Pearls of Wisdom

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.

Full Power

The sow-chui, for example, is a roundhouse punch delivered with full extension of the arms, waist and stance. The striking area used is the first knuckle and the target is an opponent’s temple. The sow-chui can also be used against a much closer opponent by changing the striking surface from the fist to the forearm and by changing the target from the temple to the neck.

The dot-chui, Choy Li Fut’s horizontal backfist, is often taught as a strike directed to the floating ribs. By using the forearm instead of the fist, the dot-chui takes on a pushing energy that is useful when combined with a leg sweep.

Many styles employ the forarms in blocking techniques. In Choy Li Fut, there is no distinction between defensive and offensive movements.

“What people don’t realize is that in Choy Li Fut every strike is a block and every block is a strike,” explains Tittle, pointing to chin-ji as a perfect example. Chin-ji is performed by drawing the fist up to the ear and swinging it at a 45-degree angle to the opposite hip. Chin-ji can be used effectively as a blocking technique, but it can also be a devastating forearm strike to the carotid artery.

Other Choy Li Fut techniques that can be applied as either blocking or striking techniques include:

• Jit-fu-chui - A movement similar to the downward blocks seen in other styles, but done with choy li fut’s trademark extension and follow through. The jit-fu-chui can be used as a forearm strike to an opponent’s knee or thigh, delivering the same kind of punishment as the Thai shin kick.
• Dam-kiu - Curling the thumb into an open palm. The hand then swings to the groin or the neck. Dam-kiu uses either the top of the hand or the forearm as a striking surface.

“Forearm strikes can be more devastating than fists because there is no hesitation,” Tittle notes. “The arms contain much larger bones than the hands so they are less likely to break. They also have few nerves so they are easy to condition.”

Conditioning the Forearms

Choy Li Fut contains several arm conditions exercises. Beginners practice 3 star blocking (som sing da), an exercise in which partners execute the system’s most basic blocks on each other. Students move on from there to learn 9 star blocking (gau sing da). Nine Star includes all the same blocks as well as many of Choy Li Fut’s fundamental strikes. This type of training also acts as a precursor to the system’s two-person forms, which toughen the arms as well as develop a student’s sense of distance and timing.

Advanced students use the balance dummy (ching jong) to test their arms against a solid object. By the time this process is complete, the forearms can be used with the brutal efficiency of a club against an opponent.

Forearm strikes are included to some degree in nearly all traditional kung fu styles. Many schools do not emphasize these tools because they focus on techniques for sparring. While sparring is necessary training for any fighter, it is also limiting. If you’re going to step into the ring week after week, many of the body’s most vulnerable targets must be either protected or omitted. These vital areas are often the targets for forearms strikes, so they are seldom used in competition. Forearm strikes make a good supplement to the training regimen of any fighter truly interested in self-defense.

Survival depends on making the best use of the tools at hand. Whether battling the elements or a vicious gang member, the same idea applies. By training the forearms, Choy Li Fut fighters can stack the odds in their favor by adding yet another weapon to their lethal arsenal.

Learn more about Choy Li Fut Kung Fu in San Diego: whitedragonmartialarts.com

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