Kingdom Warrior Academy

When I first started in Chinese Kung Fu, I didn’t really understand the titles used for the teachers.  Like many people, I only knew the Japanese title Sensei (teacher).  This is where the Chinese and the Japanese titles start and end in their commonality.  In Chinese, the equivalent to Sensei is Laoshi (老师).  They are literally the same word pronounced differently but using the same characters between the languages.  In Chinese kung fu the titles are based on family systems, and thus they take on the family structure.  To my understanding, in Japanese this is not true.  While Laoshi (老师) is a generic title for any instructor in any topic or material set, many of the kung fu titles for teachers and class relationships are not generally used outside of the kung fu context.   Also of note, none of these titles infer rank inherently.  A Shifu could outrank a Shiye, and a Laoshi could outrank them both.  They generally only define your relationship to the specific teacher.  Some times they are awarded and not used until that award is bestowed upon them, and sometimes they are assumed the moment the relationship begins.  Depending on culture and personal preference, some teachers may choose to simplify things and use the title Laoshi exclusively.  Some parts of China view Laoshi to be the more honorable title, while some places use it as a junior title in a series of progressions similar to what’s used in college settings with Instructor, Assoc. Prof., and Prof. titles.  Things can be further complicated by the prevalent use of both Mandarin and Cantonese for the same words as well as the different ways to write them in English alphabet.   Many people choose to use titles that they have claim to outside of the class settings such as Doctor or Professor, and many styles use the title Professor in English over the Chinese terms.

Here is a list of the titles, their characters, and translations per my research thus far: (simplified character sets represented here)

1. Shifu (pin yin spelling)/Shrfu (Wade Giles spelling)/Sifu (Cantonese): Teacher (class) Father (师父) also Master Teacher (师傅). These words sound identical but can carry with them different nuances.  Master Teacher is more commonly used outside of the martial context (at least this is my understanding)
2. Shimu/Sumu/Simou: Teacher (class) Mother (师母).  While in dictionaries this is translated as “honorific title for teachers wife”, I have in a rare scenario seen it used by a female teacher in place of Shifu.  Per my research, most female teachers use the Shifu title despite the male gender meaning.  Possibly the Master Teacher variant.
3. Shiye/Suye/Sije: Teacher (class) Grandfather (师爷). This is used in one of two ways, either as the teacher of your teacher, thus the same person might be called Shifu by you and Shiye by your student.  Or, as the head of a system, where only that individual uses that title.  Most commonly, it is in the former… again, per my research.
4. Shigong/Sugong/Sigung: Teacher (class) Grandfather (师公). This is used the same way as Shiye, as gong is another word for grandfather (maternal vs ye as paternal).  Per my research this is often translated into English as “Honorable Master” and is used as the head of the system more often than Shiye might get used for that title.
5. Shilao/Sulao/Silou: Teacher (class) Grandmother (师姥). Most often used as the wife of a Shiye or Shigong. Lao is a maternal grandmother title in typical Chinese conversation.
6. Shizhang/Suzhang/Sizoeng: Teacher (class) Husband (师丈). This is used for a husband of a female teacher.
7. Shibo/Subo/Sibak: Teacher (class) Uncle (师伯). This title is used for an older class uncle.  In typical Chinese conversation, Bo is used for your fathers elder brother.  So this would be for a class brother of your teacher who is greater in “grade” than your teacher – however your system defines this grade.
8. Shishu/Sushu/Sisuk: Teacher (class) Uncle (师叔). This title is used for a younger class uncle.  In typical Chinese conversation, Shu is used for your fathers younger brother. So this would be for a class brother of your teacher who is less in “grade” than your teacher – however your system defines this grade.
9. Shixiang/Suxiang/Sihing: Teacher (class) Older Brother (师兄). This title would be used for a class brother who is your “elder”.
10. Shijie/Sujie/Size: Teacher (class) Older Sister (师姐). This title would used for a class sister who is your “elder”.
11. Shimei/Sumei/Simui: Teacher (class) Younger Sister (师妹). This title is used for a class sister who is your “younger”.
12. Shidi/Sudi/Sidei: Teacher (class) Younger Brother (师弟). This title is used for a class brother who is your “younger”.

