Training for Life

Inside Kung Fu Magazine August 2007

by Grandmaster Doc Fai Wong

Chan Cheong Mo was the founder and chief instructor of the Sei Yup (four counties) Hung Sing School in Kong Moon City now called Jiang Men. He learned Choy Li Fut from Chan Heung, the founder of Choy Li Fut kung fu when he was a child. After Chan Heung past away, he continued to study from his eldest son, Chan On Pak.

In 1898, Chan Cheong Mo opened the first Hung Sing School in the Wong clan family temple in Jiang Men city and invited Chan On Pak’s younger brother Chan Koon Pak to be the head instructor and he assisted Chan Koon Pak in teaching Choy Li Fut kung fu. In 1906, Chan Koon Pak went to Canton (Guangzhou) and Chan Cheong Mo officially took over the school and became the head instructor of the Jiang Men’s Hung Sing School.  Before Chan Cheong Mo past away in 1953, his adopted son and successor Chew Kam Wing was appointed to be the keeper and head instructor of the Hung Sing School in Jiang Men city.

Chew Kam Wing taught in the Jiang Men’s Hung Sing School until the Chinese government banned traditional kung fu teaching. All of his students eventually stopped practicing and no longer taught the great Choy Li Fut Kung Fu system. Chew Kam Wing taught his sons Choy Li Fut privately; unfortunately his sons were not up to the standard that was required for passing down the traditional teaching. Chew Kam Wing’s occupation was a full time doctor in the People’s Hospital of Jiang Men practicing traditional Chinese medicine. He finally retired couple years ago having served the community for over 45 years. He became one of the most well known doctors in Southern China.

Today, only few of the senior students of Chan Cheong Mo are still alive in China and around the world. In Jiang Men city, there are Wong Kan Fu, Lui Sieh Gen and the old keeper Chew Kam Wing. In Canada, Yan Jun Ho was teaching in Vancouver’s Chinatown for over 30 years and he also retired from teaching kung fu. Today, in Hong Kong only Wong Gong is still actively involved in teaching Choy Li Fut. Chew Kam Wing now is in his mid 80’s.  He and his fellow classmates had a meeting and all agreed that he should pass on his Keeper’s position to his kung fu brother Wong Gong. All the senior members of Chan Cheong Mo’s students believed Wong Gong had achieved the greatest success in the teaching of Choy Li Fut. On February 16, 2006, Chew Kam Wing officially signed the certificate of Jeong Moon Yen to Wong Gong as the new Keeper of the Sei Yup Hung Sing School.

Wong Gong was born in 1928 and he is a native of Jiang Men city. He studied kung fu with his father as a child and later became a disciple of Chan Cheong Mo. With his teacher Chan Cheong Mo’s permission, he continued his studies from Chan Yen, the chief instructor of King Mui Village’s Hung Sing School. Chan Yen learned Choy Li Fut from his father Chan Yau Kau who was the student of the founder of Choy Li Fut, Chan Heung. In 1949, the communists took over mainland China. Before Wong Gong moved to Hong Kong both of his teachers told him to continue teaching kung fu in Hong Kong in order to keep the Choy Li Fut Kung Fu system alive. Today, Wong Gong has over 50,000 student memberships down through 6 generations from him all around the world.

If you started an exercise program (like martial arts) and haven’t thought about your diet, then you are missing a key ingredient for long term success. In today’s world of fad diets and nutrition gurus, it is easy to get caught up in a world of gimmicks and diet tricks.  It’s easy to get swept away in the science of “nutritionism” and miss the big picture.  The big picture should always be focused on two precepts: we should eat for health, and we should eat for pleasure.

Our society’s infatuation with weight loss has often caused more damage than good.  The modern diet fads of today are failing because Americans continue to have major health crises.  Diabetes, cancer and obesity are at all time highs.  So if you are searching for something that works, then perhaps history can be your guide.  All you have to do is look back far enough to find one of man’s original diets, the raw food diet.

When food is cooked above 118 degrees, the enzyme content is destroyed.  Enzymes are biomolecules that help us digest and assimilate food.  When we deprive our bodies of enzymes, our pancrease has to work harder to keep up with the demand.  Over time, this excessive work can lead to the impairment of other metabolic functions like the secretion of insulin.  In addition, high temperatures will cause the food to lose up to 80% of its vitamins and up to 95% of its phytonutrients.

