Anyone who had anything to do with the highly successful MAF festival last year will have had contact with Kwoklyn Wan.  He was everywhere at the event, from the gate at the entrance to making sure that every exhibitor had the opportunity to have their photo taken with his famous fashion guru brother Gok Wan.  What started off as a local ‘fairground’ fun exhibition turned into a ‘happening’ with people from everywhere swapping techniques and telephone numbers in a fun filled, friendly atmosphere.

Running a successful kwoon with 700 members in the middle of Leicester and successfully teaching JKD both here and in America with some of the world’s best instructors, this larger than life character is beginning to take the martial arts world by storm.  Kwoklyn and his partner Andy took the time to visit me at my Dojo for a photo shoot and chat…..

SR  Hi Kwoklyn, how did you get involved in the Martial Arts?

KW  I started in 1977 at 4 years old, my Dad is Chinese from Hong Kong and my Mum is from Southampton in England.  So even as a small child, my uncles were forever coming over and practicing their martial arts in my house and so it was always in my environment.  My parents owned a restaurant in Leicester and the Secular Hall was only 2 minutes down the road, they enlisted me into the Shotokan Karate club there run by Anthony Conroy.  I was so young, all I remember is my Mum taking me there on the bus and having Kentucky Fried Chicken afterwards!

SR  Tell the readers a little bit more about your uncles..

KW  I remember them visiting and training in various styles and under various names, sometimes Kung Fu, Wing Chun and sometimes Chinese Boxing.  I remember them drilling their strikes on the hessian rice sack, teaching me various moves and demonstrating the one-inch punch on me!  It’s been like that for the last 30 years!

SR  How long did you do the Shotokan Karate for?

KW Only for about 2 or 3 years, later I did Wing Chun with Derek Frearson in Leicester - I trained with Derek for many years on and off .

SR  I didn’t know Derek did Wing Chun!

KW  Yeah, and 7 Star Praying Mantis.

SR  I know he did Tai Chi with Bow Sim Mark…

KW  That’s right, he did Tai Chi as well, although I never really got into that.  Instruction was mainly from my uncles, in half hour to an hour lessons each time they came round.  I don’t hold any certificates in Wing Chun although I’ve been practicing it most of my life.

SR  I’ve always loved the ‘family’ aspect of Kung Fu, at parties everyone would get up and do something however good or bad they were and no one was ever ridiculed, it was all enjoyed, usually most of them were three sheets to the wind anyway!

KW  Usually on brandy!  As I became older, my training became more structured, I returned to Derek for more Wing Chun, trained in Kickboxing, Muay Thai, Ju Jitsu, Judo and Systema, trying a bit of everything becoming a ‘Jack of all trades, master of none’…  that was until I found a Jun Fan Jeet Kune Do class, I stayed with that until I found Lamaar Davies and then Tim Tackett found me.  Jeet Kune Do was me…  it was a freedom that I needed, although you did techniques in a certain way it was ‘principle led’ and you could adapt as you went along.

SR  I always think that there’s no point in training in anything if you can’t then validate it.

KW  The functionality of what you do is prime.  I have no objection to kata or form, but if you can’t be shown the reasoning behind it – it just becomes a dance!  You would never be able to use it in a combat situation because you’ve only learned it to a set rhythm and timing.

SR  I understand you also worked the doors?

KW  That’s right I did them in Leicester from 16 years of age, working at the ‘Dome’ in Leicester High Street.  I’ve been in plenty of ‘real’ situations and worked them continuously until I opened my own school about 5 years ago.  So I’ve had the street confrontations, I know what works and what doesn’t. I was using a ‘fence’ before it had a name!

SR  I’ve always called it the ‘wedge’ originating from the ‘jeet’ point and bridge in Kung Fu.  A ‘fence’ sounds too defensive to me.

KW  That’s right, in Jeet kune Do once your bridge has been met – you’re on home ground.  So I have the background and I have had to make my knowledge work, which a lot of martial artists don’t.

SR  There’s also a lot more information readily available now, in the old days we’d have to travel all over the place to learn the next couple of moves of a kata, there was no video, DVD, internet or ‘youtube’ available.

KW  That’s right – ‘youtube’ and other martial arts TV on the internet like WOMA are a valuable resource, once you’ve got your foundation in training you can always pick up additional drills and methods from this media.

SR  It’s also a good tool for the students to broaden their knowledge.

KW  Definitely!  Then by speaking to people like yourself and Pat O’Malley, my technique can be ‘tweaked’ to make it more effective.

SR  You can have a technique that’s 99% correct and it still fails you, that last one percent that’s the ‘magic’ that can make the difference between what works and what fails.

How did you come to open your academy up in Leicester?

KW  I always wanted my own place, wooden floors, big windows, I’d been teaching in various halls for about 4 years and decided I wanted to teach martial arts full time.  I started to look for a location, found where I am now and just started up with my existing students, our membership is now up to 700 so we’re a busy school!

SR  What’s your ratio between children and adults?

KW  We only have around 30 children and the rest are adults.  I don’t teach the children because I swear too much!

SR  What do you teach?

KW  Thai Boxing and Kickboxing, I don’t profess to be a qualified teacher, but I have the foundation.  We’re a fitness oriented, hard hitting, full contact club.  The Jeet Kune Do is traditional under the guidance of Lamar Davies.

SR  Who is Lamar Davies?

KW   Lamar is a Jeet Kune Do instructor in America and founder of the ‘Hardcore Jeet Kune Do Association’.  I found him on the internet, trained with him and liked what he was doing, I found it really practical.  He is ‘old school’ in the way that he has a huge training syllabus, but it’s up to us what we do with it, we can add and delete as we wish.

SR  You mentioned your connection with Tim Tackett, who’s he?

