Tag: liu he ba fa

“Kick With Your Fists and Punch With Your Feet”

The title of this blog post is a line from the 2019 dark comedy film The Art of Self-Defense. It’s a pretty good movie, and I recommend it if you like dark comedies. In the movie, the line is meant to be serious advice, but to most viewers it will come across as funny because of the seeming absurdity of it. However, if you understand body mechanics, you’ll know that the concept is actually spot on.

Although kicking with your fists and punching with your feet might seem counterintuitive at first (especially when it comes to kicking), therein lies the key to why the concept works: To strike with real power, you need to focus on the “counter” aspect of the motion/mechanics. Note that this concept is just one of the many principles of counter motion/mechanics that should be applied when striking. But it’s a very powerful one because you’ll let the physics of counterbalance, counterforce, and, depending on the mechanics, counter torque work for you instead of against you, enabling you to deliver a heavier, more accurate strike.

If you don’t believe me, keep your hands at your side and deliver a kick, any kick, on a punching bag or, even better, to a striking pad held by a partner (that way you can get feedback from the receiving end). Then do it by allowing yourself to engage your hands in whichever way you normally would. Unless your normal body mechanics are very off, I’d bet that when you engaged your hands, you had a noticeably more powerful kick. (You can also try the same experiment with a punch, though it’s harder not to engage the feet at all because most punches are thrown while standing up. You could sit and let your feet dangle while throwing a punch. And then do the same punch while standing up.)

So, why does the concept of kicking with your fists and punching with your feet work? Well, probably the most obvious advantage is that it gives you better balance. And you’ll likely notice that it allows you to get more of your body behind your strike. Those two things alone will give you a dramatic increase in power. But they’re just the beginning. They come from an elementary and mostly passive use of counter mechanics. However, once kicking with your fists and punching with your feet become second nature to you, your nervous system will have undergone a rewiring that will allow you to go even deeper. Although getting to this depth can take time, it’s well worth the effort and patience because then you can start to actively use counter mechanics to increase your power even more by more actively engaging your hips (kwa).

The concept of kicking with your fists and punching with your feet is not unique to water boxing (Liuhebafa). However, water boxing’s principle that when one thing moves, all things move (and that when one thing stops, all things stop) is actually one of the big reasons I stumbled on the concept and made sense of it. For water boxers, the joints should move together simultaneously or very close to simultaneously. I was practicing throwing sidekicks (which are not part of water boxing’s primary curriculum) on a heavy bag when I observed that my kicks were lacking real power. At first I couldn’t figure it out. Then I realized that one of the problems might be that I was violating water boxing’s principle of all joints moving together when I kicked. So I focused on getting my joints to move together while kicking.

In the beginning it felt odd to try to engage all my joints while kicking, especially because the legs are in general much heavier and stronger than the arms. But it soon became clear that a powerful, heavy sidekick is not in the feet/legs but in the hands/arms. Although you may come to this epiphany through a different route than I did, I think you’ll find that “kick with your fists and punch with your feet” is more than just a funny line from a movie—it’s one of the main ways to truly deliver a heavy strike.

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.

Why I Train on the Heavy Bag

Working out on a heavy bag can yield great results.

Although I’m more of a traditional martial artist than a professional fighter, I find hitting the heavy bag to be one of the best ways to train water boxing. It’s a great workout—and a reality check. Just like sparring with an opponent who is trying to hit you back or grapple you into submission, the heavy bag will force you to think about your art in a different way. I think it can help improve your form (as in your mechanics) and your forms (as in your understanding of Zhu Ji).

One thing I like to do is to focus on a certain strike from a form, work that strike on the bag, and then use that experience to figure out how to improve my mechanics. Obviously, there’s a big difference between hitting the air and hitting a 100-pound bag, especially one swinging toward you or braced by a partner. Sometimes I’m pleasantly surprised by how well a strike works on the bag—and other times, I’m disappointed. Either way, I find I learn something. When possible, I then incorporate what I’ve learned back into the strike when I practice the form.

