I want to formally Thank Master Meng for coming to the Houston school for his annual public seminar. I also want to thank all the Houston branch school students who attended.

This is exactly what we needed to improve our game even more.The live training is an exciting and a needed method to develop real skill for our Kung Fu students as well for our full contact fighters. Most tradition martial art schools get stuck in training dead methods or fixed time frames and forms. As we know there is a place and time for that but you have to know when to break the foundational mold if you’re going to develop real fighting skill.

On Saturday

Master Meng started out on telling us about his recent trip to China to the Shaolin temples. We are developing a relationship with them and maybe in the future going to have an exchange program where they can come learn from us and we can learn from them. There are many exciting things in the future.

Master Meng also went over the 3 Halls of Shaolin teaching methodology with everyone to help understand where everything fits in and the focus and nature of each stage

After that we dove into the live training methods.

The live training methods were based on teaching from a concept level, to body mechanics, then technique. This gives the student a gross experience in developing flow, training right off the bat and realize the mistakes and bad positions in the beginning. This also let’s the student be more free in the beginning without boxing them into an technique. From there, we give them more details on body mechanics and technique, but by that time they’re starting to have basic flow and basic application skill.

This is opposite on what is mostly taught at traditional schools. Most teach technique first skip flow and then try to spar with it. This is not to say one is right and one is wrong it just depends on your objective. If you’re training a fighter or someone that wants real martial arts skill they cannot do fixed drills for years and expect to use it in a real full contact or street fight. We’ve seen this first hand.

This was all based on the 4 ranges/4 skill sets or in Shaolin we call this Heaven Human Earth Training. Knowing each range and each nature.

Heaven - keeping distance with mobility

Human - maintaining distance, holding your ground

Earth - commitment on moving in.

On Saturday afternoon as well as Sunday we then focused on the 4 timeframes within the Human range. Most Wing Chun systems don’t have this knowledge let along other martial arts systems. They have pieces or specialties.

The 4 timeframes were:

Chi Kui, Chi Sao, Kui Sao and San Da

He broke these down into how each of them can be used specifically in real fighting application. Most Wing Chun schools train Chi Sao timeframe and think that is all they need, but that is actually the least opportunity timeframe usually in a real exchange. Let along if you don’t train the others.

Also on Sunday we went over the 4 timeframes on Earth Training; In Chinese we call this Kam Na.

Kam:Capture

1.) Bridging

2.) Takedown

Na:Control

3.) Pin / Postional Control

4.) Submission

When training this we need to make sure we have skills in the first 3 timeframes before going to the fouth. To pull off a submission in a live format is a final skill / finishing move. This does not mean we can't teach submissions before then biut just know where you are in your skill progression.

Master Meng then gave a talk on the Six Shaolin Wisdoms and how they relate to everything. This is a universal method and truth.

I’ll briefly mention Faat. Faat meaning: Methods/Reality. Faat comes from Buddhism means Darma.

In summery:

The system is as good as the student.

The student is as good as the methods. The methods are as good as how close to reality they are.

This is so true. There are good systems out there but the methods are dead or don’t support the reality of changing of time space and energy.

On a person note Master Meng and I had many hours of person training on the Bart Chum Dao from the Yipman system, a new level of understanding of training Chi Sao from the 6 ½ point concept perspective as well as going over the curriculum.