KW  He graded under Dan Inosanto in 1973 as a full Jeet Kune Do Instructor, for me and many others he is the ultimate Jeet Kune Do instructor, he was there right from the start.  I was lucky in that he approached me, came and trained with me and I did several weeks intensive training with him to be sure that I had a grasp of his system - he was surprised that a 25 stone man could move so fast and apply the principles.

I’d like to record that at no time did I ask him for a certificate, he asked me to represent him in the UK.  People will always bitch, but I’ve had the honour to train with him on a regular basis and have been over to America and trained with the famous ‘Wednesday night’ group and taught on his Summer Camp.  Some of the people I was teaching had been training 20 years longer than me!  They still enjoyed my teaching, which I think is down to the varied martial arts background that I have.

SR  How did MAF come about?

KW  I went to a boating show with my wife and kids in Leicester and a Capoiera group were doing a demonstration, I was walking around, the sun was shining,  kids playing, people were looking at the boats, having barbeques and so on.  I thought “what a good idea, to have a martial arts show in a similar vein!”  I’m not talking about the big shows or exhibitions but a festival.  It took me two years to put the idea together.  Last October I took Adam as a partner, he’s been training with me for 6 years and has a background in arranging events and building websites.  The event turned out to be an enormous success.

SR  MAS certainly did very well at the event.

KW  It was all about people going there to have a good time.  The festival had a ‘local fair’ feel about it; we had the capoiera group, bouncy castles, spiritualists, healers and lots of people having fun just showing what they do.

It was a local place that people could go to with little money and have a good day watching people that loved what they do showing their arts to an appreciative audience.  There was no hierarchy or bitching, just people training and often ‘trading off’ techniques with each other showing what they do.

I didn’t get the time to speak to everyone, but I got around as many people as I could.

The exhibitors, demonstrators, workshop instructors and participants have all said that they would love to come back next year.  Hence April 2010 we’ll have another big show, we’re looking at locations now.

SR  It was a winning formulae because it was so friendly.  I was only there for a couple of hours but arranged enough interviews to fill the magazine for months ahead.

KW  Saturday, I was a bit stressed as it was the first day and although Sunday was packed, I really enjoyed it.  The next MAF will be for 3 days so that we have that extra day to make sure we have everything right on the Friday for the weekend.  We would also like to a have a special  “A Night With….”  show and for the Bruce Lee Foundation to come over.

SR  Where are you planning to hold it next year?

KW  In or around the Midlands, there is one location that we’re considering that has a Bedouin tend that holds 20,000 people… it wouldn’t matter what the weather was like then!

SR  What are your future plans for your school?

KW  The school is doing well and we’ll just keep going as we are, I’ve been teaching professionally for 10 years now and tend to teach the ‘invitation only’ classes, where we train together more than it being a hierarchal structure.  I’d like to focus on those classes rather than teaching everyone.

SR  Do you have any plans for other events?

KW  We’re looking at a Bruce Lee Convention on his birthday, he was a great fan of birthdays so we’re looking at getting everyone together on that day.  We’re flying out to Los Angeles to talk to his wife Linda and daughter Shannon to put a few ideas on the table and get a Bruce lee Convention UK arranged.

We have the ‘Concrete Arena’ that launches this summer in August that is a full MMA show with 3 UFC fighters acting as judges to the first show.  We’re hoping for Mike Bisping to be there and Ian Freeman to compere.  It’ll be an all ‘glitz and glamour’ cage show.

I’m going to help Pat O’Malley out with the British Padded Arnis Alliance and help to build that up in the UK, he has groups in Europe that want to come over and compete.

Maybe we’ll also run a Freestyle Championships, as there seems to be a big market for it and we are considering promoting a series of events.

Quite a few spin offs from MAF really!

SR  I wish you all the best for the future and we’ll be there in 2010!

KW  Thank you.

I spent the time in Czech at the end of February priming everyone for the Summer Course in July.  We worked on the importance of studying each bit of advice from the classics in synergy with the others.

“Raise the head as if suspended by a rope from above” goes naturally with “lighten the top of the head”.  There were a few problems with ‘lighten’ in translation, but when everyone realised that they didn’t need a light bulb on the top of their head, (which I would argue with) they realised that when they tried to ‘straighten’ the head they invariably tensed the neck muscles, but when they ‘suspended’ and ‘lightened’ they felt like it was ‘floating’ upward and the entire body moved with a lighter feel.  Add on to that the feeling of tying a weight on to the bottom of the spine and it allowed a gentle opening of every vertebra in the spinal column and access for the bodyweight to the soft tissue of the legs.

This also opened the waist and allowed it to ‘loosen’ and freely drive and manipulate power through the entire body.  The head was the start of the ‘5 bows’ (spine, arms and legs) and the spine itself consists of a separate 3 bows, the upper spine is bowed by the action of the head, the upper back by the ‘sinking of the chest’ and ‘raising of the back’ and the lower back by the softening into the legs and pulling the PC muscle to draw the coccyx forward.  The whole bowing process is driven by ‘peng’, which opens the joints and soft tissue, allowing a free flow of energy and with an action like blowing up a balloon ‘frames’ the entire body with ‘animated’ energy.

We looked at how to put our ‘strength in the tendons’ by angling and rotating the joints to ‘reticulate’ them through the body connecting the power down to the feet.

We finished by working on ‘continuous movement from the waist’ to make the connected, light, framed and spiralling power become actualised into that essential Tai Chi motion that repels all boarders!

By pre framing everyone’s mind for the Summer, it means that as they are already moving in that direction and won’t feel too uncomfortable as we apply these ideas throughout the form!

Don’t forget that on the Instructors Course in April we’re working on the Jian and Dao with a deeper level of skill, so bring your wooden swords!

Despite the multitude of different martial arts and infinite variations on training methods there is one common component that links all systems and styles – the human body.  Regardless of culture and ideology, size or shape, armed or unarmed, modern or traditional or any of the other divisions that have arose in the martial world the human structure is the one thing that unites all.  Understanding the core principles that govern the human body forms the foundation of all arts and our awareness and view of the body has a direct correlation with how we engage it and more importantly develop its potential.  At the heart of studying these core principles is the awareness of how the human body is constructed and how best to train it for optimum performance.

