey as a martial artist and a teacher has been to understand all of the movements passed down to me.  I was lucky that my Sifu and the other teachers who helped me offered me a good understanding of many applications for the movements in the forms.  This was much more help than many people get learning TCMA.  For my interest this still wasn’t enough.  My goal has been to understand and feel confident in using all the movements I know.  This has led me to seek out techniques and strategies from other styles but specifically sport styles who have the most experience putting their techniques into practice.  

Often, once I have learned a key principle which enables a movement I know to work, it unlocks many other variations on the movement which are already locked away in my forms.  When I get better at other systems of wrestling, or striking, or throwing, I am much better able to make use of all that my own system has to offer.  My hope is to do much of this work so that those following after me don’t have to.  People who learn from me should get the chance to develop all of those skills and to a level that permits them to jump into competition with people who specialise in those specific games, and at least offer some challenge.  After that, they can choose to specialise and develop in the ways they personally prefer, but regardless, the mixed martial arts system of Northern Shaolin kung fu will continue to be a complete system from which someone can be based.

Most people who practice traditional martial arts and value being able to realistically put their art into practice have a difficult position in the modern culture of fighting.  The skillsets used in combat games are really good at winning those combat games.  TCMA won’t be as good at those games which favour other movements.  Modern MMA competition has decided the best skillsets are the ones used in those combat games.  Many traditional martial artists lack opportunities to engage deeply with their own combat games, which limits their ability to refine their skillsets and thus contribute to broader conversations on martial arts.  Also, even those who get good at one game, such as taiji ‘push hands’ or wing chun ‘sticky hands’ don’t play other games so that they could become well-rounded mixed martial artists.  Because people are not training this way, there are not good examples of TCMA winning fights in modern competition.  This doesn’t mean that the arts can’t be used that way, but its current practitioners haven’t done the work to do so.  Without any fighters ‘proving the system’, the techniques and principles are often disregarded as ineffective.   Often the martial artists who want to develop their skillset for competition are told they have to use other systems, and so even people who say they are doing kung fu rarely fight using the techniques of their system.  I have encountered this for years. 

 I don’t have enough people who practice what I do with whom to play the games I need to in order to get good at my movements. Instead I go and play games with people from other styles and try to beat them at their own games, which is not as good at getting me good at what I do.  I would argue some of my greatest insights come from teaching and working with my students but this is still not equal to having regular competition with practitioners at my skill level.  I’m still trying anyway and as I step into boxing/mma/kickboxing matches, I have to accept not doing as well as I would like and often losing.  Even as I continue to get better at my skillset, getting good at ring fighting and becoming proficient at managing nerves, excitement, and fear is its own challenge. 

In 20 years of training, I cannot remember a single year in which I did not gain new insights into how to better practice and apply my art.  It has provided me a relationship to my body and access to states of flow which have seen me through my hardest times.  Foremost, in games with competitors, training partners and students it has been a deep source of fun.  I hope I’ll be able to say the same in 20 more years.

Practice and passion are all you'll ever need (and food, sleep, etc.)

