Foundations

Life itself contains infinite possibilities and opportunities. We cannot see our future, but through planning and experience we can usually expect certain occurrences specific to our routines and current conditions. However life tends to throw the unexpected at us from time to time, which diverts us from our typical or planned paths. These deviations may be small or great depending on the nature of the event, but one thing is for certain, although our path ahead may be different than expected, the path behind us will remain unchanged.

No matter how life happens for you and regardless of if you continue your training seriously, or casually, or not at all, there are certain things you will never forget. Forms, flexibility, strength and endurance can easily be lost without consistent practice, but the foundations will remain permanent. Whether you realize it or not your basics will still be apart of everything you do, in the small nuances or large undertakings you will still find the fundamentals of your training stand the test of time.

With that said, should your path deviate, do not fear. Get back to the basics, the fundamentals, and with an experienced mind you will be able to stretch your potential in whichever direction you wish.


Doc-Fai Wong Center 2016

Momentum

Momentum is an important concept in your martial arts training. Understanding it and applying it correctly can add devastating power to your punch or kick or to equalize your energy against a much larger opponent. Your opponents momentum can be manipulated to  unbalance their timing or mobility creating more openings for attack. It should be a point in your training to understand momentum and how it is applied in your martial art.

However, the same understanding can be applied in our daily lives. When we find ourselves in flow state, when we are accomplishing our tasks seemingly effortlessly, the positive momentum can help us complete other tasks in other parts of our lives. When our day seems full of challenges from the get go, momentum can build, increasing the effects, and we can easily fall off into a cycle of failure and frustration. Now don't forget, just as we can adapt to our opponents and unbalance and redirect their momentum to be used against them, we can smartly analyze the situations in our lives and adapt to off balance the negative momentum.

When we open our perspective from our martial arts training and techniques and see how we can adapt these concepts in our day to day lives, that's when we truly embody the spirit of the martial arts.

Looking back: 1994 Chinese New Year Parade San Francisco

Check out this footage we found from the 1994 San Francisco Chinese New Year Parade. Not only was there Lion Dancing but a kung fu mass attack performance. Tai Sifu Jason Wong is in the black uniform and is bested in the end by his father, Grandmaster Doc-Fai Wong.

You can see more parade photos here.

Get to know your Past Masters: Hu Yuen Chou

Great-Grandmaster Hu Yuen Chou (1906-1997) was a native of Fut San and was more well-known in Hong Kong by the name Woo Van Cheuk. He began his Chinese martial arts training at the age of 9 with an acquaintance, a master of Choy Li Fut from the city of Fut San in Guangdong, China, named Chan Ngau-Sing.

At 16 years old he moved to Guangzhou (Canton) for high school and college, eventually he graduated from a Western Medicine Academy sponsored by the Red Cross, one of the first schools in southern China to offer the program, and there he met a Choy Li Fut master, one of the masters of that time with a great deal of Martial Arts knowledge from Southern China, the grandson of the founder of the Choy Li Fut system, Chan Heung, he was Great-Grandmaster Chan Yiu-Chi. Great-Grandmaster Hu spent 20 years of his life studying with Chan Yiu-Chi, becoming one of his most advanced pupils, he, together with Three other pupils, were nicknamed "The Four Kings of Heaven" because of their abilities and their great level of Kung Fu.

In 1945, Dr. Hu Yuen Chou accepted a Russian Boxer's challenge for a full-contact match in Fut San. He was not just representing the Hung Sing Kwoon at that time for the full-contact fight; he actually represented the entire Chinese martial arts community of Fut San in taking this challenge. He won the match during the second round with a TKO. He helped the kung fu artists of Fut San city to gain face and respect for Chinese Martial Arts. Everybody in Fut San knew the name of Woo Van Cheuk in those days.

Besides studying Choy Li Fut, Dr. Hu Yuen Chou also studied other systems of Kung Fu, which increased his knowledge of Chinese Martial Arts. He studied systems like Northern Shaolin, Hung Kuen, Hop Gar, Lung Ying Mor Kiu, Lohan Moon, Gee Yin Moon, Preying Mantis, Hsing-I Chuan and Pakua, etc. In 1929, his first Tai Chi Chuan instructor was Chen Wei-Ming who came to Canton to represent his teacher Yang Cheng-Fu in teaching Yang Family Tai Chi Chuan, After studying with Chen Wei-Ming for nearly 3 years, Hu had the privilege and the good fortune to become a closed-door student of the great Master Yang Cheng-Fu from 1932 to 1934.