The common view of human construction is that our body is formed as a series of bones that sit upon one another to form the structure we know as the skeleton.  In my treatment room I have a skeleton and in order for him to stand erect he has numerous bolts, springs and wires that hold him together – without them he’d be nothing but a pile of sticks on the floor.  In reality our skeletal structure is exactly the same and on its own it has absolutely structural integrity.  Far from being a like a house of bricks with one bone being stacked upon another our body structure far more closely resembles a suspension bridge in design than a static pile of bricks.  Our bones form only one component of a far more dynamic whole.  It is only through the way the soft tissues of the body (muscles, tendons, ligaments and fascia) weave the bones together that allows us to stand tall and dynamically move and interact with our environment.

In the book ‘Anatomy Trains’ renowned structural bodyworker Tom Myers likens the relationship of the soft tissue and skeletal system of a human to that of a mast and rigging of a sailing boat.  In sailing if you didn’t have the rigging attached to the mast and various points of the hull, the mast would be ripped from the deck as soon as gust of wind caught the sail.  What the rigging allows for is the distribution of the ‘pull’ on the mast to multiple points on the sturdy structure of the hull.  In exactly the same process if you think of the spine as a mast and our muscles as the rigging, when the spine is pulled forwards the rigging at the rear will tighten and pull to stop the spine from snapping forwards and vice versa if it is pulled backwards.  Many people who have back pain often visit me to have that specific area treated and are surprised when I sometimes start work on the front of their bodies to address ‘pulls’ that may be causing the ‘rigging’ in the back to pull harder.

To enable dynamic movement our bodyweight needs to be suspended within the ‘rigging’ of the body rather than being precariously balanced on the bones.  Understanding the way this system of ‘rigging’ pulls and slackens is the key to grasping the anatomy of human movement.  Thinking holistically will provide clarity and reason for all of our movements and may even help identify areas for improvement and allow you to develop a ‘holistic’ training regimen.

Another misconception that often shapes peoples training routines is that muscles work independently of each other.  Luckily this view is beginning to change as many athletes and martial artists are pursuing what is being coined as ‘functional strength training’ or ‘whole body workouts – yet still far too many people still train their body parts in isolation rather than as a holistic unit.  In my opinion I think isolation training actually negatively impacts on the performance of the body when compared against whole body function specific training programs.  The only context I recommend isolation training to my clients is during rehabilitation to bring an isolated body part back up to strength after which I advise them to switch onto exercises that will re-integrate the damaged or dysfunctional area back into line with the whole system.  Other than for aesthetic reasons I see absolutely no benefit to isolation training and in clients I have dealt with who follow “legs today, chest tomorrow and then arms the next day” programs I see imbalances in the body that lead to injury and tension in the system as a whole.

The key to both health and performance in the martial arts is having balance and harmony in the body.  When in balance the body can operate as a coordinated unit rather than as a series of isolated units that fire up independently all scrambling to fulfil their roles in life.  In tai chi we have a concept called ‘passing muscle to muscle’ whereby we train the muscles of the body to work co-operatively and efficiently and this is one of the primary purposes of the seemingly slow pace you often see tai chi practiced at.  This pace is needed to ensure that the muscles engage sequentially in a clean continuous partnerships and this level of coordination cannot be achieved through isolation training.  It is like tuning a car.  Once the muscles are tuned properly you can then begin to increase their capacity by moving more enthusiastically to stimulate synchronised growth throughout the whole body.

This then takes us onto another vital concept when engaging the body in a therapeutic manner to encourage health - something in our system we call ‘stimulation not decimation’.  Back in the glory days of the 60’s and 70’s martial arts people used to do thousands upon thousands of exercises, drills and techniques – many people believed that the muscles and bones would respond favourable if pushed to a point exhaustion.  The theory was that as the body recovered it would repair and adapt itself into a stronger machine. Many of the old timers from this era now spend a lot of time nursing chronically bad backs, knees, shoulders and other constant aches caused by the years of abuse.

Whilst there is some wisdom in this approach this approach a distinction needs to be made between ‘decimation’ and ‘stimulation’.  Overtly intensive training requires the body to repair damage rather than develop a stronger unit – there is only so much repair work the body can cope with before it breaks down.  This brutal approach to training is what we refer to as ‘decimation’.  ‘Stimulation’ of growth lets us tap into the body’s ability to evolve and requires us to look at the system as a whole and how best to engage it.

In my last article we discussed how humans learn from experience and we can use this quality to evolve the body’s physical capacity.  To stimulate the development of the body for martial arts you need to look at which function you want to improve and then decide an exercise or drill that will suit that function.  You then need to push the body through that drill just to the point that you can feel it start take effect - this is as far as you need go.  The body will take notice and then start to adapt and strengthen the structures you have worked – you have stimulated growth.  If you push past this point you start to decimate the body and it then has to divert resources allocated for recovery and regeneration to repairing and patching damage and ultimately this places a load on the body that you’ll eventually pay the price for.

When planning a program for self-development we need to look at how to nurture the body – not torture it.  In order to do this takes awareness and discipline.   It requires us to dispassionately apply reason and ‘holistic’ thinking to our training.  We need understand the system as a whole and it is impossible to evaluate that which is weak and that which is strong without first considering an individual components part in the whole – the evaluation of strength and weakness is always relative to the condition of body as a complete dynamic unit.