People who have increased the amount of raw foods in their diets have seen some amazing changes in their overall health.   Eating raw foods has been shown to stop the advance of many of the “middle age diseases” like diabetes, heart disease and cancer.  In addition, raw foods improve immune function, increase energy, and aid in weight loss.  People who consume a high level of raw foods claim better digestion and more radiant skin!

You don’t have to eat 100% raw to have benefit.  People who have a diet that comprises 50-75% raw are seeing great results.  The more hardcore “raw-foodists” however will suggest 75-100%.  Regardless of the amount in your diet, simply increasing the consumption of raw foods over time will help you in your quest for optimal health.  A diet that is rich in fresh vegetables and fruits (organic preferrably) is widely accepted as cornerstone for great health.

By Adrian Corrales

Inside Kung Fu Magazine November 2002

The guiding principle in nature is efficiency. An animal in the wild must use every resource available to survive. Choy Li Fut Kung Fu takes a similar approach to combat. While many styles choose to focus only on the fists and feet, Choy Li Fut practitioners use every weapon at their disposal. One weapon often neglected by other arts is the forearm.

Choy Li Fut’s vast arsenal of forearm strikes gives fighters an extra edge that can mean the difference between life and death on the street

“A lot of people usually associate their forearms with defensive movements,” says Sifu Don Tittle. He claims that the forearms are often ignored as offensive weapons because they take time to learn to use properly. “A fist is more natural, it’s primal…any kid knows how to do that. With the forearm, there’s skill involved.”

Tittle, Chief Instructor of the White Dragon Martial Arts school in La Mesa, Calif., is a veteran of numerous tournaments, but his emphasis in training is always to develop practical self-defense skills. Tittle has trained for more than a decade with Master Nathan Fisher, one of the highest ranking students of Grandmaster Doc-Fai Wong and an expert in Choy Li Fut Kung Fu and Yang Style Tai Chi Chuan.

Versatile Style

Choy Li Fut’s founder, Chan Heung, based the system upon Northern and Southern Kung Fu techniques. This diverse background produced one of the most versatile fighting styles in the world. Choy Li Fut is famous for its powerful roundhouse punches and uppercuts. The system also includes a number of crushing backfist strikes. In many styles these blows are delivered as quick jabs.

Choy Li Fut Kung Fu practitioners, however, perform each strike with the full use of the waist to produce bone-shattering power. People often characterize Choy Li Fut as a long fist style based on the prominence of these powerful hand strikes. According to Tittle, the forearms offer a way of shortening these moves for close range combat.

Choy Li Fut students practice every strike with as much extension as possible. This teaches them the proper body mechanics for each technique. Students often learn the long range applications of strikes first to encourage them to use the entire body behind every movement. Once the student has achieved proficiency with this type of practice, they can shorten the strikes without losing much power.
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Training For Life April 1989

By Grandmaster Doc Fai Wong

One of the biggest selling points of internal Chinese martial arts are their health and longevity benefits. You know, practice Tai Chi and life becomes better for you.

Well, that’s true. However, people question why several famous Tai Chi and Hsing-I masters have died at relatively young ages. If we who teach tai chi tell the public that internal martial arts promote longevity and health, why did these well-known masters die so soon?

Those people’s early deaths resulted from the lifestyles, not their martial art. Actually, if they didn’t know Tai Chi or another internal martial art, they probably would have died much sooner.

Well-known martial arts masters around the turn of this century had far different lifestyles than the ordinary martial teacher. They often worked for rich families, who exposed them to all of the excesses available to the wealthy – opium, women, alcohol, and gambling. Before long their social habits cut into their Tai Chi practice time. They spent more time gambling, drinking and carousing, and less time practicing Tai Chi. They ate more of the wrong foods, increasing their cholesterol levels and overtaxing their digestive tracts. The best tasting food was not always the healthiest food, especially when they didn’t get enough exercise to digest their extra fat.

They slept fewer hours, stressing themselves with addictive habits. In China, before the People’s Republic, the upper-class fashion was to smoke opium. Of course, only those who could afford it smoked it. Many great masters, whom I will not name, with respect for their martial arts fame and leadership, became wealthy from teaching government officials and rich families. Unfortunately, their opulent lifestyles outweighed their internal training, and they died young.

Not all famous internal martial arts teachers fell prey to temptation. Wu Tu-Nan, a Wu and Yang style Tai Chi expert, lives in Beijing. Wu is almost 105 years old, and he still practices tai chi every day. The author of many outstanding Chinese Tai Chi books, Wu is very healthy. He emphasizes three things for a long life – good nutrition, enough rest, and daily Tai Chi practice.

