clemson chinese martial arts club

So, in light of my recent Cuong Nhu fallout, I've decided for several reasons to start my own martial arts club.  I hope nobody takes it the wrong way; I'm not mad at Darius or at Cuong Nhu.  I respectfully disagree with their philosophies on the martial arts, and I also am disappointed that there isn't already a Chinese marital arts club at Clemson.  In an effort to "be the change you want to see in the world", so to speak, I've started designing my own club that I can hopefully start in the spring semester, although I may wait until next fall so I can have a larger student starting base (since I can have an exhibit at the club fair then).

I had an issue when I was coming up with this in my head, though.  The issue is this: I know a lot of kung fu, but I don't want to rush the teaching of it.  I want to teach the forms slowly, and include lots of applications, breathing exercises, and drills.  This means that if I teach a linear curriculum to all students, I would get through perhaps a quarter of what I know before I graduate.  But if the club is going to continue after that, they would need to collectively know a bit more than that.

Instead of using a linear curriculum then, I took inspiration from both sifu Yao Li's curriculum, as well as an idea of specialization that you see in lots of RPGs (sort of like sub classes), and have decided to use a curriculum that offers several paths of study.  Observe my cool image:

In my curriculum, everybody (with some exceptions) would start with learning 1st Long Fist.  The reasoning here is that 1st Long Fist includes a lot of general movements and patterns in it that are seen throughout the martial arts.  In this way, everybody can at least come from a similar background when discussing mechanics of kung fu.  The form would also build flexibility and endurance, which is good for all branches of martial arts.  Finally, it will let everyone get to work together before being in more specific groups.  The rare exception I would make to this rule would be if someone wanted to take Tai Chi but didn't feel like they had the capacity for the kind of exercise required for a wushu form.  This might pop up if an older adult or someone with health problems wanted to take tai chi for its health benefits.

After learning 1st Long Fist, students could choose their next form out of these three: 2nd Long Fist, the 24 move Yang style tai chi form, or the baby mantis form (which I may start calling "junior" mantis to remove the negativish connotation).  After learning this form, the idea is that they would continue along the track they chose, but they could always change tracks if they so desired.

As for the different tracks, I tried to place forms in what seemed to me to be a logical ordering.  For the Tai Chi track, I started with the 24, which seems like an obvious starting point and is kind of a universal standard for starting off with the Yang style.  After that, I inserted some Chi Kung, and some philosophy will probably go in there as well, in addition to push hands exercises and meditation.  Following that, the student can learn, in whatever order they wish, the other three forms: the 42 combined sword form, the 48 combined open hand form, or the fan form I learned.  Of course, after that, I'll hopefully have learned more myself so there is something else to teach!

In the Wu Shu track, the students would learn 2nd Long Fist right after 1st Long Fist.  Following this, they would get their first exposure to a weapon with the 32 long staff.  From there, they could pick up the 32 short staff, 32 spear, or compulsory (108) long fist.  If, god forbid, they finished all that, I would still have plenty to teach them, so I'm not so worried about that.  They would probably continue with the two 32 swords, compulsory long staff, compulsory broadsword, double broadsword, etc.

The last track is an odd one.  Since I made the first two tracks kind of pure in their topics, I didn't know what to do with the other stuff I knew.  As such, I created what I initially wanted to call an "Exotic" track, but decided to call the "Survey" track instead, which was probably a good decision.  It would start of with the mantis form and then go either to some southern forms like nan chuan and nan quin, or they would learn fonza and eagle.  Beyond that, they might pick up things like bei shaolin (if I ever learn it), and 18 elbows, which my instructor said I'll be learning at some point.  If nothing else, they could pick up some more long fist forms.

So that's that.  If any mandarin speakers are reading this, please excuse my awful romanizations.

martial philosophy fallout - my story of cuong nhu failure

Tonight, I'm considering quitting Cuong Nhu.  And, strangely, although it's been sitting in my mind for a while, everything has been put into place by one of the people I've come to respect most at Clemson - Darius Jones, my Cuong Nhu teacher.

I originally started Cuong Nhu because I was afraid to lose the aspect of my life which is so centered on martial arts.  Looking around at what clubs existed at Clemson, I found a disheartening lack of any Chinese martial arts (which seem to be going strong at all the other institutions I have friends at).  The closest thing I could find was Cuong Nhu, which blends several arts together including Wing Chun and T'ai Chi Chuan.