I also like to use the heavy bag to figure out how to put different strikes together in a meaningful way. Although some forms have useful combinations of strikes built in, there are many combinations you can put together that you will not find in any form. However, hitting something solid with weight—just like sparring against a noncompliant opponent—will also make you appreciate the potential limitations of a dozen lightning fast punches in a row, if only because hitting the heavy bag in succession like that requires a decent amount of stamina.

As a traditional martial artist, I find that one of the biggest weaknesses in how we sometimes train is that it can make our footwork lousy or impractical. Although doing forms can teach you a lot, working out on the heavy bag teaches you about distance, space, and movement (assuming, of course, you are not just standing in one spot all the time). Like a western boxer, I like to move around the bag. Because water boxing has its own footwork and combat theory, I might look different than Muhammad Ali and Manny Pacquiao—but I still move.

In a previous post, I discussed how I used untraditional training methods like taking video to improve. I find that taking video of my bag workout sessions has really helped me because I can see for myself what I can do better. (Tip: Try taking video from different angles.)

Naturally, working out on the heavy bag has its risks and limitations. You could get hurt (I suggest starting very light, especially if the bag is firm or very heavy, until you’re conditioned). You might get sloppy and complacent because the bag doesn’t hit you back. You could become obsessed with just hitting and ultimately end up one dimensional. You run the risk of overestimating your striking power. (Note: You might also underestimate your striking power. You have to know how to gauge what is and isn’t a powerful strike on a bag and on a real person. Just because the bag doesn’t swing much doesn’t mean you lack power. In fact, the bag might not swing much because you’re actually very powerful!)

So long as you keep everything in perspective, I say go whack the heavy bag. At the very least, you’ll get a good workout. At the most, you’ll see your form, forms, and force improve heavily!

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.

Your Goal Should Be to Beat Your Teacher

“Your goal should be to be better than me.” I’ll never forget how shocked I was when Sifu Paul Roberts told me this. I had just started learning from him and we were casually chatting about his teachers’ skills as well as recounting stories of past martial arts legends. When he asked what my goal in training with him was, I told him that I wanted to get good. I had never considered beating him (or any or my previous teachers) as a goal. It seemed not only unthinkable but also, well, disrespectful. Who the hell was I to think that I could surpass my sifu?

In fact, I had never heard of teachers encouraging their students to strive to be better than they are. If anything, it was usually just the opposite, with teachers cultivating a culture/environment in which they (and their own teachers) were supreme authority figures, almost god-like, and their skills unbeatable to the point of being mythical. But all of a sudden, here was Sifu Roberts not just encouraging but practically demanding that I strive to be better than he is. It was jolting, but I realized a little later that I needed to be jolted.

From what I’ve seen, martial arts tend to perpetuate deification more than most endeavors. I think there are several reasons for this, including the Asian culture in general, the people/personalities that martial arts tend to attract in both teachers and students, and the business/economic advantages for a school in setting unattainable (or vague) goals.

But whatever the reasons, deification is detrimental for the individual and for the art because it prevents both from progressing. That was Sifu Roberts’ (and that is now my) main reason for encouraging students to make their ultimate goal beating the teacher—we want the art and our students to progress.

Think about how far technology has progressed because Bill Gates and Steve Jobs made it their goal to improve on what was then considered “high-tech.” Although they surely respected their professors and the tech leaders of the time, they also must have believed that they could in some way go beyond these individuals. Had Gates and Jobs instead deified them, you might very well be reading this blog post in the form of a printed monthly newsletter instead of on your smartphone or tablet.

Although I expect my students to strictly follow my methods (at least for a while, in order to understand and apply the principles) and to respect me (even when they do surpass me), I remind them that if I’m a good teacher, my goals should be to teach them to beat me, and that if they’re good students, their goal should be to learn to beat me. When they do beat me, they and the art will have been taken to ever higher levels.

So now you may be asking yourself if I’ve surpassed Sifu Roberts. It’s a good question and one that you can answer if you come train with us. Hope to see you soon.