Well, taking a break from my Taiwan adventures, I feel the need to write about what's been occupying my mind during these days out in the heat. This is primarily in reaction to my having finished the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. That and my other sources will be mentioned at the end. This is just a blog so I won't be citing, but I did do some extra reading for this, all of which is available for everyone.
Now to my subject. In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell dissects a host of modern success stories to discover what it was that made these people special. We tend to put people on pedastals, calling them geniuses or naturals. We see them as inherently gifted and that's why they're better than us. However, across the board, whether you're a chessmaster, a sportstar, an amazing guitarist, or the world's best programmer the one thing that really sets you apart is how much you've practiced. By all means you have to have been lucky enough to get the time and opportunities that made you successful, but by the end any innate ability is statistically insignificant. What often happens is adults perceive a child as special and then facilitate greater opportunities for that child, which over time actually makes that child better than others who weren't given the same help. We see this in everything from sports programs to gifted programs because we seem to believe people are better for one task or another, but in the end, time and time again, what actually matters is the time put into achievement.
The catch is how much time. 10,000 hours. If you want to be world class and reach extraordinary levels of skill, numerous studies across all sorts of disciplines consistently find the same numbers. If you just want to be good enough to teach and enjoy your discipline, perhaps even become a great teacher over time, you will probably have put in approximately 2000 hours of deliberate practice aimed at improvement, rather than just maintenance. Say you want to be really good though. To get a handle on nearly all the skill qnd knowledge base of a discipline you are looking at 7 to 8 thousand hours of deliberate, dedicated practice. You won't make it to the olympics, but you won't be far either. You won't come up with a new theory of the universe, but you'll really understand everyone else's. Yet, with the addition of roughly 2000 more hours, something magical happens. You'll assimilate your art. By this point you are no longer operating at seemingly normal levels of human performance. To anyone else you seem to be faster, smarter, more fluid, alltogether operating at another level. Your mind is actually functioning differently. You gain the ability to access your long term memory at times when others use short term. This larger storage gives you the ability to make faster and better educated decisions in the moment and to access huge amounts of experience to unite ideas and solve problems. What's amazing is that anyone can do this. You don't need a huge IQ or amazing reflexes. What you start training with will make the beginning harder or easier but in the end if you stick with it, it all evens out.
All research has been done with fields of expertise which have huge followings, often with the chance for professional involvement or world class competition. What about my passions which are not mainstream enough to have been studied. I am reasonably sure the past couple generations have seen hardly any martial artists reach this level. It simply isn't feasible without the support structure afforded to more commonplace disciplines. There is no profession or level of competitiom that requires or can support the amount of training for a traditional martial artist to get to this stage. Perhaps over the course of a lifetime, but without systematic practice as rigorous as in the first few years of training, improvement will slow until huge amounts of time pass without improvement, which will in turn decrease the amount of training one is willing to do. It has been shown that maintaining skill takes much less time, and that's what most skilled people will do. However, in the long run for our art to survive, we cannot only immortalize past masters and their skill, we must seek to reach those same levels so as to push forward our art and not let it stagnate and wither with time. Let's look at freerunning/parkour. The art is too new, and as anyone in the community knows, the skill level advances every week. The average Joe can do more moves than most of the world's best a few years ago. This is natural. No one, I'm willing to bet, perhaps not even the founders have hit the 10 000 hour mark. That requires ten years or more of dedicated training, constantly trying to perfect and improve. People are working towards that, and so the vocabulary of our movements is still expanding with the raised level of the group. Parkour benefits from the fact that so many other disciplines are applicable. If you have 1000 hours or more in breakdancing, gymnastics, or even martial arts, those hours will count; not completely, but they help. Just wait, in the next ten years, we'll see more and more guys we want to call prodigies, but really they will just have had the right amount and kind of training. We have no idea what's possible yet. Finally, I started studying german longsword when I was 11. I had an english teacher who was just getting involved in the new field of analyzing the old manuals and recreating the martial art. I could not have been luckier. It would be like being David Belle's kid brother ten years ago. I got involved with the art at almost the earliest possible time, and have had an advantage in practice time that I will admit I've been squandering the past few years. Were someone to hit the 10000 mark they would be resurrecting a dead art and be probably the first one to do so in more than 400 years.
Before I lay out my plans, I should summarize some of the research about how to train more effectively. First of all, all time spent dealing with things which involve your discipline help, but those ten thousand hours will be most easily and effectively reached by independent practice. The kind I'm talking about requires that you are focusing on your techniques, without worrying about anyone else, while attempting to perform whatever you are working on as well as you can. This drilling sort of practice should be self monitored and aiming to constantly improve some element of your performance. It is tiring, and more importantly, very little fun. The best in the world (at anything) can only do about an hour at a time, averaging three to 4 hours throughout the day. To recover and maintain this level of training, you need sufficient periods of rest and consistently good nights of more than 8 hours of sleep. Other hours can be accumulated with others or solo, for improvement or recreation. In general, if you are training for fun, it is most beneficial with others, whereas drilling to improve technique is best alone. Those dense hours of private training should always be exercising full effort and intent, basically holding nothing back. Every step of the way benefits from having coaches, teachers, or friends who can help monitor your technique and who you can seek for advice. Also, pure repition is insufficient for more advanced levels. Just repeating will lead to plateaus of skill level. Instead, you must devise systems to organise and reorganise your knowledge, constantly targeting aspects of training and performance to work and improve.
As for my plans, I have decided to reach the ten thousand hour mark in all three of my disciplines (languages would count but they're more complicated). I will strive for the pinnacles of skill in Northern Shaolin Kung Fu, Freerunning, and German Longsword. This is not because I'm special or deserve it, but because we all have the potential to do the same. To help anyone who feels the same way, I will be organizing practice sessions throughout the week, both to offer more dedicated times to improve and to enjoy our arts as a group. I will offer my own knowledge and coaching free of charge to anyone who wants it and is honestly dedicated to striving towards mastery in the long term. This is not a short term journey. Starting at 0 hours it can take no less than ten years of deliberate daily improvement to attain the levels I'm talking about. In order to be sure, I will disregard my years of experience and for myself start logging my hours from 0. I recommend anyone attending my practices to keep logs of personal practice, and notebooks in which you can systemize your art. Start now but remember if you can only do ten minutes at a time that's fine, just mark that down. As time goes on I will provide more information on workouts and get togethers. As for how I plan to survive with this level of dedication, I have all sorts of plans, but I recommend creativity and perseverence. I don't want to be mediocre. I practice these arts because I love them; no matter what else I pursue or encounter my knowledge and experience gained from these disciplines has pulled me through physically and psychologically. Research shows the passion required to attain this eminence should not be obsessive, defined as a need to appear better than others or arising from insecurities about oneself, but must become passion to excel for its own sake, a healthy striving.