So I enrolled.

A particularly interesting thing about Cuong Nhu that attracted me was its similarity to Kempo.  With that in mind, I felt pretty good about how I was doing in class.  I tried to be very careful about over-performing, so to speak.  And I did pretty well at that too.

Soon, though, I came to realize that something was missing.  I'm not sure if it was because I knew too much already, or if it was because of a lack of something in the instructors' roles, but I was certainly not being mentally stimulated.  The physical conditioning was great, don't get me wrong.  But I hold the strong opinion that the martial arts are not just physical, but also both mental and spiritual, and I was not getting the latter two of those stimulations.

I had kind of known all along that this was going to happen to a degree, because I would initially be training alongside less experienced martial artists; and that's okay.  I actually enjoy watching them learn, and I'm glad that I can help them when I can.  So I knew this was coming, but I had a plan.  To compensate, my plan was to make an effort to more deeply understand the art.  My plan was to examine every part of it carefully, with scrutiny, and perhaps understand the both the mechanics and the philosophy of it with more depth.

In the first few weeks of my classes, this kinda worked out.  And to my surprise, some of my instructors even seemed to supplement my training.  I remember that during our first class about rolling, Sensai Nick coached me on new, harder things try since I initially knew how to do it all or picked it up with a good bit of ease.

I'm not saying that I got everything right, of course.  Many things were harder for me, since I was accustomed to other philosophies of fighting.  But that's okay.

Sadly, though, things like that faded.  I was back to my initial plan; criticize, examine, scrutinize, disassemble, and comprehend.  I didn't have malicious intent with these things; my plan was not to expose flaws in the system.  I figured that if a scholar learns by careful analysis of literature, why shouldn't an martial practitioner learn by careful analysis of his art?  So this is what I did, and I kept it in my head, in notebooks, and some of it in my muscle memory.

Today, though, I was corrected for the form I took on my "inner chop" strike (crosshand shuto strike).  I didn't really mind, and I corrected it, but I asked afterwards why we should fully chamber the hand instead of striking from the waist.  I knew the answer, of course, because I had been asked the question seemingly hundreds of times by white belts, especially the younger ones.  But I asked anyway, because I felt that having mastered the basic strike, it was more efficient and practical to not fully chamber to the ear.

This is the point at which our marital philosophies took separate paths.  My answer to this question would be "because we learn it this way to make your strike better as you perfect it", meaning that we learn it this way as white belts so that we understand the outline of motion, but that it is clearly ideal to generate equal force across a shorter (and therefore quicker) path of attack.  We will also, then, eliminate telegraphing the strike to the opponent.

Sensai Darius's answer, however was simply - and I paraphrase, of course, because I can't remember verbatim - that we do it this way because that's the way it is.  This answer was, on the whole, not what I expected.  I've given that answer to questions before too, but usually when it pertained to the order of moves in forms and katas or the names associated with techniques.  I almost never given such an answer when a student has questioned the mechanics or practicality of a strike, and neither have my instructors before me.  Even if the answer is "we'll talk about it later", I try to explain the reasoning behind the move.

I was so surprised by this answer that I was actually somewhat... distraught?  From a man I had come to respect and, to a degree, admire as a martial artist, I had expected a more elaborate comparison of my suggestion against his dictated form.  He acknowledged that my way might make sense sometimes, but that we did it this way for basics.

Clearly, this makes sense, right?  Well, sort of, but not really.  I understand that this would be the answer to someone who has just learned the strike, but he and I both know that I've been doing the strike for 14 years.  I can do the strike in my sleep.  If our roles were switched, I would have allowed it to be done differently in basics if it made more sense and wasn't too big of a change.  Why?  Because basics are where we engrain technique into our muscle memory.  In a fighting situation, simply knowing that it would be faster to throw a shuto from the hip means nothing if all you've ever done is thrown it from the ear, just like remembering what a technique looks like doesn't help you until you've practiced it over and over.

[On a separate note, I also asked why we have to start our wrist from a weird rotated position before executing a middle (#1 or #2) block.  He did give me an answer this time; but I can't make sense of it.  He claimed that by rotating the arm as it blocked, it would "torque" the arm to give it more power.  I can't make sense of this, though; the only effect outside of the arm would be a (very!) slight increase in angular momentum, but on the axis of the arm, not the axis of motion.]