A well-known Tai Chi master is San Francisco and Taiwan, Kuo Lien-Yin lived into his late 80’s. Kuo also practiced Tai Chi every day, outliving several wives.

Professor Yu Peng-Si, one of the most renown Hsing-I (I-Chuan) masters of modern times, died in 1983 at age 83. He would probably be alive today, except that he suffered from acute diabetes. His demise came from complications caused by restaurant food that triggered a diabetic attack.

Professor Yu was once quoted as saying “If you want a long life get eight hours sleep every night, don’t eat a large meal right before you go to sleep, and don’t let yourself become emotionally upset.”

Professor Yu, also a distinguished medical doctor and full professor at the University of Shanghai, practiced his I-Chuan internal martial art every day until his final illness.

My own teacher, Hu Yuen-Chou (Woo Van-Cheuk in Cantonese), is 85 years old. He is famous in Hong Kong and Taiwan, having been a direct disciple of Yang tai chi’s leader, Yang Cheng-Fu. Hu practices and teaches tai chi every day. He is also a doctor, believing that daily exercise is a must for a long healthy life. Hu refrains from eating greasy foods. They are hard to digest and raise blood cholesterol levels.

These are just a few examples. There are many Tai Chi and other internal masters who have lived well into their 90s. I have observed many external martial arts teachers, younger than them, in the Orient who must use canes to walk and can no longer practice their martial arts.

I believe that the benefits of internal practice, living a long, healthy life, means that you should practice certain principles. Practice your martial art every day, staying relaxed and calm. Don’t overdo your workouts, but do enough. Stay away from other excesses, such as drugs, alcohol, and the wrong kinds of food. Get enough rest every night. Do these things, and you too may be teaching Tai Chi, Hsing-I, or paqua well into your 90s.

Discover the many health benefits of Kung Fu & Tai Chi: whitedragonmartialarts.com

On the Cutting Edge

Training with Traditional Kung Fu Weapons

May Help You Survive a Real Life Street Encounter

By Adrian Corrales

Inside Kung Fu Magazine October 2006

Certain things catch your eye when you enter a martial arts school. Along one wall you might see a belt display or a school motto. Out on the mat a few students may be training too hard to notice that anyone is watching. Hanging in a corner is a heavy bag, worn from years of abuse. And, if you’re lucky, you will also find a collection of weapons that a school has as teaching tools. Many martial artists ignore weapons training, because they don’t think it’s important or because they don’t know the right way [to] go about it. With the right approach, however, traditional weaponry can become a powerful tool for self-defense.

Sifu Dennis Smith has been teaching Choy Li Fut Kung Fu and Yang Style Tai Chi in Oceanside, California (San Diego County) with White Dragon Schools for more than a decade. His school offers a balanced method designed to make students as well-rounded as possible. Traditional forms are taught along with different training methods that can turn ancient weapon techniques into life-saving combat skills.

Kung fu styles have always stood apart from other arts because of their exotic weaponry. Some people are drawn to training with ancient swords and spears, because it puts them in touch with a foreign culture and a different era in history. Unfortunately, many kung fu pratictioners get so involved in the historical and performance aspects of their art that they ignore the fighting spirit that lies at its core. Traditional forms training should teach a student the essential concepts necessary to wield a variety of weapons effectively in a life threatening situation.

Techniques were passed down in prearranged forms as a means of creating a library of techniques from which students could draw. If they perfected a form, they would have learned all the basic techniques that masters of a certain style deemed useful. Forms serve the same function today. They provide a quick way of cataloging a wide range of offensive and defensive moves. Smith often breaks the forms into shorter techniques when teaching them to students. Drilling short sequences gives students a chance to focus on specific steps so that they learn exactly how each move can be applied.

A student should never demonstrate a form without understanding the purpose behind each step. Understanding each step thoroughly will greatly improve its aesthetic performance of the form. Someone who truly understands they combat applications of a set will know which moves require more definition and power, and which moves can be done more quickly and continuously.

TEST YOUR WEAPON

After mastering movements in the air, Smith next encourages students to test their weapon techniques with contact. People do not realize how different a strike feels against an object until they actually try it. It takes practice to teach your body which muscles to tense and how to time movements for maximum power. If you have never laid into something full force, you might even find that you have difficulty holding onto your weapon. That is not the kind of thing you want to learn when your life is on the line. Canes, staffs and other impact weapons can be used against a heavy bag. Wooden swords can also be used to let students test the effectiveness of their blade techniques.