In order to ensure that our training is therapeutic and having a positive effect on our body we need to understand how the body is structured and functions as a holistic unit to avoid any training that will take a certain isolated part out of synch with the rest of the system.  I believe wholeheartedly that we should walk away from training in a better state than we walked into it.  As a martial artist I have no interest in what looks pretty I’m merely interested in the practical and the functional.  I love the martial arts and want to train every single day so I refuse to do anything that will stop me getting up and doing what I love every morning.  I’ve long ditched the training sessions that took three days to recover from and opted for ones that stimulate and invigorate my body on a daily basis.  Understanding these concepts is fundamental to long term prosperity and health through the martial arts!

Gavin King is a physical therapist and martial arts instructor based in Essex.  He can be contacted via email on This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or via http://www.shikon.com. You can keep up to date with all his articles and training via his blog on The Martial Archive at http://www.themartialarchive.com/gavinking.

Sooner or later in this game the question is asked “Ok what type of martial art do you do then?

Usually at this point there is a pause as you try to explain that you don’t train in a “traditional” system but in the much more unorthodox and hard to categorise  “combatives.”

The retort is then a confused “What’s that??  Is it a BJJ style”

“Errr – similar name but no, not quite”

How do you define the answer to that question.  It can mean a whole host of things to different people.  Many instructors have spent whole books trying to give a definitive answer – and have still been nowhere near to a satisfactory conclusion at the end of it all.

It gets even more confusing to the uninitiated when the different “factions” of combatives get together and have a flame-war!  Is WW2 combatives the best, Modern the best, tactical the best, street, core, urban…..the list goes on and on (apologies to any I might have omitted).  Jeez – even I get confused and I have to do it as part of a job!

Personally I just don’t think that there is a definite answer.  Combatives is a catch-all term – it is far too varied and complex for that.  Just as we as practitioners are varied and complex.

But what I can tell you is what OUR version of Modern Combatives is, what its all about and how we define it at the Modern Combatives Group.

Modern Combatives (or combat at close quarters) is a derivative of close combat used during wartime operations by such fighting forces as the commandos, special operations forces, and the USMC.

It is not a traditional martial art or mixed martial arts style, it is instead an aggressive mindset geared towards eliminating your attacker expediently.  For us combatives is more of a “doing” or “action” word rather than a label or title.
Many individuals practise what is termed traditional WW2 combatives and pay strict homage to the syllabus of Fairbairn, Styers, Applegate and Biddle.  All noted Second World War close combat instructors of much experience, skill and toughness.  That is they're choice.

We at the Modern Combatives Group do not.

Modern Combatives utilises the core skill-set but also feels free to introduce other close combat concepts into the training. We tailor what we need to fit the situation at hand for today's World.  If it works USE it - if it doesn't BIN it!

We do after all live in the real world of gang attacks, personal security threats, street assaults and global risks , and as such Modern Combatives is adaptive to the situation on the ground.  Quite often in a violent encounter we will have no second chances, so we have to be as cutting edge as we can be.

This is our approach and viewpoint to combatives and self protection, it is not a style or art but a range of "serial" strikes and counter-attacks designed to help the individual prevail under a violent assault from a determined aggressor.

So, while we train in the more well known techniques of tiger claw, chin jabs and edge of hand strikes, we also intersperse them with a variety of concepts based on our own training and experiences from working in the security industry and from working in high-threat environments worldwide.  It is here that the “Modern” in the title comes into its own.

Our approach to close combat is flexible and we are not locked into a technique or syllabus unless we have confidence in it gained from first hand experience.   I like the Line, "good technique is not a museum piece."

Its says it all.

We don’t get all dewey eyed about the past.  We respect what has gone before, but we can also look to the present and future as well.  We never stop learning and evolving.

For us close combat can be delivering a face smash, punch or chin jab to an attacker, close combat can be using a stick or brick as an impact weapon, it can be biting, gouging, spitting, smashing limbs, breaking bones.

It can be stabbing with an improvised weapon, scalding with a hot drink in the attackers face, slamming them into a wall or kicking them into the ground.  

In extremis it can be jamming a firearm into the bad guy's guts and unloading a half-magazine in at close quarters, or maybe just pistol whipping him to put him down, or clubbing him with our rifle butt………. 

Is the picture we are painting vivid enough yet?

Close combat has no rules and no referees; you do what you have to do to survive the situation at hand.  It doesn't matter what the technique is called as long as you get a result from the strike and it has POWER behind it (This doesn't stop some bonehead prattling on about "ah, but you have to deliver a chin-jab in exactly the only correct way as in the wartime manuals" - nonsense there are many different types of chin jabs/strikes - the only way that works is the way that works best for YOU!).

Some combative instructors, who have come late to the game have an almost zealot-like loathing for future instructors who want to tread the path.  Its as if combative time began when they INVENTED it!!

Look in the dictionary and you will find a picture of these types under "hypocrite." They started out with one martial arts style, then another, now they try to re-write history and play combative "catch-up" in order to gain some kind of legitimacy as the first to promote this.  They have missed the point completely about close combat and what it involves.  After all people where doing this stuff long before these instructors were even a twinkle in their Daddy’s eye….

Best advice is to ignore the log-in legends (and their yes men) and treat them with disdain.  

But enough of negative influences.

I started close combat training in the mid 1980's as a teenager when it was virtually unheard of.  I had an unarmed combat background in boxing intermingled with regular wrestling training and kickboxing skills.  It was a good grounding, however I was looking for more practical skills. 

My first instructor was also my old boxing coach and had served with the Airborne forces during the War. He was a punchy little street-fighter, who knew from first hand experience how to throw a powerful hook punch, chin jabs and put in devastating boot kicks.  Little Tommy taught basics only - basic strikes, kicks, and personal weapons skills, but above all else he instilled aggressive ATTITUDE! It was definitely a condensed curriculum. 

He summed it up with the line, "That's all you need - after that it's up to you to find out the rest and work it your own way."
And it's true. You need one good experienced instructor to show you the fundamentals of how it works in the real world - then the rest of the journey can be yours alone.

It is a personal thing with no rights and no wrongs - ONLY RESULTS MATTER!!