Anyway, I asked him this while everyone was getting water, and class restarted afterwards.  It continued and ended.

After class, he pulled me aside into the equipment room, along with Sensai Bruce.

The first thing he told me about was that some of the time I was standing with my arms crossed or on my belt, and that it wasn't really following etiquette.  Mreh, I think, okay.  I know that I do that sometimes, especially when I'm tired, and I understand where he's coming from (even though it's not in the etiquette list that he claimed stated it).  So whatever.  I'll try to fix that.

But then... ugh.  Then it came.

Paraphrasing (hopefully not too unfairly), he said that my question was to some degree out of line, but that my follow up response of dissatisfaction with his answer came off as arrogant and cocky.  To his credit, he did allow that perhaps it just came off this way and that I didn't mean it, but it was quite clear from his manner of speech and his follow up remarks that he was quite convinced that I was was being cocky and arrogant.

Which is untrue!  If I write a critical analysis of Kant, am I claiming to be a superior philosopher?  If I question the mechanics of a proof in calculus, am I claiming to be a superior mathematician to my professor?  Can I not question - and requestion, if necessary - the mechanics of a martial art?

Apparently, the answer is no.  He made it quite clear (although Sensai Bruce seemed to keep contradicting him on a few points, a pattern for which I was quite thankful) that Cuong Nhu was static and, to put in short, set in stone until his superiors say otherwise.

In some ways, I find this to be arrogant.  Consider the various styles of Chinese wu shu.  They have been around for millenia, and are still being refined - not by some core board of directors, but by both masters and students across the world, bettering styles and letting them be adopted through a genetic natural selection of sorts.  But in accordance with Taoist philosophy, there is very little close-mindedness in the Chinese arts.

I thought this was true with Cuong Nhu, considering that one of their "Five O's" is "Open Mind."  But I suppose your mind can only be open to yourself.

What came next was a bigger surprise; after I talked a bit about practicality in self-defense, Darius made the (in my opinion, very broad and philosophical) claim that Cuong Nhu is not primarily about self defense, but about self betterment.  I could see where he was going until he said that "the moves are irrelevant... if we are told [to load a shuto from the forehead], then we should do it."  While many martial arts are deeply rooted in philosophy and many, especially Chinese arts, ultimately aspire to other than physical perfection, I have never heard of a respected martial art which disregards the "martial" aspect as nothing more than a medium for self improvement and "following orders" (as he said).

I don't just want a self-improvement program, and I don't just want a physical fitness regimen.  I want an art.

This is why I am considering quitting, but I'll probably let the semester run through and see how I feel then.  If I do quit, I will probably start a Clemson Wu Shu Association of sorts, since I know some people who have expressed interest.  It seems to be pretty popular at colleges these days anyway, and I know a few people from Charleston and North Carolina who I might be able to get to do some cool seminars on occasion.

Blegh.  If you got all the way to here without skipping, you gain 450 exp.  Congratulations.  I have more to say, but this is way too long as it is, so I'll discuss it later.

jjw v leaf

Or, more verbosely:

"Jump, Jive, and Wail, versus the Lake Eden Arts Festival"

They're both fun!  I'm going to JJW this weekend.  To be honest though, if it were possible, I would love to go to LEAF instead.

But since it isn't really possible, and since I do want to spend some time in Charleston and with Anastasia, I am happy to be going to JJW.  It's a pretty awesome event.  My first JJW was in my sophomore year of high school (2005).  Jackson took me, and I remember that Sytske was the first person I danced with.  I didn't get to go the next year, but I went with Anastasia in 2007 and we're going again this weekend.  This is seriously a high class event; much nicer than any other school event I've seen put on (except, of course, Harmony Fest).  If you haven't been, and you get a chance to go, you should definitely take advantage of it.  It's a great night, and you get to dress up but not uncomfortably so.  It's in bus depot by the visitor's center (I remember being scared of "The Bus Depot" the first time Jackson told me its name).

Oh, and if you don't know how to swing dance, it's okay.  All the cool people from contra are there, and - just like at contra - they'll help you out.  That's how I learned... although I'm actually not too good.