Masters of the past wanted the most realistic weapons training they would get, so they devised two person forms to allow them to try their techniques with a partner. The forms taught students what kinds of moves one could use when pitting one particular weapon against another. The inherent danger in training freestyle with real weapons kept them from being able to spar their moves full force. Students often discovered whether they could make a technique work against an unwilling opponent in a life-threatening situation. Failure meant serious injury or death. While useful, two man sets alone still left a lot to be desired.

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Monosodium Glutamate, more commonly referred to as MSG, is a food additive and flavor enhancer that that has widespread use across the world.  Sold as “Accent” or “Ajinomoto” in the United States, MSG is a common seasoning which is found in many Chinese Food restaurants and in many canned foods like soups, meats and salad dressings.  It’s found in many commercially produced foods like Doritos, Cheetos and other snack foods.  It is also used by fast food companies McDonalds, Burger King, KFC and Taco Bell, just to name a few.

The dangers of monosodium glutamate are well documented.  MSG is an excitotoxin which means that it over excites your cells to the point of damage or death.  MSG and has has been linked to a wide variety of health issues which include: obesity, fatigue, depression, rapid heartbeat, and headaches.  It is the culprit in dreaded Chinese Restaurant Syndrome.  Even though MSG has received a lot of bad press, Food companies continue to use it, but under different names.

Here is a list of ingedients that always contain free glutamate: MSG, monosodium glutamate, monopotassium glutamate, glutamic acid, vegetable protein extract, gelatin, hydrolyzed vegetable protein (HVP), hydrolyzed plant protein (HPP), autolyzed plant protein, sodium caseinate, senomyx, textured protein, calcium caseinate, yeast extract, yeast nutrient, autolyzed yeast.

Here is a list of a few ingredients that often contain glutamate: malted barley, barley malt, maltodextrin, dextrose, stock, broth, bullion, carageenen, whey protein, pectin, soy protein, natural chicken, beef, or pork flavoring, modified food starch, corn syrup, corn syrup solids, citric acid.

The best way to avoid or limit your MSG consumption is to stick to a healthy diet that contains lots of natural and raw foods.  Avoiding processed foods has many other health benefits as well.  Skip the fast food lunch and elect to cook more often at home where you can control the ingredients in your foods more consistently.  By engaging in a wholistic lifesyle that includes exercise and a healthy diet, you can become a better you!

White Dragon Martial Arts, Train Hard-Live Better!

Soft on the Streets

Inside Kung Fu Magazine February 2004

by Adrian Corrales

Tai Chi Push Hands for Self Defense

It seems that everyone has a different idea about what will work in a fight. Ask a thousand martial artists what kind of training is best for self-defense and you are likely to get a thousand different answers. Some say that punching and kicking is the way to go. Others claim that training on the ground is more practical. By dealing with what happens between kickboxing and grappling, tai chi push hands training can help prepare you for whatever comes your way.

No-holds-barred tournaments have shown time and again that it is very difficult to stop an opponent who is determined to take you down. Once things end up on the ground, much of a striker’s power is neutralized. The argument against grappling for self-defense is that it is effective only because no-hold-barred fights occur in a controlled environment. Dropping to the ground is harder to do on the streets when fights aren’t always limited to two people and you don’t know what kind of weapon your opponent might have hidden in his back pocket.

Charging Opponent

Tai chi offers an excellent supplement to any fighter’s routine. A skilled push hands player is an expert at staying on his feet. At the same time, he is capable of controlling an opponent with the expertise of a grappling master.

Sifu Ming Lau, chief instructor of the White Dragon Martial Arts School in Mira Mesa, Calif., is a student of sifu Don Tittle in grandmaster Doc-Fai Wong’s Plum Blossom Federation. A veteran of numerous push hands competitions, Lau maintains that push hands is an effective tool for self-defense.

“Push hands is a great self-defense exercise because it forces you to adapt to oncoming force that is constantly changing,” says Lau. He adds this adaptability is a valuable skill for anyone that wants to learn to fight.

Push hands teaches practitioners to either neutralize or redirect the force. Neutralizing works by applying pressure to an opponent to negate his incoming force. For example, let’s say a force is being applied to your left shoulder. By taking your right hand and placing it on the opponent’s left shoulder, you can easily turn your body and direct his energy back toward him. The force has been neutralized because he cannot push any further without disrupting his own balance. Redirection involves changing the course of an opponent’s attack. Small amounts of pressure are applied to the attacker’s arm or torso so that his force misses your center of balance. Advanced tai chi practitioners can accomplish the same thing merely by turning the body in response to an attacker’s force. This leaves the arms free to counter.

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