Also “elder” or “younger” is generally used based on when the people started, not always based on rank or skill.  However, these titles can be adapted in each school for individual purposes, and often are, so you should learn how they are used in your school’s context.

Jan. 2020 I saw my first student test for 2nd degree black sash, Logan Urbeck.  Then in the summer of 2021 he achieved Shifu title (also my first student to reach this level).

Jan 2020 also saw a first degree test for black, Andrew Wilson (probationary til he turned 16 in June of 20).  In Summer of 2021, Andrew reached Laoshi title.

Christmas of 2020, Justin received his Teachers License.

Richard Cameron is approaching black sash, tentatively in November of 2022

When I started in the internal arts, I began in the Shen Long TST lineage. I didn’t really know a lot of the unique history of the lineage, and I was curious. I asked my teacher questions, his teacher questions, and searched voraciously to learn as much as I could about the origin of this lineage of which I was now a part.

I found the TST line to be unique, it had clearly gone through an evolution of sorts that set it apart from the typical Xing Yi Quan I was seeing online and represented in books. It was subtle, mostly. A larger emphasis on the rear step to root the power, scaled down movements in terms of size to emphasize shorter power, a tighter fighting guard in the san ti shi, and some unique waist mechanics to create the power. But it also possessed some things that no other line of Xing Yi in the world had… the 8 step forms.

There were 5 forms that were used as introductory forms in the TST line, specifically the Shen Long TST line. Namely:
1. Babuda
2. Balienshou
3. Bashou
4. Batangquan
5. Meihuatui

There were a few others that were unique to this line as well that did not clearly scream that they belonged to the art of Xing Yi Quan specifically. The TST line was unique in a number of ways that I will just list:

1. the addition of forms not found in other XYQ lineages
2. the way it was organized
3. it combined the three big internals (xing yi, ba gua, and tai ji)
4. the use of uniforms and belts (sashes)

While there were other lineages that also taught all three arts, none of them did it the way that the TST line did, or not so I was aware in all my research.

The first question I wanted to know was what happened to bagua and taiji? You see, historically all three had been in my lineage, but now only the one art was. I found out that my teacher’s teacher had never learned the other two from his teacher (Xu HongJi) before he had died. After a while, I realized that in all my research – I had never found a student of Xu HongJi who had learned either Ba Gua or Tai Ji from him. It made me wonder if Xu had even learned those arts from his teacher, Hong Yi Xiang.  Alas, I will probably never know the answer to that question. My gut says, probably not, or not in their entirety.  But either way, I do not believe he chose to incorporate them into his schools curriculum. I was told by one student of Xu that Hong was not given permission to teach the BGZ or TJQ from his teacher, Zhang Jun Feng. I will circle back to this point later.

Let’s go back in time to the early 1900’s. Tian Jian, China was a popular place for the internal stylists to live and teach. We know that Gao Yi Sheng lived there, as did Li Cun Yi. They were the primary source of knowledge for Zhang Jun Feng, who was a merchant that studied privately with these two men. He learned Hebei Xing Yi from Li Cun Yi and what would later be termed Gao style (a Cheng style) Ba Gua from Gao Yi Sheng. Somewhere along the way, he learned Wu-Hao (a Yang derivative) style Tai Ji, but we don’t know from whom. In 1948, he was forced to leave China because of the Communist revolution. He settled in Taiwan with a large number of other Chinese immigrants. He didn’t have much luck with his business, so he fell back on teaching the martial arts, as he had gained some attention for his skills. He opened up the Yi Zong school, a name given to his line of Ba Gua from Gao Yi Sheng.  Doctor Kenneth Fish trained with him some time after that and reports that he taught BaShou and BaShi at that time, so we know that those 2 forms pre-dated the TST formation. From other research it was clear that many lines of Xing Yi taught a form called Bashi so that one was even older than Zhang himself. I have not found any other lineage of Xing Yi or Ba Gua that teaches Bashou, and it is a clear fusion of the Xing Yi animals and the linear Gao forms, so it is likely that it is post Gao Yi Sheng, maybe even a creation of Zhang himself.

