Tag: grant ching water boxing association

Push It

Instructor Ken Wildner catches me while playing a more freestyle version of push hands.

I recently had the pleasure of pushing hands with instructor Ken Wildner of the Tampa Bay Martial Arts Group, who contacted me earlier to see if I was interested in sharing and exchanging. Ken has a background in water boxing (from different lineages than mine). After seeing some of the vids of his group, including this one, I was impressed with how they approached push hands in a variety of ways, from fixed step to almost anything goes, so I invited him to one of my classes so that my students could also benefit from his knowledge and experience.

Ken didn’t disappoint. He’s highly skilled in the chess game of push hands, and he’s a good guy. If you click on the link above (or here), you can see raw, unedited footage of Ken and me engaging in a fairly freestyle version of push hands. I tasted the ground at least a couple times during our play—but still had a hell of a lot of fun getting out of my comfort zone. (Note: You’ll see my wife, a hung gar instructor, first in the video. Although she’s never trained push hands, she catches on very quickly and is gung ho about almost all things gung fu.)

Now you might wonder why I’d post a video where I, as an instructor, end up on my ass. After all, in the world of traditional Chinese martial arts, it seems like 99.9% of vids are of instructors, well, looking good and saving face, especially in front of their students. However, I think this is often achieved because instructors stick only to their own styles and schools, closing themselves (and their students) off, which can actually hurt the students and the arts more than it helps them. Many, many instructors only do and show stuff that makes them look good—or, hell, look practically invincible—in order to build themselves up.

It was clear to me from watching the vids of Ken and his group that this wasn’t their modus operandi and that “win” or “lose,” everybody was gaining something in the process. This is the same approach I myself follow, including with my students, which is why I invited Ken to class in the first place and why I’ve posted the vid. Whether you’re a student or instructor, you should push yourself, even if it means you end up on your ass. There’s no shame in that if you’ve gained something. In general, I’d rather lose face than lose an opportunity to learn something that makes me better.

Needless to say, we had a blast with Ken and are looking forward to the next time he’s in town. If you’re ever in Tampa Bay, I highly suggest you reach out to Ken to check out his group. Whenever you have the opportunity to get out of your comfort zone (in a way that’s safe, of course), I say to go ahead and just do—or push—it.

Can You Bullseye a Womp Rat?

“It’s not impossible. I used to bullseye womp rats in my T-16 back home, they’re not much bigger than two meters.”—Luke Skywalker

If you’ve seen Star Wars (Episode IV – A New Hope), you’ll probably remember that Luke Skywalker saved the day and the galaxy by firing torpedoes from his X-wing space fighter into the exhaust port of the Death Star, a moon-sized battle station with enough firepower to destroy a planet. This was considered practically impossible because of how narrow the approach was, how small the exhaust port was, and how fast the fighter craft would be approaching—not to mention that there would be resistance from the enemy.

This scenario got me thinking: In “no-holds-barred” type fights, is the reason why strikers have historically done poorly against grapplers because they’re essentially trying to bullseye a womp rat? (For the sake of this discussion, let’s define strikers as those relying primarily on punches and kicks and grapplers as those relying primarily on throws or on shooting in followed by submissions and chokes.)

Sure, at the highest levels of striking and grappling, both can work and be devastating. No doubt that striking with adequate force to a vulnerable area can be a showstopper. And no doubt putting someone in a guillotine with adequate constriction around the neck can also be lights out. The question is which of those against a moving, non-compliant, resisting, and perhaps even aggressive opponent is more likely to work.

In my opinion, in a situation where both opponents square off beforehand (e.g., in a UFC competition), if you rely primarily on striking, you’d better be Luke Skywalker and able to bullseye a womp rat to stop even a decent grappler. Although there are many vital areas and pressure points all over the body that a striker can target, a grappler’s targets are by comparison largely, well, large (e.g., the legs for a takedown) and arguably easier to get to, requiring less precision and coordination than a punch or a kick. Sure, a well-placed knee to the head or elbow to the back of the neck can stop someone shooting in for a double-leg takedown. But there’s a reason why the sprawl is generally more effective against someone shooting in: executing the knee and the elbow with proper timing and distance are like, well, bullseyeing a womp rat. And if you don’t bullseye the womp rat, the grappler’s going to be all over you.