That is what we train for - results. End of story. 

Close combat - to quote Carl Cestari, "is not rocket science" despite the best efforts of some to turn it into almost a quasi-science/psychology lesson.  At base level, and this has been said many, many times before, it comes down to the individual. Who wants it more in a fight, and who has the juice to keep on going when the energy reserves are almost empty.

When it all goes belly up in the dark car park late at night, no combative internet guru will be there to help, the DVD's from "celebrity" instructors will seem inconsequential and probably most of the reading matter that you have researched or downloaded will be the last thing on your mind.   

What will matter will be pure naked aggression and powerful strikes, all gained from realistic and practical training.

Anything else is just "fluff."

I would like to leave you with a quote by the legendary US security operator Kelly McCann, which perfectly sums up what close combat is all about;  "A martial art is what you do with someone, (a reciprocal arrangement of strike, parries, and counter-strikes); combatives is what you do TO someone."

Read it through a few times until you get it - it's all there in that sentence.

Looking forward to training with you soon.  

Copyright – MCG - 2006

“I would consider tai chi to be the ultimate skirmish art” said a night club doorman of 28 years and lifelong martial artist.  “This is exactly what happens on the doors and it gives us the skills to deal with being pushed, pulled grabbed and hit from all directions at the same time, we’re often in a melee and the ability to cope with simultaneous multi directional attacks is essential.”

The mental image that most have of Tai Chi is that of the ‘hippy’ or ‘health’ version and of old age pensioners creaking along to the only range of movement and speed that they can cope with.  Or it may be of the ‘youtube’ version of bodies flying unconvincingly away from an aged masters ‘magic’ light touch or of bad karate or aikido applications to the strange movements.

Tai Chi is a martial art.  It can be taught very methodically.  Those that consider it a martial art often say that you have to practice it for years to be any good, in fact the same can said for any art. Tai Chi starts with the qigong exercises, in the Yang Family these are essential foundation training that releases the body core to allow internal softening, connection and rooting.  They then work methodically through the body, opening the joints, softening the muscle and fascia connections, flexing the spine, correcting the posture and working all the powerful directional movements that a human body can do.  The ‘exercises’ also work the ‘jins’, the energy lines through the body exciting the system to engender a vigorous health and positive, powerful movements and technique.

When skills are taught, they are taught in the exercises first, then put into the hand forms, weapons forms, push hands and finally boxing and grappling applications.

Being taught properly and methodically means that the student is taught what he ‘needs’ rather than what he ‘wants’, this is known as ‘eating bitter’ and can be construed by a part of modern society who want to be ‘entertained’ as boring and painful.  Those people would be attracted to what is known as ‘tourist’ Tai Chi where they are entertained with simple unskillful movements that make them happy and keep the instructors rice bowl full.   This is the popular form of Tai Chi.

To be taught properly, the student needs to learn how to stand, how to breathe, how to think and focus his attention and then how to move.  He must ‘empty his cup’ of whatever he thought martial arts and fighting were to be able to learn the skills from exercise to form in a pure liberated movement free from emotion and wrong intention.  He would then learn how to generate power from the feet, through the legs, manipulated by the core and torso to be fed out through the arms and hands.  Different forms of connected power are used for striking, manipulation, locking, escaping, strangling, choking and throwing.

It takes time and effort (the meaning of the words ‘kung fu’) to work these skills into the body until they become natural and any form of trying to force them will result in unnatural tension and anxiety.

Development is a lifelong process, it’s said that the student will first learn in feet, then inches, then hundredths of an inch, then thousandths… then hundredths of a thousandth of an inch.  BUT….. he is better on day 2 than he would be on day 1, any skill learning is the same process.  ‘Tourist’ technique in any art may work until the student meets a powerful, internally connected fighter, who will simply walk through or disrupt anything he has to offer.

The difference with Tai Chi is that it is a skirmish art; it is a continuous double helix spiral of movement and momentum, during this continuous movement the practitioner remains actively powerful and responsive in all directions for every hundredth of a thousandth of an inch.

The founder of the Yang style, Yang Lu Chan, was the son of a farmer who loved the Martial Arts and had studied Shaolin Hung Quan with a local instructor before studying in the Chen family village under Chen style Master Chen Chang Xin.  Yang Lu Chan was his most talented student and eventually returned to his home village at Yung Nien where he taught for a living.  He was undefeated locally and in his travels where he won many matches utilising his soft and yielding art that as a result became known as ‘mien quan’ (cotton boxing) or hua quan (neutralising boxing).  ‘Cotton boxing’ because for the opponent, it was like putting their hands into soft cotton and finding a needle in the middle!

By the time he was middle aged Yang taught at the Imperial Court and was tested by experts many times and never defeated, this earned him the title ‘Yang the Invincible’.  He became the martial arts instructor to the Shen Ji Battalion and taught in the Royal Households earning the title 'Ba Yeh’ (Eight Lords) because eight princes studied under him.

Teaching at the Imperial Court was a grave responsibility in that he was obliged to teach well or it would be considered treason with a probable death sentence!  It also gave Yang the opportunity to meet with and compare his skills with the best in the land.

Yang was a hard taskmaster to his three sons with one dying early, one attempting suicide and one frequently running away and attempting to become a monk.  Eventually both remaining sons became masters in their own right and both taught at the Imperial Court.

‘Cotton boxing’ is an interesting term because it indicates where the vital secret of Yang Tai Chi Chuan lies.  In combat the mind tends to be coarse and responds only to harsh and sudden movement ignoring the soft and sensitive.  The Tai Chi practitioner develops the skill of  ‘four ounces to move a thousand pounds’ and when the opponents mind is going coarse, his becomes more sensitive and works on a subliminal level neutralizing the opponents force with light touches, sticking, following, redirecting and controlling with power connected from the feet and legs up through the core, manipulated by the waist and out through he hands.  The ‘soft’ strikes carry that same connected power that although deceptively soft, carries the ‘kick’ of a donkey!