While studying Chinese Martial Arts, Great-Grandmaster Hu also studied the many weapons of those systems, the straight-sword or Gim (Jian) being his favorite. In 1927, Hu Yuen-Chou met and studied with General Li Jing-Lin, one of the main experts in Wudang straight-sword of that time. In 1949 just before China turned Communist, he moved to Hong Kong. Later years, Dr. Hu further developed his ability with the straight-sword with Kuo Chi-Feng, companion and Wudang Sword brother of General Li Jing Lin. Both of Hu Yuen Chou's teachers were well-known exponents of the famous Wudang straight-sword system.

For decades, Great-Grandmaster Hu Yuen Chou promoted the Chinese Martial Arts in Canton and Hong Kong, being known inside of Kung Fu circles by the nickname "Mr. Gam Chou" of the Martial Arts (Gam Chou is a special herb used in Chinese herbal medicine mixtures in order to balance them), he was and has been considered one of the last and highest level Grandmasters of Choy Li Fut and Tai Chi Chuan.

Before Hong Kong was handed over to China, Great-Grandmaster Hu and his wife moved to Taiwan. He died on the 26th of August 1997 in Taipei, Taiwan, at the age of 91 years. Today, his teachings continue to live through his most outstanding senior student, Grandmaster Doc-Fai Wong, who has extended his teachings all over the world.


Check out this video footage of Hu Yuen Chou from a training session with Grandmaster Doc-Fai Wong https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iP8Bt-uj46g

You can also see more at www.PlumBlossom.net

Making Time for Reflection

Any workout you have is best closed with a moment of reflection. Look back and recognize progress and the success of adjustments you had made from prior corrections. Note the feeling of consistency of drive and energy you put into your work. Recognize your weaknesses and assess the best way to address and overcome them. Just as your martial arts changes and evolves with each session, so should your practice, to adapt to your various and ever changing needs. Set a plan for your next workout, mark the map ahead of time so you can focus solely on the journey. Though change is expected, remember to keep one important factor routine... reflection.

Measuring Progress

Your own progress is not always easy to see. This becomes increasingly more difficult as you advance in the martial arts and progress is made incrementally while refining skill. The most common way to gauge progress is by observing those in class with you. Unfortunately this is one of the worst ways of recognizing improvement. It is learned as a beginner when you first join a class and look at everyone who is able to perform a basic or technique that you have trouble with. Over the first couple of months through this observation style, you will notice that you are not struggling as much (comparatively) and seem to be catching up as well. However, it is easy to forget that as you become more advanced, the students around you make progress as well thus masking the actual improvement you are accomplishing.

In this day and age, we have access to technology that allows us to record ourselves so that we can actually see with our own eyes, what our martial arts looks like. So take a minute and record yourself on a smartphone or tablet doing the best you can at your level, especially before a test when you have really been focusing on your material. Store it. You will not see much right away other than a few things your instructor corrects you on, but after long enough you can look back into the archives and see that you actually have been improving and with tangible evidence.

In the end, the only person you need to compare yourself to is yourself. Work hard so that you may be better than you were yesterday.

Improving Your Forms Training with Training Forms

When students advance from one ranking level to the next, they are expected to have their forms advance with them as well. Meaning even an advanced level student will test on their beginner forms, and when performed, the beginner forms should appear advanced by execution of technique. This shows that their martial arts altogether has advanced.

Now this is where the importance of "training forms" come in. Since your beginner forms have been with you the longest, and you should know them the best, you should see them in a new light as you move up. They are your training forms. When you receive a new correction, detail, or concept during your lesson do not only try to implement it solely on what you are working on at the time. Go back and apply it to your training forms, that way you can place all effort on the correction/concept rather than trying to remember the next move at the same time. This allows you to make real-time adjustments without the stutters that happen when the mind is preoccupied on sequences.

The benefit will encompass more than just your training forms, but your new stuff and your entire martial arts altogether. So be smart with what you have, train smarter and progress stronger. Mastery is not achieved through first tries, it takes dedicated mental and physical work and rework.