So, what to do if you’re a striker? Well, one obvious solution would be to practice bullseyeing womp rats more. By increasing your precision and speed against a decent grappler at full speed, you increase your chances of being able to use it in a realistic situation. But in my experience there’s a big problem with this solution: finding a person who’s willing to be kneed or elbowed like that. When executed perfectly (especially if you try something like hitting a person in the trachea when they shoot in), striking can be very dangerous—and that makes it problematic in training. Unfortunately, being unable to train at full speed makes using these strikes in real combat much more difficult.

Another, probably better solution is to work some grappling into your game. Both standup and ground grappling will almost certainly occur naturally in any situation that is not for some reason limited to striking. In fact, even in western boxing, fighters will clinch, sometimes throwing the opponent away to make space or staying in the clinch and getting off short, powerful body strikes. And I don’t disagree with grapplers who say that most street fights go to the ground (I just disagree with a percentage like 90%—I’m not sure it’s quite that high).

A third way to make striking potentially more effective is to make your strikes heavier. That way, even if you miss your intended target the size of a quarter, you might at least do some damage to the area you do hit, perhaps jolting your opponent enough to then allow you to hit your intended target. So, if you’re primarily a striker, ask yourself if, like Luke, you can bullseye a womp rat when the entire galaxy’s fate rests on it. If not, consider practicing on more (and different) womp rats/partners, consider working in some grappling to your skill set, or consider making your strikes heavier. But whatever you do, don’t join the dark side.

Introduction to Water Boxing, Part 6

By practicing the five old fists of Xingyi Chuan, we can often develop the proper mechanics of certain movements/forces in Zhu Ji more quickly.

In part 6 of my series of videos introducing water boxing, we look at how Xingyi Chuan fits into our approach. In addition to training Zhu Ji, we train the five old fists (beng chuan, zhuan chuan, pi chuan, pao chuan, and heng chuan) to focus on mechanics. When learning a form, it can sometimes be difficult to focus on the proper mechanics for a particular movement (or force or posture) because you’re often learning several movements and the transitions between those movements–all at the same time (sort of like a martial arts version of multi-tasking). Because a Xingyi fist like zhuan chuan has the same (or at least very similar) mechanics as some of the movements in the form, by practicing it as a drill we can concentrate solely on those mechanics and, ultimately, put those mechanics into the form. There’s a lot to learn from the mechanics of the five old fists, but perhaps the most important concept to get out of it in the beginning is yin/yang theory, including reprogramming your nervous system to think with and about the other side/half of your body, ultimately enabling the other side/half to be engaged naturally. You can also take this approach by just focusing on one movement in the form and drilling it over and over again.

Cobra Kai Offers a Real Lesson in Fighting (Hint: It’s a Hit!)

My wife and I are huge fans of Cobra Kai, the Netflix series based on The Karate Kid movies, and we can’t wait until the third season is out. Even though we just recently binge watched the first two seasons, we’ve already started re-watching episodes because, well, they’re so good. It might take you a couple episodes to really get hooked, but once you get to Episode 3 or 4, I think you’ll find yourself becoming a fan, too. The writing is excellent; the series pays proper homage to the movies but also has twists, depth, and surprising gravity that maybe surpass what the movies had.

SPOILER ALERT. Although I’m not really giving anything away regarding the plot, I figured I’d warn you just in case. What I’m about to talk about happens in Episode 7 of the first season.

In this episode, Sensei Johnny Lawrence requires that every student gets punched in the face in order to learn to stop flinching. Although learning not to flinch is arguably an important lesson, I think the more important one is simply getting hit hard. I don’t necessarily think you need to get a bloody nose, lose a tooth, have a rib broken, or be knocked unconscious, but getting hit hard enough to respect and expect what your opponent can do to you is one aspect of training that I think many traditional martial artists overlook. It’s also a big reason why I think Chinese MMA fighter Xu Xiaodong has dominated traditional martial artists—he can take a punch. (You could, however, argue the punches he was taking were weak or ineffective to begin with, but that’s a topic for another blog post.)

Two boxers, one famous and one fictional, get it (and got hit). Mike Tyson once said, “Everyone has a plan ’till they get punched in the mouth.” And Rocky Balboa said, “But it ain’t about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward; how much you can take and keep moving forward.”

Now you might interpret those quotes a little differently than I do. But I think we’d agree that the essence of both is that if you want to succeed in fighting (or in life), you’d better prepare yourself mentally and physically for getting hit—so that you can hit back. Some might disagree with me, but I don’t believe anyone is untouchable. (I’ve heard of a few untouchable masters over the years, but I wonder what would happen if you put all those untouchable masters together to fight. Who would win?)