Zhang became quite successful at teaching the martial arts, even training the Taiwanese President and some of the military commanders of the time (this becomes relevant in my Ba Gua lineage which I trained in much later). He eventually began training three siblings. Hong Yi Xiang, Hong Yi Mian, and Hong Yi Wen. Each one of them were either given a specialty by Zhang or just grew into them organically. Yi Xiang was the Xing Yi guy, Yi Mian Ba Gua, and Yi Wen Tai Ji. As far as I know, Yi Wen never taught much, if at all. But Yi Mian and Yi Xiang both taught (together and separately, I believe). It is my understanding that they all learned all three arts. At some point in time, Hong Yi Xiang began his own school, Tang Shou Dao (Tao). Literally it means “Chinese hand way”, I find it hard to believe he was not referencing Karate, which originally translated the same way before Funikoshi changed it to “empty hand way”. Hong was known to have a great appreciation for the way the Japanese arts were taught, and supposedly it was a trip to Japan that inspired him to organize his curriculum the way he did. He even borrowed the uniforms and belts as well as many exercises for conditioning.

When Hong created the TST, he was apparently very rigid in the way he progressed people through the material, at least that is what is believed if you watched the BBC documentary on him. I believe he relaxed this significantly later in his life, if not abandoning it completely eventually.

Multiple sources confirm he created several new forms to act as stepping stones for his students into the more abstract material of the internal arts. Listed below are the ones I have been told can be attributed to him:

1. Babuda
2. Balienshou
3. Meihuatui (may have been called Ba Ti, “8 kicks”, at some point)
4. Shaolin yi lu
5. Shaolin er lu
6. Wu Hu Xia Xi Shan
7. Da Peng Zhan Chi
8. Bai He Quan

Remember in the beginning of this article, where I stated there were a bunch of forms that didn’t seem to exist anywhere else but in the TST line? By now, we have seen where most of them came from. There are even some on this list I had never heard of or seen before. Namely, 4,5,7,8. But one of them was conspicuously missing… Batangquan.  We will see it later.

Now, I believe, Yi Mian and Yi Xiong taught together for a time, then split to do their own things. If my source is correct about Yi Xiang not being allowed to teach Ba Gua by his teacher, then at some point that changed. Maybe when Zhang died. I don’t know, but at some point in time he began teaching the BGZ curriculum to people. This is well documented.

Many of Hong’s senior students learned all three arts from him. And this is where an interesting wrinkle enters the equation. Zhang practiced Wu Hao Tai Ji, which was a complete system that split off from the Yang style then again from the Wu style. But when the time came for Hong Yi Xiang to learn Tai Ji, Zhang sent him to Chen Pan Ling to learn his system, while he taught the other two Hong brothers the Wu Hao system.  It is even noted that in the Wikipedia article on Hong Yi Xiang, it states he learned Wu – Hao, but he didn’t.  No one knows why. This created some confusion several generations down the lineage as it was believed that Yi Xiang did a Yang style, but he didn’t.

Then comes Xu HongJi. I don’t know for sure, but at some point, Xu broke off from Hong to do his own thing, and he created his own school called Shen Long, then later founded the International Tang Shou Tao Association. I will never know for sure if Xu learned the other two arts, or just decided they were not needed to accomplish his goals, but he basically continued Hong’s way of teaching with just a few changes.

For all I know, Xu might have taught all the forms Hong created, but they didn’t travel down my lineage after him, nor did several other students of Xu remember learning them. It is my personal belief that he did not teach the two Shaolin forms (yi lu and er lu), or the Bai He Quan or Da Peng Zhen Chi. He did continue the Wu Hu Xia Xi Shan, and he introduced 6 other forms into the system:

1. Batangquan (told you it would be revealed)
2. Shaolin 1
3. Shaolin 2
4. Shaolin 3
5. Shaolin 4
6. Bajiquan

Based on the fact that almost all of Batangquan movements are present in a different form taught by the Taiwanese military in the late 60’s, I would have to conclude that Batangquan was a re-imagining of that form.