LEAF... god.  Leaf is like heaven.  It's the most amazing event of the year.  It's just full of art, music, nature, rhythm, life, harmony, beauty, humanity, poetry, euphoria, peace, and oneness.  If you ever - ever - get a chance to attend, please do it.  You won't be sorry.  As soon as you take up the courage to remove your shoes and turn off your blackberry, you'll love it.  It's definitely a release from technology, as Araba advocates in her recent draft article.  You can learn to heal, to dance, to love, and to listen, to play, to poet, and to eat all around the beauty of Lake Eden in the mountains of North Carolina.  

If there was any one place I could go, Leaf is pretty well tied with Charleston.  

Man, why did you put so many tags on this post, Matthew?  Well, probably because Leaf represents them all.

$ man punching

How do you throw a proper punch?  What's all this internal energy stuff they talk about in martial arts?  Here's the first half or so of an article I'm writing to explain.

  Directing Energy in Your Martial Arts

  ----       Matthew Daniels       ---- 

|=======================================|

If there is one thing that seems to frighten and temporarily alienate newcomers to the martial arts, it seems to be noise.  The kiai we often see in the Japanese arts is a prime example.  Often, a new student will feel out of place when asked to kiai, and may sometimes refuse to kiai for weeks into their training.  Even among those who do not refuse, it is not uncommon for the more arrogant students to snicker behind their instructor's back at the idea of a kiai.

But for the advanced student, the kiai is no longer only a noise; in fact, one might eventually feel that the kiai is not a noise at all, but happens to produce some involuntary sound as a consequence of an energetic explosion which drives the power behind their motions.

When a student begins to realize that a kiai is, indeed, not a noise at all, he has probably started to understand the importance of energy management in his chosen art.

I - and my instructors, before me - will sometimes ask students where their punch begins and ends.  To a white belt, this may seem a nonsensical question; the fist, of course, travels from the ribs to the desired target (the opponent's solar plexus, for instance).

Obviously, this is not the answer that an instructor is looking for.  The punch should start not from the ribs, but from the ground.  For some students, this will initially seem confusing, but it is certainly true.  The energy that drives your fist should start from the heel.

As a punch is executed, the heel should push against the ground.  Imagine that the path of your body between the heel and the knuckles is a large canoe resting against a riverbank (the ground).  From a standstill, can you simply begin to paddle and expect the canoe to move?

Well... actually, you can.  And sometimes, there's nothing wrong with this.  This is called punching from the shoulder.  But would it not be faster and more powerful to push off of from a sturdy riverbank, getting your momentum going before you begin to paddle?  This is called punching from the heel.

A convenient way to practice energy concepts like this one is to visualize the energy transferring through your body in real time, as you're punching.  The Chinese traditionally believe in the concept of chi, an energy-like substance which permeates the body and the world, providing a sort of life-force.  Fully appreciating the concepts of chi and the Chinese philosophies behind the different energies at work in the cosmos and inside the human body is far, far beyond the scope of this article.  For now, to illustrate my ideas about energy in your martial art, we will make the gross assumption that chi is a homogeneous, energetic fluid that can be directed and harnessed by the body.

So, in the previous example, can we draw energy like this from the ground?  Yes, we can; and you should, if you wish to generate a respectable amount of power in your attack.  If you visualize the energy transfers at work in your body, it can help you attain this energy channeling and put your whole body in sync with your attack.

Let's run a basic trace of this energy as it travels from the Earth and out of your fist.  For our purposes, the Earth is not moving; it provides an eternal riverbank to shove off of, and is a limitless source of energy.  Therefore, when appropriate, we should always try to use it to our advantage.  To do this effectively, we must root ourselves into the ground; this is one application of your stance training.  Try to imagine your feet reaching down into the ground, locking themselves in place by becoming part of the Earth.  These roots will help ou soak up the energy that will drive your fist.

As you shove off from the heel (without losing your root), the energy will being to travel up the legs.  As it reaches the waist, two things should happen simultaneously.  The energy should being to torque the waist and hips.  It turn, the waist and hips will accelerate the energy up the body and into the spine.

As the energy travels up the spine, a similar reaction will take place.  The energy will excite the spine, causing a wave through it and up the back.  Your chi should ride this wave up your body (along the fire path), and it will be thrown out of the spine and into the arm.