So unless you’re physically so frail that getting hit poses a serious danger to your health (or if you can’t trust the person hitting you to exercise restraint), I suggest getting hit every now and then. In fact, when I started dating my wife, I told her to hit me so that I could feel how powerful she is. I wanted her to see that I could take a hit. But I’m not stupid, so I also told her not to give me full power. She happily delivered a roundhouse kick to my thigh because that is one of her signature weapons. Thankfully she gave me only about a third of her full power. When she asked how it felt, I smiled, doing my best not to wince from the pain, and told her she was good. I’d like to think she spent the week until our next date really impressed by how tough I was, but I know for sure I spent that week massaging out the bruised knot on the side of my thigh and thinking that if I ended up with her, we’d never fight because I’d never want to get hit like that with her full power. We’ve been married for a year now, and I can happily say I’ve never felt her full power.

I’m convinced you’ll learn something from getting hit, too. In fact, in all seriousness, there are actually other very good reasons to get hit in training, but I’ll save those for another blog post. Now go out and get hit!

Should You Learn One Style or Many?

Before I came to Liuhebafa, I was training in Bak Mei. I loved it—in fact, at the time it was all I wanted to learn. But then my teacher told me he wouldn’t teach me more Bak Mei until I learned Liuhebafa. Among other things, he told me learning Liuhebafa would make my Bak Mei better. It didn’t make sense at the time, but now it does. Although it depends on your goals and your resources, following are some of the reasons why I think learning more than one style will make you better:

  • To compare and to contrast can yield great results in your personal development and in the understanding of your style(s). You may understand fast better if you understand slow. You may see circles where you used to see lines. You may feel powerless when you’re actually very powerful.
  • Unless you’re only expecting to fight people from your style, you better know what other styles do. This is one of the big reasons why traditional martial artists have often fared poorly in freestyle bouts with MMA fighters. If you think your style has it all, I think you’re going to be very surprised when someone hits you with great force from an angle you never expected or gets out of your rear naked choke by slightly adjusting their alignment in an imperceptible way.
  • The way I’ve learned traditional Chinese martial arts, the different styles represent different methods/types of power generation. Sometimes these methods/types contradict each other. But sometimes they can actually complement each other. This is probably the primary reason my teacher told me Liuhebafa would make my Bak Mei better.
  • You’ll engage with new people who likely have different perspectives and different attributes. You’ll see both the strengths and the weaknesses of your style—if you keep an open mind (see the last bullet).
  • By learning something new, you keep yourself open. And vice versa. This may be the biggest reason to learn more than one style. Think about it this way: if your style’s founder hadn’t been open-minded, you wouldn’t be learning that style right now.

So you might be asking yourself why, as a Liuhebafa teacher, I’m advocating learning different styles. The answer, it turns out, is a little complex: I myself continue to train in other styles, and I even sometimes teach them to my students (for very specific purposes). I also learn about other styles from my students, who have come from backgrounds such as tai chi, Burmese Bando, judo, kung fu, aikido, and kendo. I exchange ideas, occasionally fists and feet, and the rare chokehold with my wife (who trains in Hung Gar and Choy Lay Fut). Also, when I can, I try to push hands and play with people from different styles—and even with non–martial-artists, who sometimes surprise me.

If you have the time and resources and you want to get good overall, my advice would be to find one style that works best for your mind, body, and soul and then specialize in it, making it your primary style, while continuing to learn other styles, whether casually or formally. You may end up sticking with your primary style your entire life—or, like me, you may someday have a new primary style that fits you better than your previous one. Either way, I think you’ll find that staying open and learning new things will make you better. That is what I’ve found has worked best for me. It’s also why the way I teach and train Liuhebafa is different from many other teachers.

Kung Fu First Dance: Perspective and Gratitude

During these unprecedented times, I think it’s more important than ever that we keep our training in perspective and are thankful for everything that it has given us.

A hundred years ago, we probably would have trained mostly for martial purposes. Today, with most of the world being largely safer and more stable, many of us train for other reasons as well.

When I started training in the martial arts more than 30 years ago, I just wanted to be like Bruce Lee. I could never have imagined that because of my training I would ultimately meet the kung fu girl of my dreams.

In October 2019, I married that kung fu girl—and I got to do a kung fu first dance with her that was magical. Neither she nor the dance would have been possible without my training.

Who would have guessed that my martial art would turn into a marital art? So, the next time you train, be thankful for all the ways your art has enriched your life.