The 4 Shaolin’s and the Bajiquan are probably either borrowed or re-imaginings of forms from the arts with their names. He also introduced some significant changes to the Tian Gan exercises from the Gao Ba Gua in the system. I have no idea if he changed them permanently or if the way he taught them was part of his own experimentation or maybe a step in a teaching progression but the ones done by people who learned them from him show a significant difference from the ones done by Gao practitioners today, and by students of both Zhang and Hong who are still alive to comment on it.

In the late 90’s, my teacher and many of his generation under his teacher went back to Taiwan to pay their respects to the family of Xu HongJi. While there, they learned a form called Shishequan (10 snake fist) from one of Xu’s class brothers who helped him to run his school. I believe he was known as Black Snake. I have no idea where this form came from originally, as I have not found any reference to it anywhere else. It may very well have been Black Snakes personal creation, I don’t know.

It is fascinating to me to see the evolution of the lineage through the years from generation to generation, and also based on when each person studied with each teacher. It is clear that it was common place to take ownership of what you had been given, to pay respect to it, but also to make it your own.

I am sure that as I continue to learn, I will learn more about my history. It’s a constant process.  Much of this information wasn’t available when I first started looking.  With the popularization of the internet and social media, it became possible to hear from people that otherwise were not an option. I wanted to write this because I realized that I had gathered information that helped me form a narrative that explained where stuff came from, but it was pulled from a vast number of sources and not all in one place. I wanted to put it down in writing while I still could. I would have cited more sources, but some of the discussions over email, or forums, or even interviews that were online at one point in time are gone now.  I don’t know how accurate my narrative is, but it makes sense of things for now.

Not exactly recent, but thought I would post it anyway,

Justin Elliston, passed his 4 hr long black sash test!! (Jan 4, 2017 I know, not recent)

Both Andrew and Daniel Wilson are prepping for their brown sash tests in a few months.

An ongoing debate in the martial arts world, that has probably been going on for its entire existence and probably will continue to go on for its continued existence is about technique efficacy.  Does it work?  That is the question, and well it should be because we are often trusting our lives to its answer.  Recently, I have seen this question being bantered around  in the context of self-defense.  This teacher posts a strategy/technique to deal with this scenario and someone else responds with a criticism, then someone else with another criticism of the criticism.  Bravo, this is the line of thinking that keeps us all sharp.  Without it, we may allow ourselves to become ineffective and watered down, and that is when we become truly dangerous – not to our opponents, but to ourselves and to our students.

However, I do want to point out that whether a technique works in real life or not is nearly impossible to answer.  We have all seen examples of things that probably should not have worked, but did.  It doesn’t mean we take a laissez faire approach, we should teach with a critical eye, based out of experience and research.  It instead means that we have to acknowledge all the different factors that contribute to a specific technique’s efficacy.

If the technique will work in a demonstration, then it works… period.  Everything that decides its efficacy after that is more about whether Joe Schmoe can make it work against Harry on Nov. 22, 2017, at 12:32 pm in the alley behind Place X.  And that depends on a lot of different things.  How much has Joe trained that technique, how many people has he practiced it against, did he set it up properly, or was it appropriate for that moment, was he trying to force it, weather, lighting, fatigue level, injury status, footing, terrain, Harry’s level of preparedness and skill level, etc… you get my point.  I talk about this a little in my post on sparring strategies.  The bottom line is that every person is going to have to commit to training to make anything work, no matter how simple or effective, and there will be situations where it won’t work… no matter who is doing it or how good they are at implementing it.

