While increasing or maintaining muscle mass is important, it’s only a portion of cultivating health. The motions of Kung Fu that keep the body nimble, flexible, and moving, also improve circulation around the internal organs, which is crucial for long term vitality. New found vitality is found even in early stages of training

The Secrets of Combat – Depth, not Width

The MMA fad appeals to men who want a wide range of combat methods, from different arts, synthesized into a blend. This feeds into the desires of a generation who is used to getting what they want right now. As we grow wiser, we learn that a width of knowledge is not as valuable as a depth of knowledge. There is a massive difference between skimming many styles of martial art, and getting to the depths of just one; just like many minds are now training to hop from one social media app to another for compounding dopamine hits, it is thought if we hop from one style to the next, we might accumulate more knowledge. The truth is, the most advanced knowledge, regardless of the art, is not laying at the top ready to be skimmed of by a practitioner passing through, rather it is buried in long term study.

This is like the difference between googling for answers on a topic vs reading an in-depth study or book on a topic. You can tell when you are talking to someone on a subject, if they’ve simply googled and memorized talking points, or if they have an actual in-depth understanding. It is the depth, not width where one can find life changing wisdom.

As we mature, we start to understand this. This is why you won’t see many 20 year olds in our adult classes. Our adult male student body consist of men in their 40s, 50s, and 60s who have outgrown the easy-answers trend and are ready to learn something with depth. Because of that, they learn the secrets of combat not otherwise available to most younger people.

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Stop being Flustered and Busy, Start Being Focused and Effective

You need more on your plate like you need another hole in the head.

A life of effectiveness, not business

While everyone is caught up in a life of busyness, in Holistic Kung Fu, the practitioner instead learns to live a life of effectiveness, being less busy, yet accomplishing more, in their work, in their relationships, and in their hobbies. I want to share a story with you of how I learned the difference from my teacher, Grand Master Philipman Chow, of the Wong Hon Fun clan, and Chin Woo Academy. If you’ll indulge me, it will be worth it:

Over a decade and a half ago, I was in what we call “Kung Fu Lala land”. I had finally found a Grand Master to directly train under.

I was overdue for a new teacher to push training to new heights and I finally found him.

I was particularly driven to put in 300km of travel once a week to study with him because this man was a master from Hong Kong.

I had learned and understood that masters coming out of Hong Kong from the 50s and 60s were kind of a different breed. They typically weren’t teaching modern wushu. They weren’t interested in teaching anything fancy, anything flamboyant, or anything for competition. They were about old school functional Kung fu.

This was true of Grand Master Philipman Chow. His motto was: simple; useful Meaning, if it wasn’t simple, it probably

had “no use”.

His approach to applying Praying Mantis Kung Fu in self-defence was direct and to the point, which ultimately made it effective. One principle that he often repeated was “shake the foundation”. This one is my favourite because it applies to much of life. It was also one of the hardest lessons to learn for me, physically, and philosophically.

 Grandmaster Chow was also a pretty sharp business man in his day as well, which I didn’t know when I first met him, but came to understand after knowing him for years.

He successfully operated business in trading weird and wacky ingredients for Chinese medicine. This made him a great mentor for both martial arts, and the rest of life, teaching a holistic lifestyle through his example, since, as it has been said, “how you do one thing is how you do anything”.

I came to understand Shaking the Foundation was a fundamental principle for life.

Shaking the foundation was all about striking hard. If you are going to hit, don’t hit and hope that your attacker will get discouraged by the hit and give up. Don’t hope he will acknowledge the point, bow out and leave you alone. That doesn’t happen in real life. You must hit hard enough to break the opponent’s balance, to disrupt their stance and position.

Shake the foundation is important in Praying Mantis Kung Fu because if you break the person’s balance, they will not be able to hit you back with any rooting. Likewise, if you hit them without a root of your own, it will likely do nothing, other than maybe hurt their feelings. In live combat, you have to count on probably getting hit at some point.

When shaking the foundation, your aim is to keep the opponent from having a root, so if and when they do hit you, it won’t have enough power to knock you out or knock you down. When adrenaline is surging through your body, the only hits that count are the ones that knock you unconscious, or knock you off balance. You won’t even feel or remember the ones that don’t shake your foundation; they’ll be of little consequence.