The Killer Punch—Definitely Not a Myth but Maybe Misunderstood

Sadly, I was reminded that the killer punch is very much a real thing when I saw news articles about a sports fan in my city who is fighting for his life after being struck. According to at least one article, he was hit just once. A quick Google search finds that one-punch deaths have occurred all over the world, including in Mobile, Alabama; New York City; Nottingham, England; and Vancouver, Canada.

So what have these one-punch killers mastered that makes them so deadly? Are they professional fighters or expert martial artists who train in iron palm or who know some secret technique? Although I can’t say for sure, I suspect that most are not. Part of the reason is that if the puncher were a professional fighter or expert martial artist, that fact would very likely come out in the media—it makes for a more interesting story, for sure. Also, from a legal standpoint it could very well change the nature/severity of the charges against the puncher. (On a side note, although it’s a myth that professional fighters and expert martial artists in the United States must register their hands as deadly weapons, it appears to be possible [although not required] to register them as such in Guam.)

How is it, then, that untrained people can kill with a single punch? Simple—it’s rarely the punch itself that is responsible for the death. Although it is possible for a single punch by itself to cause fatal injury to the brain or to induce a person to stop breathing, it’s usually when the punch causes a person to fall backwards and hit their head on a very unforgiving surface, especially pavement, that people die. Note that one-punch deaths rarely occur in combat-sport events: It’s not just that the combatants are tough and well trained. The events are also held on relatively forgiving surfaces to prevent fatal incidents.

With all due respect to martial artists skilled enough to legitimately break coconuts, bricks, boards, and other objects, that skill is unlikely to translate into a killer punch. Those objects are almost always immobilized against movement in the person’s line of force, making it difficult for the object to absorb the impact of the strike and thus making it easier (though maybe not easy) for the object to be broken. The skull and neck of a standing opponent, on the other hand, are not immobilized. And they do a remarkably good job of absorbing blows when an opponent is upright. This is especially true when the head is moved from front to back and, probably to a lesser extent, when moved from side to side.

I don’t doubt that a martial artist who can break coconuts or other hard objects could fracture the back of an opponent’s skull if the person were lying on the ground so that they couldn’t move their head. But it’s hard to get a person to lie still like that unless they’re unconscious (for example, if you’ve choked them out). In that case, though, you’ve pretty much already won the fight.

Of course there are definitely ways to help make a punch more lethal. For example, if a punch knocks the opponent out cold so that they’re unconscious on the way to the ground, the opponent can’t change their posture to better absorb the impact (e.g., tucking their chin, among other things, to prevent or at least minimize the back of their skull from contacting the hard ground and causing a traumatic brain injury). But as we can see from Western boxing matches, most fighters don’t die even when they’re out cold before they hit the canvas—mostly because they’re not hitting pavement.

So yes, the killer punch is real. And once I understood how it works, I also realized that if my opponent is at risk of hitting their head on the pavement, I would be, too—which is why I do my best to avoid getting into fights on the street.

Why I Prefer Being “Heavy” Over Being Fast

When I was younger, I was obsessed with speed. I was a huge fan of the blinding-fast Bruce Lee as well as of those kung fu movies with cool wind-like sound effects for punches and kicks. More than anything, I wanted to be fast. And that was how I thought and trained for probably 20 years.

But around 10 years ago, I started to rethink the importance of speed in unarmed combat. Note that when I say “speed,” I mean the velocity of the movement (not reaction time). And when I say “mass,” I mean the mass behind the movement, not a person’s mass in general (although sometimes a person’s mass in general can also be an overwhelming advantage).

I now prefer being “heavy” as compared with being fast. Don’t get me wrong: I know you must have speed and mass (and other things, too) to be effective. But consider the following two options: (1) having average speed and above-average mass, and (2) having above-average speed and average mass. All other things being equal, which would you take? Unless I knew beforehand that my opponent was especially vulnerable to speed, I’d take the first option—average speed and above-average mass. But why?

First, I think back on my own fights. (For context, most of my fight experience has been in what would be best described as schoolyard fights. Also, I am not including sparring during training as fighting.) In the maybe six or seven fights—I know it’s not much experience, but it is my experience—I’ve had in my lifetime, in only one did I basically give up. And the reason why was because the guy hit me with such heavy blows—on my body—that I felt like I was, well, getting the hell knocked out of me every time he made contact. Basically I felt like I was being hit with a hammer. Interestingly, I don’t think this guy, who was a classmate in high school, had ever had any formal combat training. He just naturally hit with his whole body.