Please read the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, whose sources I later plundered to right this. In it you'll find enough of the research and all of the inspiration to set out on a journey to become an outlier. Also he adresses many questions of environmental influences, such as culture and era which should be better understood by everyone. You might know how much of a strict fan of copyright laws I am, so you know I'd definitely not send a .pdf version of the book to anyone who asked for it.
If you wanna see the research, I can send pdfs of the published relevant papers. They're long, took almost as long as the book to get through.

When the going gets tough, it doesn't really matter how tough you are

After just over 6 and a half years in traditional kung fu, I’m still very much a newcomer, but gifted with excellent resources, a host of meaninful experiences, and a lot of spare time with which to dedicate myself, I’ve managed to make the most of those years.  The truth is the longer you stick with it, the smaller a group you are part of.  Most people will quit in their first year or even first few classes.  More and more will quit every year after then.  For many of those people in the beginning, they quickly realize that traditionally taught martial arts is not what they are looking for.  The way I see it, starting kung fu or any traditional martial art, there are 3 main motivators which at the same time are the three things most likely to stop the first wave of beginners.  

First, Kung fu gets you in shape.  The very name means hard work, and if the class is done right it will kick you around and batter you into the shape it requires you.  If that’s what you want, great, if not, you’re out already.  Second there is a desire to “know how to fight.”  The will to be able to defend yourself is probably the most common motivator for beginners.  If it’s not yours, you might be out the first time you take a hit to the face in training.  Or, perhaps you expect this to be an easy goal and want it to happen quickly, in which case, there are a host of less-traditional arts that will get you able to punch, kick, throw, and submit in half the time.  Whether for the ring or street, there are fast methods to basic proficiency.  If that’s your only motivator, you probably are in the wrong place.  The last factor is everything else that the traditional martial arts is.  This is the movement, culture, and when you’re lucky, the community.  If you fall in love with this, you’ve got a good shot of being in it for a while.  If you are attracted rather than put off by the complicated movements, esoteric names, and formalities of practice, you might have found a new home.  There are endless movements to keep your attention and you’ll get fit and learn how to defend yourself while you’re at it.