It becomes a ‘skirmish art’ because the body moves in that framed, posturally aligned and internally connected manner and is able to repel attackers from any direction at any time.  I remember when I talked about ‘fa jin’ being ‘like a whip’ to Ma Lee Yang she thought about it for a moment and then said that it was more like a ‘pin ball machine’.  This troubled me for ages, as I couldn’t see her point until I grasped the double helix and the ability to bounce or send power to any point of the body and in any direction in an instant.  A whip has vulnerable points in its’ movement and is committed – the pinball isn’t.

It makes the martial aspect of Tai Chi very different to that of most other martial arts.   I don’t think there is a ‘best’ art, only the best art for the character of each student.  It’s never the art, but the person that practices it that makes it efficient.

Good Yang style Tai Chi as a ‘skirmish’ art certainly suits doormen, security personnel and law enforcement officers.  I have taught all 3 categories successfully for over 3 decades.  Sometimes you have to search for the right instructor and art and not be put off or be influenced by others or by the first instructors you meet.  It can take as much time and effort to find the right instructor as the actual training itself!  People have often said to me “I always knew it was there in Tai Chi, it was just not easy to find”…..

Steve Rowe is an International Tai Chi Instructor teaching Presidential Bodyguards, Security Personnel, Police Self Defence Instructors and runs an association with over 15,000 students across Europe.  He is also an 8^th Dan in Karate, 3^rd Dan in Iaido, 2^nd Dan Jodo and 1^st Dan Ju Jitsu.

He is the Chairman of the Martial Arts Standards Agency and Shi Kon Martial Arts International.

You can read his blog and articles at www.themartialarchive.com and his website at www.shikon.com

Some martial artists are obsessed with fighting; they think about, dream about it, talk about it, write about it and think if you’re not actively ‘fighting’ every training session you 'ain’t a proper martial artist'… this  attitude I think is worthy of contemplation.

I personally agree with the need to challenge ourselves in allow for growth.  Growing up amongst martial artists and those who engage in physical pursuits has given me very strong sense of the type of personal growth that can be achieved when we challenge our perceptions, horizons and fears and the various methods we can employ to do this.  This experience has also shown me how insular and narrow minded we can become when we take on the wrong opponents and fight for the wrong reasons – in these cases instead of broadening our horizons we can actually isolate ourselves from the world and compound our fears.  So without direction and objective reasoning ‘fighting’ can take us to unhealthy places.

In truth I think ‘fight’ is the wrong word to use and a reason why some ‘fighters’ can’t see beyond the end of their noses.  Myself personally I’ve never really enjoyed fighting – it always seemed rather barbaric and uncouth and went against the grain of the dignified image of the martial artist I've had from a young age.  What I have always longed for is experience and the stimulation I get from entering the unknown.  My personality craves knowledge and wisdom; I like to know how something feels and how it interconnects with everything around it.  Trouble is that rehashing the same experience over and over for me soon loses its appeal, it gets boring and I need to go out and find something else to do to occupy my cravings with.  Without broadening my horizons I do not find anything to satisfy this need for stimulation… this quirk of character has blessed me with a very interesting life, both inside and outside of the martial arts.

Part of me can’t help but question if these so called ‘fighters’ are the ones we need to be looking to as role models – are they really the brave and the strong when they constantly engage in the same style of fight day after day, week after week, year after year?  How long do we engage in a ‘fight’ before it ceases to be a ‘fight’ for us?  After which what is the point of continually engaging said ‘fight’?  Will continually doing something we are comfortable with encourage growth?  The human ability to adapt and evolve leads me to think not.

As I said part of my character chases after experience and the martial arts have provided me with a wonderful means to satisfy this need.  When I moved up from the kids class into the adults class as a 9 stone dripping wet 15 year old I was battered every session, but after a while I learnt how not to take as many beatings.  At 16 I joined one of the toughest kick boxing camps I could find and started the process again.  A few years later still with a baby face and bum fluff on my chin I started working security at the nightclubs and had to adapt to that environment.  As a result of all of this experience my training stopped satisfying the cravings so I started my own group and we systematically worked our way through practically every style of fighting you can imagine, travelling, studying and ‘fighting’ with many different people, but again all of this soon became bland and easy and the growth almost ground to a halt.  And then I found shiatsu…

Starting shiatsu took me out of my comfort zone and put me in an environment outside of the world of fighters and martial artists – I started to associate with people who’d never had a fight in their life.  On my very first lesson we had to pair off and introduce our partners to the group once we’d found out a bit about their personal history.  My partner introduced himself, and this is the god’s honest truth, with, “….I’m currently on anti-depressants and having counselling after being abused and a victim of violence and have anxiety attacks because of it.” You should have seen the look of dread in his face when I replied, “My name is Gavin King and I’m a bouncer and a martial artist!”  I just didn’t know how to deal with people like him – I was an alien in this world and it scared the crap out of me.

In this world matters couldn’t be rectified simply by training harder and applying a bit of spite, but these were the only tools I had.  Everything in the martial arts had taught me that being fast and first won the day, but these things meant nothing to these people and I was defenceless and open.  And at first every comment hit home and caused me emotional distress – you’re tense, you’re anxious, you’re not being sensitive to your clients needs, etc, etc.  These were like battle cry’s to me… a voice inside me kept saying well let’s step onto the mat and see who’s anxious, who’s tense and there we’ll know the truth!  The thing I failed to realise is that this was their mat, so I made it mine.  Now I was back in the children’s class again and relishing the first real ‘fight’ I had in years.