You want to be able to defend yourself, you need a multi-modal approach that looks at multiple different approaches and gives you several different tools to use.  I believe in keeping things simple, but when you simplify it too much you risk making it less effective due to narrowness of scope.  You try to make it too broad and you risk making it unattainable for the masses.  There is no perfect balance for all people.  Each person seeking to improve their self-defense skills needs to have a custom fit approach, and that isn’t always possible for everyone.

My recommendation is to be realistic in your expectations of any technique or strategy, understand its strengths and weaknesses.  Have multiple tools to use, carrying a gun is a great tool… but you can’t always get to it in time and you need to have something else to use in the meantime.  Same thing goes for if you are attacked by someone bigger and stronger than you or if there are multiple attackers.  Be prepared for a lot of different scenarios and learn how to identify them earlier rather than later.  In self defense it is especially true that knowledge is power and an ounce of preparation is worth a pound of cure.  And train regularly against a variety of different resisting people with different demographics and anthropometrics. Never assume something will or won’t work until you have given it due diligence in training, and that means hundreds of hours of practice.  If you don’t have that, then stick with the easier methods, but don’t be critical of the technique.

I tell all of my students that in real world combat there are only 3 rules:

1. what you can do, try.
2. what you can’t do, don’t try.
3. always consider what you can justify in a court of law.

Happy training folks!!! and keep it real – real life, and real civil.

This post is going to be somewhat random, so I apologize in advance for jumping all over the place.  I was browsing a discussion online when I ran across a question about sparring strategies from a new student asking for tips from the veteran practitioners.  I thought “that is familiar”, as I often was looking for those golden nuggets when I was a new student myself.  As I have grown as a practitioner, I have come to understand that there is no single linchpin concept that will unlock successful sparring for a new student other than “stay with it”.  Every student is unique, and so are their struggles, so this post isn’t meant to be an answer to that student so much is it is just me blabbing about what I have learned about sparring in my 16+ years.

My teacher used to always tell me that I had two stumbling blocks when it came to sparring, and both of them were psychological.  My first one was that I unconsciously assumed skill levels in others and sparred accordingly.  I would put my fellow classmates through the paces with sparring and suddenly drop down when I faced off against my teacher, because he was supposed to be “so much better than me”.  Unconsciously I would not press him as much because I felt like I had to maintain the “gap”.  Then I would spar one of my classmates and I would ramp it up significantly because I had to be at that level to keep up or stay above them.  I still struggle with these thoughts, but now I can spot them and deal with them appropriately.  You have to approach every sparring match as an opportunity to show that other person your very best, regardless of how good you think you should be or how you think you should compare to them.  As a teacher, I still get hit by my students, and I still fight the urge to degrade myself mentally for allowing it to happen.  The truth is that no one person is going to be able to block everything, or always function at a certain level.  Real life doesn’t work that way, and it’s ok to just let things go and give it your best, regardless of how things line up afterwards.

The second trap my teacher clued me into was not trusting myself to just respond.  I had all these expectations of how I should respond to my partners/opponents in matches/fights and I was constantly trying to micromanage my reactions.  My teacher was always telling me to just relax and let my training take over on a subconscious level – to trust myself.  I feel like I do much better at this now, but I have logged thousands of hours retraining my reactions and my expectations of my responses to come to that point.  Real technique and skill isn’t in the prediction of technique or the regurgitating of it, but in the appropriate responses to real life stimuli.  I used to think I had to block X technique with Y technique and if I didn’t I wasn’t using my art.  If this is what you are being taught, then you need to find a new teacher.  Any true art is expressed through much simpler principles than rehearsed movements and lists of techniques that you learn for tests.  The techniques are there for you to learn the principles, the essence of the art.  That is what needs to be expressed.  It used to be that I would try a whole match to use a specific technique and I would view it as a failure if I didn’t.  That mindset was setting me up for failure because I couldn’t control my opponent, and a true expression of the technique has to be relevant and spontaneous; it has to be creative.  Allow yourself to be judged by whether what you did worked, not by whether you performed X technique in all the right places.