Unfortunately, that is not what I set out to write about.  My interest is not in those who lack interest in these motivators.  What I need to talk about is what happens when you have struggled, gotten stronger, learned a bunch of forms, learned how to hold your own better than the average punk, and then you ask yourself what’s next.  I don’t think any of the above is enough to keep you in it, or at least not keep you getting better.  No matter what, no matter how varied the class is, you will reach a point where attending class will not make you noticeably more fit or flexible.  If you want to be, you’ll train outside of class, and you’ll realize class is just maintenance.  If you don’t care anymore, you’ll find it harder and harder to force yourself to get your ass kicked.  Endless movements will begin to seem more like a burden than a blessing.  Even if you love the movement, you’ll be tempted to stick with what you have rather than progress further, and if you’re sticking with what you got, why keep showing up?  You may love the community, and can’t bear to be away, but that wil not keep you working hard and getting better.  It will definitely not get you over the next hurdle.

Ultimately martial arts are about becoming a warrior.  Not a brawler, a performance artist, or just an athlete.  The traditional martial arts aren’t there to help you protect yourself, but to protect others.  You shouldn’t be able to just fight one person, but handle situations.  All the esoteric mumbo jumbo had a reason. Kung fu must change the way you think, move, and live. This is achieved by uniting those three earlier forces.  Your athleticism must be natural in your movement, and your movement must be natural in your fighting.  Whatever excuses you might have heard, you can and are meant to fight with the movements from your forms/katas/etc.  If you are incapable of using your low stances, arsenal of blocks, and the mind game of movements meant to get through the other guy’s guard, you are not using your art.  

    Worst of all, you probably know you are not using the art.  Pulling off a move from your style is not using your style, and until you can develop the style passed down to you into an effective personal system, you are not really a martial artist.  I personally am in the midst of that lofty goal, making the movements of my style my own and maximizing my potential, and I fully expect to be on this stage of the journey for the next few decades.  However, there is a serious wall right before this.  Before you can make the style your own, you must be able to use the style as it was intended.  You will realize if you are kickboxing or using feints and tricks rather than moving naturally in the way you were trained.  Having already spent years training, how could anything be more frustrating?  
    The truth is that this might be your stop.  You got what you came for and are done.  That is the easy way out.  You can make excuses, deny the traditional arts or claim that the complicated movements and stances were meant just to train and not meant to fight with, but that is only a justification for not being willing to go further.  It doesn’t even matter if you keep going to class, training, holding stances and kicking pads.  You can start teaching, win fights, do stuntwork and none will know the wiser.  However, you will be doing your style and the meticulous development of previous generations a disservice.  You will also be missing out on the feeling of accomplishment that comes with realizing that your natural reactions are guided by the movements you have drilled and that every strike pays homage to your tradition.  
    I miss a lot of those who have left before they broke through that wall.  I feel their frustration and I have wondered for years why they stop and I haven’t.  I wonder about teachers and students who’ve lasted longer than me, some who embody their styles and others who don’t.  I wish I could isolate what enabled some and prevented others, so that I could better help my friends.  The truth is it’s just not worth it for most.  To really progress you have to make it into your life.  You have to think about it night and day and go out of your way to practice your spare time.  I think to excel in anything requires this.  I couldn’t keep up with the guitar or basketball when I was younger, but I have no problem training for hours every day doing what I do now.  I think it comes down to self image.  I never saw myself as a musician; that wasn’t a vision I developped for myself.  I do have a distinct, possibly unattainable image of the martial artist I wish to become.  Whenever I have neglected my training I feel myself move further from that person I want to be.  Everytime my movements are sloppy or I lose my cool when someone is coming at me, I feel I’m insulting that warrior.  It may not be for everyone but that thought keeps me at it.