Around about the same time I happened upon a lesson with Steve who systematically tore apart everything I was doing; my thinking, my movement, my aggression and showed me my glaring weaknesses.  I found a new fight, tai chi.  Having the mental fortitude to do 10 rounds all out on the bag for me was easy, full contact sparring wouldn’t even raise a earbrow, standing on the door in front of a thousand people became just a job… don’t get me wrong I still got knackered on the bag, got battered in sparring and felt the brown adrenaline on the door, but it wasn’t anything special after a while, it was something I could do.  Being able to do a 20 minute form continuously without the slightest pause in my movement still to this day eludes me – my mind flutters, my body tires and I just don’t have the skills to deliver the goods.  Tai chi is glorious for someone like me because it has no hiding places and there is no cheating - a bonafide unadulterated challenge!

You see it’s all good and well these people telling us to ‘fight’ but who are these guys actually  fighting?  What are they doing that is so special?  Most of those dishing out this advice haven’t even got the goods to be able to handle running their own lives, many are plagued with self doubt, are insecure, penniless, aggressive and to be honest are pretty undesirable people to be around.  These people don’t fight; instead they insulate themselves by cowering in the arenas they are comfortable in.  It’s not something to admire or even aspire to.  In one of my classes I have the pleasure of teaching a lady who has multiple sclerosis and has trouble simply standing let alone marching through a twenty minute form, but she still soldiers on.  That’s a real fighter; someone who steps up to the plate and takes on a real challenge.  For me she is a martial artist worthy of looking up to!

So I guess what I’m really saying is that if you’re going to be picking a fight, make sure it’s a good one!

When I was in my early 20’s I got my first place and moved out of my parents home.   The independence was great, no more being told to pick up dirty socks off the floor or being berated for being too loud coming in after a few drinks.  It didn’t take too long for me to realise that liberation came at a price and whilst not being told to do the dishes was exhilarating  the downside was that if I didn’t do the dishes no one else did either.  Very quickly my lovely new bachelor pad resembled a cesspit and became a rather unpleasant place to live.  Another realisation was that the longer I left between cleaning sessions the more the rubbish built up making the task so huge it appeared impossible.  Things became so bad that I eventually sold the place and got married!

Although most of us appreciate that keeping our homes clean and clutter free is an essential part of making them pleasant places to be very few of us pay the same consideration to our own body.  Just like with a home without regularly maintenance and house keeping our body will quickly become a very unpleasant place to be and the longer left between spring cleans the more crap will accumulate.  It is alarming the amount of people I meet who do not like to live in their own skin and scary the number who actually hate it – and as the world spins quicker the number of those dissatisfied with the own internal environment is increasing at an epidemic rate.

In the outside world we appreciate that if rubbish and filth are allowed to accumulate disease will follow, but the only time most of us even pay the slightest attention to the world inside ourselves is once disease has taken hold.  Only once our body becomes uninhabitable do we give any thought to taking care of it – up until this point it’s ‘party time’ 24/7!

Disease (‘dis-ease’) does not target the strong; it doesn’t look for a tough fight.  Like any predator it targets the weak and vulnerable looking for an environment it can grab an easy foothold in before attacking.  So in order to prepare ourselves for the fight we need to give our body a fighting chance by ensuring that it has a strong foundation from which to defend itself.  But like with my old flat, once the filth has piled up beginning the cleaning process starts to look like mission impossible… which is why the task needs to be broken down and tackled one room at a time.

With my clients, some of whom have multiple serious conditions, I help them break down the task of ‘cleaning house’ in order of importance to make things managable and bearable.  Quite often the first room that needs cleaning is their mind – breaking down the habits, addressing the patterns they’re not happy with and looking at ways to systematically work through their issues.  All too often people fall into habitual routines that unless broken make it impossible to achieve long lasting healing.  A common one I see is people will say something like “My body is aching and feeling like death warmed up…. So I’m going to wake it up with a heavy session down the gym!” which to me is like saying, “My house is a pigsty after that party last night… so I’m going to have another session tonight to forget about it!”  And all that results from this mega session down the gym is a total crash in a couple of days time as the body reaches the point when it has to shut down everything else down so it can tidy up - que the colds, flu, joint pain, bad backs, depression, etc, etc that then move in for the kill once the body is busy trying to sort out the mess!

When the body is a clean and tidy having a party is fine and actually enjoyable, but I see so many people who ‘party’ just to forget that how unpleasant a place their body is to be.   I think it really is a shame when someone doesn’t enjoy living in their own skin and see the martial arts as being a wonderful tool to ‘clean house’ - but when abused they are also a great way of increase the rubbish we load our body with.  Look at your training and make sure it is making your body a pleasant place to be… once it is the parties get even better!

We’ve been working on the idea of continuous peng in all directions whilst maintaining continuous spiraling motion in the form.

One of the ways we’ve been practicing this idea is with 4 people gently pulling or pushing the form practitioner in all directions making him find his feet and spiral into them, maintaining peng and taking the ‘opponents’ just out of their feet with the first couple of millimetres of movement so that they are still attached, weakened, but not really aware of it.

The skill is in utilising the right-brained ‘spatial’ mind that has the ability to treat all four opponents as one and as one ‘balancing point’ instead of trying to deal with 4 separate people and 4 separate balance points.  This is easier than it reads and it’s the sensitivity that’s the real skill.

The idea of the ‘pinball’ is that it’s the strike that comes from the spiral AFTER the weakening of the opponent and into them on the curve.  This means that it continues to move on the curve and into the spiral from the strike.  The pinball effect also means that the ‘fajing’ can travel quickly from point to point in the body and hit again and again into the weakened opponents with a ‘pinball’ effect.

Bear in mind that many people can’t get their balance in the first place or lose it as soon as they start moving and are therefore vulnerable all of the time.

In Tai Chi the hands are only one option for hitting, more often than not it will be the spiraling, curving forearms or any other part of the body, Dao (broadsword) training helps to understand the spiraling forearm ‘cutting strikes’ to the vulnerable points, breaking the opponent’s structure.

