What's New with Falling Leaves Kung Fu!

Thanks in large part to Pavel Tsatsouline and the dragondoor crew, people are becoming more and more aware of the benefits of training barefoot.

According to Vibram, some of the benefits of being barefoot are:

1. Strengthens Muscles in the Feet and Lower Legs - wearing FiveFingers will stimulate and strengthen muscles in the feet and lower legs, improving general foot health and reducing the risk of injury.

教学相長 - jiao4 xue2 xiang1 zhang3

Even if you only practice a stand up art, primitive movements are still important to practice as part of you conditioning routine since they are those that mimic the process we all under went as babies. Rolling over, pushing up, crawling and then standing.

Here is the famous Steve Cotter (also of the Tang Shou Dao lineage) doing the "fuhugong" 伏虎功是 (lying tiger exercises). As I understand it, Xu, Hong-Ji took these movements from Judo and added them into the TSD curriculum.

Cung Le V. Na Shun "The Mongolian King"

Hong, Yi Xiang (洪懿祥) founded the Tang Shou Dao (唐手道) association in Taiwan, and taught Xu, Hong Ji, (許鴻基) who in turn and taught noted American CMA practitioners like Mike Patterson, Vince Black and briefly, Tim Patterson. (I've written about the TSD before).

Here's a short clip of Master Sam F.S. Chin discussing pull and push as one circular force at the point of contact in I-Liq Chuan. The clip was taken during the most recent workshop here in the Phoenix/Tempe Arizona workshop.

This is 13 year old Dmitri Smelkov, fighting his first fight against a (Kyokushin ?) Karate student from a neighboring school in Vologda, Russia. Dmitri has only been training in I-Liq Chuan for one year.

I-Liq Chuan is quite popular in countries like Russia and Poland. They have large groups who all train very hard. They're an inspiration to I-Liq Chuan students all over the world!

Well done Dmitri!

Here's a quick nutrition tip regarding getting adequate, quality protein in your diet.

One of the most common questions I used to get about I-Liq Chuan's spinning hands training was "if we ever did it with stepping?"

Here's a little clip from the recent workshop in Meas, Arizona.

Here, my Sifu discusses a bit on the wrapping exercise we use to generate the spiral energy in the body (i.e. the chansijin, aka, silk reeling)

Please post thoughts to the comments section!