In all my other fights, which in some cases included guys formally trained in a variety of arts, I got hit (including on the head), tripped, and taken down, but I never felt that I was in serious trouble. In fact, in some cases getting hit and even bloodied just pissed me off even more. But when I got hit with that heavy blow from my classmate, I was done—physically and psychologically.

Also, based on my experience on both the giving and the receiving end of martial contact (e.g., a punch, a block, or a grappling maneuver), I find that what gets the recipient’s “respect” the most is when they get hit harder or controlled easier than they expected. Put another way: speed may get the attention of spectators, but a heavy blow will get the attention of your opponent.

Now let’s look at combat sports including boxing, modern MMA, wrestling, judo, etc. Except for the old-school MMA fights back in the 90s and “underground” competitions, notice that all combat sports have weight divisions—but that that there’s no such thing as speed divisions. Why divide competitors into weight classes instead of speed classes? Because whether it’s a striking art or a grappling art or something in between, a big difference in weight between participants is generally considered unfair (and more dangerous) to the lighter competitor. Who would you take the majority of the time in these some-of-the-greatest-of-all-time bouts in boxing, MMA, and freestyle wrestling, respectively: Heavyweight Muhammad Ali versus welterweight Sugar Ray Robinson? Heavyweight Fedor Emelianenko versus middleweight Georges St. Pierre? Super heavyweight Aleksandr Medved versus bantamweight Yojiro Uetake?

I know some people will say that in real-life self-defense situations, speed plays a much bigger role because all it takes is a relatively light hit to the eyes or groin or windpipe to maim or kill. I won’t completely disagree with this—just press on your own windpipe with your finger to see how fragile the area is. But there is a reason why women and children, who are generally smaller and weaker (but can often flail their arms with a good amount of speed), have self-defense classes geared specifically for them, while men, who are generally heavier (and stronger), do not.

I would also add that although it is true that for vulnerable areas and pressure points you only need a modest amount of force, I find it also true that hitting those targets on a moving, reacting opponent can be challenging. Being in a stressful situation can reduce your fine motor skills, making you less accurate. And when we’re talking about vulnerable areas and pressure points, you must be not only fast but also accurate. Don’t believe me? Try angling your finger while pressing on your windpipe and note how just a few degrees of deviation from pressing directly against the windpipe make a substantial difference in the pressure, pain, and ultimately the efficacy.

Thus, I train and teach with an emphasis on being heavy because I think it’s a heavy blow that hurts an opponent more physically and psychologically. And it turns out I can even go back to the blinding-fast Bruce Lee to support my argument. About a year ago, I came across a YouTube video in which James DeMile, one of Lee’s more well-known students, said that when he first met Lee, he was thoroughly impressed at how fast Lee was. Lee, he said, seemed to punch like 50 times a second—but they felt like bee stings and didn’t necessarily keep him from coming forward and continuing to fight. He noted that Lee himself quickly realized that blinding speed might not be enough to stop an opponent in a fight, so Lee began working with his students to figure out ways to add mass to the equation. I only wish I had been as fast as Lee in realizing that.

“Master” Versus “Teacher”

In traditional martial arts, the terms “master” and “teacher” are usually used interchangeably. But for the sake of this post, I make the following distinction:

  • A master is someone whose own martial skill level is (or was) high
  • A teacher is someone who has students whose martial skill level is high because of him/her

This is the same distinction that is often made in sports: a (good) player versus a (good) coach. Good players don’t necessarily make good coaches. And good coaches weren’t necessarily good players. The skills and methods to be a good player or master are not exactly the same as those to be a good coach or teacher.

Note that I emphasized above that a teacher is someone whose students are good because of him/her. Why the emphasis? Because sometimes students (of a bad teacher) were already good from having studied with a different (and good) teacher. And sometimes students become good despite having a bad teacher (note that this is not the same as students becoming better than their teacher, which I’ll discuss in another post). And then, of course, some people are just freaks/naturals and would be good almost no matter what.

So in the world of martial arts, a master has his/her own martial skill. And a teacher might have his/her own martial skill, but for sure his/her students (depending on their own abilities and other factors) should have martial skill from having studied with him/her.

Turns out some people are masters, while others are teachers. And occasionally—but not that often—people are both. Unfortunately, quite a few are neither.

So what’s most important for you to find? A master? A teacher? Both? (More on this in an upcoming post.)