I remember being taught application after form training one day (aka-routine, pattern, or kata). By application I mean how the artistic movements of martial art actually work, combatively. I was so happy with myself that I took my time, learned the move correctly, and practiced it on my own so many times until it looked exactly (or so I thought) like the way Sifu did it.

While other students were chit chatting, I was outside of the small club, in the bitter cold repeating it again and again. Shortly after, I went inside to apply the technique I had just learned and practiced.

I had a training partner throw a punch at me and my goal was to knock their attack down with my forearm, driving it down toward the ground. This would open up the opponent’s chin for a split second for a quick counter punch.

My partner for that day, being about 15 years my senior (in training years), had notorious arms of steel after many years of conditioning them, so when he punched, my downward chop did nothing, barely moved him, so his punch got in with no problem. “No,”, Sifu said to me “you still have not shaken the foundation.” This phrase will be permanently burned into my brain, so I will never forget it. “Shake the foundation”.

Perhaps it stuck with me because of how embarrassed I was for utterly failing at it, especially after practicing it for so long and thinking that I had it because it “looked” perfect. Aside from what it “looked” like, the technique did nothing, and was, therefore, useless. “You still have not shaken the foundation.” Sifu repeated and walked over to take my spot.

He motioned for my training partner to throw the same punch at him. The 78 (+/-) year old, 5’5” man from Hong Kong, weighing in at about 145lbs, replied to the punch with a quick downward chop with his forearm, which dropped my partner’s steel arm down, directly toward the ground with ease. It looked so easy for him, even though I was sure I did the same motion; or so it looked.

 The only visible difference was it looked like Sifu was putting in even LESS EFFORT (not more) than I was, despite the fact that his result was much greater. “Here” Sifu said to me, motioning me to throw a punch at him the same way so I could feel the effect of the block, since only then would I understand.

I threw the punch at him, to which he replied with the same downward chop I was expecting. What was not expected was the searing pain that shot through my entire arm as it went limp toward the floor, instantly rendered useless until I could rub the feeling back into it.

That was the day I truly understood what shake the foundation meant on a philosophical level. It didn’t matter if it looked correct, it only mattered what it did. I would later use this principal to prove successful in my business and life. Shake the foundation taught me the difference between activity and result.

The activity; the technique I practiced, was what I put a lot of time and practice into, I was proud of it, but when it came time to put it to use, it was meaningless, because the result was meaningless.

Sifu didn’t care what I made the technique look like, he only cared if it worked; he cared about the result. If I ever had to use it to defend myself, the look of it wouldn’t save me, only the effectiveness of it would.

Gladly, on that day, I wasn’t stupid enough to say “but I did the technique just the way you showed me, and it didn’t work.” I had made that juvenile mistake before, just like many of us do in other areas of life, trying to shift accountability somewhere else, anywhere else, other than on ourselves.

Too often in life we try to justify excuses and validate them because of our activity, but we don’t take accountability for

the result. In combat, if you lose, it doesn’t matter if you hit the opponent or not, what matters is whether or not the desired result was achieved.

Being successful in any area of life requires accountability.

Telling your boss or your customer “Well, I did what was asked of me, it’s not my fault it didn’t work.” might buy you sympathy, but it won’t buy you results. If we want to be successful in any endeavour, we need to stop getting hung up on what activity we’re doing and instead focus honestly on what results we’re getting.

We need to stop wearing “busy” as a badge of honour. It’s not.

Being effective is.

Being busy is opening up your laptop and responding to all your unread emails from the past 2 weeks, and taking 3 hours to do it, instead of making that one very important call you’re supposed to make, because you’re afraid of being rejected.

Effective is making that call first thing in the morning, and then getting the desired result, and then going to get a massage and brunch, ignoring the emails that can wait, because you already did the most productive, result-producing task for the day.

Being effective is spending 10 to 20 minutes in the morning quiet and alone, rewriting your major goals. This will help you regain focus.

This is more productive, and more effective than spending the day running busily around putting out every little fire, jumping at every dog that barks, and not actually taking any action on your major goals that day.

This will bring you the level of freedom, clarity, and purpose you yearn for. You’re capable of so much more, and you deserve so much more.

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