The use of the syncromeshed multi spiraling 'peng' provides the rooted, waist manipulated, spiraling emission of energy that can be powered through the hands with little or no arm extension whilst either first or simultaneously displacing the opponents structure with the other hand or by pulling, pushing, 'nudging' with forearm, shoulder etc.. So this is best practiced on another person with minimum or no padding and either pushing the strike in (to lessen impact) or controlling it, as a hit on a weakened structure is different to hitting a rooted and aligned one. Finding angles through a human body to de-structure joints, hitting vital points, shortening tendons, separating muscle and fascia whilst the body is moving are all hitting skills worthy of a lot of study. As the hit itself is on a curve and therefore will continue in momentum and not lose structure, hitting bags and pads is not always particularly useful.

In summary…. Grasping the ideas of working subliminally, utilizing peng, spiraling from the feet in continuous motion, breaking the opponent’s structure and hitting from the spiral, on a curve, in continuous movement and using the pinball effect of fajin will give us the skills we’re after!

In my shiatsu training I was told that one of the most powerful components of our treatments was the ability to bring our clients back to the ‘here and now’.  Having been a devotee of Zen and other eastern ways of thinking for the majority of my life the concept wasn’t alien to me, but it’s importance wasn’t truly understood really until I started delving into bodywork and my taiji studies.

I was on a course with the world renown shiatsu practitioner and teacher Saul Goodman who described the phenomenon of being ‘displaced in time’ by explaining that most of us have our energies shackled in the past or projected out into the future – both of which depletes us by drawing our resources away from the present moment.  Now it’s very easy to dismiss the idea as a ‘cute’ philosophical musing but through my treatments and teaching I have found the awareness of where our attention is focussed to have immense practical significance and when misplaced it can be one of the root causes of many of the modern illnesses of today such as depression, anxiety and stress.

We often use the expression “stop living in the past” but it is usually a lot easier said than done.  Certain personality types have a natural tendency to dwell on the things of the past – the traumas, the disappointments and even the successes.  The person locked into trauma and disappointment from the past is fairly easy to spot and the implications of this condition simple to understand, but what about the person of past success?  The image that always comes into my mind when thinking this sort of person is the old rock star who in their twilight years are still running round like a twenty year old – just that they now have a colostomy bag and they have to pick their groupies up from the nursing home.  As outwardly happy as these people may apear you always hear about many aged celebrities constantly having cosmetic surgery, divorcing people half their age and battling addiction.  Not truly the signs of a happy life when examined closely.

Displacement in the future comes in the form of obsessively worrying about bills, lack of a love life, career development and really overly worrying about anything that ‘could’ happen in the future.  This can create stress and anxiety as we spend our time worrying about things that have yet to come.

Being displaced in time draws our attention, our focus and our energy away from things that are unfolding in front of our very eyes and greatly skews our perception of the present.  Our problem is that most of us haven’t been given the tools or education to be able to sufficiently cope with these problems and for some the they become so bad that they have to turn to external agents such as alcohol, narcotics and anti-depressants to deal with them.   Yes there is zen, Buddhism, NLP, counselling and the like but as martial artists we actually have all the tools we need and also the strategies to use them - just some of us don't employ our skills outside of training.

Sparring is great place to see the effects of being ‘displaced in time’.  You can see people immediately acting out of synch with current time.  Some people when they spar have an anxiety of being hit so they will flinch, jump around and tense up at the slightest twitch of their partner.  They are often locked in the past and projected future at the same time with the memory of being punched in the mouth pulling them one way and the fear of it happening again pulling them the other – and as we all know the more we end up trying to avoid getting hit we usually end up on the receiving end even more.  As instructors the way we coach students through this is to break the situation down, provide the means to analyse it and help build the skills to handle it.  If you just keep throwing a student in head first you'll see that rather than resolving the anxiety and stress you’ll compound and exacerbate it… and the same is true in every day life as well!

One of the magical components of the martial arts is their ability to help the practitioner understand and expand their lives – to do this we only need to take the lessons we learn in the dojo, kwoon and gym and apply them in the real world.  For me that is the true meaning of ‘reality’ martial arts.

For those that don’t see me too often I thought I’d give you all an update as to what we’ve been working on lately….

The opening of the spine in both directions
To not only stretch the spine upwards, but to also feel like you have a weight attached to the coccyx, pulling it downwards to open the spaces between the vertebrae.  This goes along with the idea of ‘parking’ the spine and you cannot help but ‘loosen up’ through the ankles, knees and hips at the same time.  This also allows you to be more sensitive to gently pulling the PC muscle to create the ‘bowing’ of the spine and limbs.

Using the waist to change the hands.
The hands are always ‘driven’ by the waist.  We never ‘throw’ them. When changing the hand technique it must be ‘spiralled’ into change from the waist displacing the opponent at the same time, we have been paying particular attention to grasp sparrow’s tail (as ever), single whip, shoulder stoke, stork cools wings, cloud hands and fair lady plays at shuttles, but the idea is in all techniques.

Continuous movement from the waist.
The waist never stops and as it’s driving the hands they are always in continuous ‘driven’ movement.  As it’s sometimes difficult for the student to know when the waist and link to the hands has ceased, we have been working in pairs with one student watching the other and by observation and discussion have resolved any problems or anomalies.

Spatial energising of the skin.
Instead of identifying an individual opponent in the mind when performing the form, we have worked on the idea that the performer is being held by many people and pulled multi directionally so that he has to secure the drive from the feet, spiral in motion to displace them and keep peng and frame to maintain power in all directions.  This has the added benefit that the awareness and energy is bought to the surface of all the skin spatially as opposed to just towards one opponent.

That’s enough to kick the New Year off!!  I’ll let you know where we go from there.

Don’t forget the seminar this Sunday 17^th January is on meditation, the chakras, their relevance, and healing.  11am – 3pm at the Chatham honbu £20 for members, £30 for non members.