Some other things that I discovered that hindered me along the way were crazy hollywood expectations of fights.  I always thought that if I was really good I would be able to have that perfect fight like you see in the movie, and it took me years to un-program that expectation of perfection from myself.  I had to teach myself what real skill actually looked like, and it is rarely perfect.  Setting realistic expectations of my performance helped me tremendously as a fighter.  Realizing that there were so many more variables than just me that determined if I landed that strike or blocked that strike or pulled off that technique or not.  The important thing was not that I tried and succeeded, but that I tried and learned.

One of the things that helped me a lot also was sparring with really talented people.  The first few times I sparred outside my own school I thought to myself, “these people aren’t that good.”  It wasn’t until later that I realized that I was judging them by my classmates, who were really talented.  I always thought of myself as barely keeping up in class, and suddenly I was wasting people who were supposed to be on my level from other schools, feeling like I was always holding back on them.  I had classmates from a variety of different backgrounds, and each of them challenged me in a different area.  I credit a lot of my skill to training with them and having to learn to deal with them.  If I had not, I would have gotten locked into one way of doing things and ranked myself as pretty good when in fact, the moment I stepped outside of that comfort zone I would have been destroyed.  So don’t get locked in, force yourself to face off against people with different approaches and skills, and learn to handle those.

Spar with intent and differing levels of intensity.  Often I would see a couple of people sparring and they would do very well, then when faced off with me, would fall apart because I would press them harder than they ever allowed themselves to be pressed before.  I am not saying you have to spar at full contact levels, but don’t always practice at the comfortable “circle each other, tag, break, circle…” level either.  You need to know what it feels like to be pressed by an attacker that just keeps coming and nothing you do seems to be able to stop them.  You need to be able to function at the full speed continuous motion level if you have any aspirations of becoming good, let alone great.  So switch it up occasionally.  Train just legs, or just hands, or all attack, or all defense, or only right side or left side.  Train one hit sparring, train continuous flow sparring, train light touch, train medium touch, and occasionally with proper protection and with people you trust… train full contact.  Train short rounds, train long rounds, train with emphasis on certain types of techniques or certain ranges.  Train against different people.

Have no expectation about results of any technique or strategy.  What works beautifully on Joe, may fail miserably on Mary.  Realize that technique efficacy isn’t always a quantifiable variable that you can say with confidence that this strategy will or won’t work.  There are too many variables to determine that in advance.  Lighting, temperature, terrain, background noise, context, height ratios, weight ratios, reach, unique backgrounds and experiences, level of weaponry, builds and body types, muscle bulk and tone, previous injury, CURRENT injury, mood, emotional position, fatigue, etc…

Understand that not all technique is equally applicable.  Simple techniques like punches, backfists, most kicks, and elbows/knees are easily performed and don’t require thousands of hours to do effectively.  Compound techniques are simply linking several simple techniques together in a short series.  They take your fighting level up several notches and bring you to a whole new level.  They are harder to implement and harder to handle defensively.  As a student, you should start off with simple attacks and simple defenses.  Don’t expect yourself to do more until you start to feel slightly less overwhelmed by the process of implementing the simple techniques.  Then you can begin stringing them together in combinations.  Get that down and then you start getting to complex techniques.  Complex technique is more abstract, and requires more refined timing and anticipatory skills.  Placing the expectation of that technique early on in your training is foolish and will lead to ineffective implementation of your art and the belief that the techniques “don’t work” in real life.  The truth is that it wasn’t the technique that failed, it was the practitioner who tried to operate above his/her level.  Even among high level fighters, you will observe a significant percentage of technique utilized is still simple/compound technique.  It will always be your foundation.

Don’t make it about winning or losing.  Make it about learning and improving.  It would be better for you to train with someone who always beats you than to train with someone you know you can dominate.  If you are winning all the time, make sure you are making it helpful for the person you are training with too.  If you are losing all the time, make sure your partner will help you to figure out why.  Realize that true gains are often times in your head first.  They come from overcoming presuppositions,  fears, insecurities, and false assumptions and allowing yourself to just be in the moment and respond to what’s happening right in front of you.

That’s it for now.  Happy training!!!!