A video of me demonstrating a feat of grip strength by tearing an entire deck of cards in half.
Traditional martial arts instructors often frown on strength training (or at least the version of it that is most often practiced in the West), and my own teacher GM Sam Chin is no exception; however, one type of strength and strength training is revered by almost all martial artists is grip strength!
When it comes to “lifting weights,” even GM Sam Chin is in favor of training the grip.
Your feet are how you connect to the ground to generate power (not including ground fighting like jiu-jitsu), but the hands are how you connect to your opponent or to a weapon to apply power.
In addition to training with heavy weapons like long spears and poles, maces, and swords, traditional martial arts often used additional grip training methods like “gripping jars” called nigiri game by practitioners of karate and the stone locks of China (similar to kettlebells) to develop multiple aspects of grip strength like crushing and pinching strength.
Most traditional martial arts emphasize four categories of techniques: striking, kicking, wrestling, and grappling, which involves grabbing the opponent’s limbs and essentially “bending and twisting” to either dislocate a joint or break a bone. All wrestling and grappling require maximum grip strength to be effective.
In more modern times, scientists have even discovered that grip strength is an excellent indicator of your overall health: many studies, like the PURE study, have shown that grip strength is a better indicator of your risk of death in the following 10-12 years than biomarkers like blood pressure!
Whether you want to be an effective martial artist, or just want to be lean, strong, and healthy, train your hands!
The Hidden Battle in Martial Arts Training: Confronting the Ego
Martial arts like Kung Fu are revered not only for their effectiveness in self-defense but also for their power to shape character and foster personal growth. Yet, amidst the rigorous training, the relentless discipline, and the pursuit of mastery, there’s a struggle that many practitioners overlook—a battle that takes place not on the mat, but within.
In this week’s blog post, I delve into a personal story that many martial artists might find uncomfortably familiar. On the eve of my first full-contact fight, I faced a challenge that had nothing to do with my opponent and everything to do with my own mindset. It was a moment of clarity that shifted my understanding of what it truly means to train in martial arts and transformed my approach to both my practice and those I train with.
This revelation didn’t just change my outlook; it redefined my journey in martial arts. If you’ve ever found yourself frustrated by slow progress or caught in the trap of comparing yourself to others, you might be closer to a breakthrough than you think. The solution lies not in how you fight, but in how you view things. And it starts with confronting the one opponent we all have in common—the ego.
Welcome back to another edition of my video blog. This week, I want to talk about an insight I had. It was pretty radical for me and definitely changed my entire training experience since then. It happened the night before my first big San Da fight. I don’t know if they’re actually connected, but that’s when it happened.
My first San Da match, which, if you’re not familiar, is like “three-quarters MMA.” It’s punching, kicking, stand-up grappling, and any takedown is legal, but no ground fighting. We were in Texas because I was going to be fighting at what was then called the Tai Chi Legacy, now known as the Legends of Kung Fu, a tournament put on by the Chin Woo Association every year in Texas.
I was really excited, of course, because it was my first full-contact fight. I also thought I was going to spend the weekend with Sifu, which is always a nice treat. There are so many students now, and Sifu is a popular guy, so it’s hard to get some one-on-one time with him.
But as it turned out, that wasn’t the case because some of the other students came from New York and were staying with us in the hotel. So there I was, up late with nerves, thinking about the fight the next day.
I was also thinking about how I thought I’d have the whole weekend alone with Sifu, and the ego always comes into play. I started thinking, “I’m the best student, and I deserve this and that.”
Then, out of the blue, it occurred to me that even if that was true, even if I was the best of all Sifu’s students, nothing else would be different. My level would still be the same, and I’d still have the exact same amount of work left to do, whether I was the best or the worst.
I had this epiphany that it’s not about anyone else. Wherever others are in their progress has no relation to what I’m working on. That realization totally changed my perspective on training.
It removed a lot of the ego from the process, making the training much more enjoyable. You can celebrate your own victories and progress, as well as be happy for and celebrate the progress of others.
When it comes down to it, the most important thing about martial arts, or any group activity, is the community you’re building.
If you can’t step back and take yourself out of the process to enjoy and encourage the successes of others, you’re not getting the most out of what you’re doing. Additionally, you’ll never be able to become a good instructor.
For those of us in my generation, or if you’re one of my peers, we’re responsible for carrying the arts into the next generation. If you can’t take your ego out of the picture to celebrate and encourage the successes of others, then whatever art you’re practicing—whether it’s BJJ, some kind of kung fu, Karate, or Muay Thai—it won’t help those training under or with you.
Join us and unlock the secrets of the Old Masters!
In this week’s on the mats I’m going to introduce a new channel segment called Coach’s Corner as we take a look at some competition Push Hands footage coming up right after this.
Troy was that my mini seminar in La last month and asked me on Facebook to take a look at video of him doing some competitive Push Hands in the Pasadena California ICMAC tournament in participating in last month and give them my feedback.
First of all props to you Troy for stepping out on the Mast test your skills I think that always has to be said and you did awesome if you’re not familiar with competition Push Hands it can vary wildly depending on the rules set and who’s judging but in this case the rules were pretty free so it was essentially like a nogi Judo match.
First thing I’m going to offer some critical feedback based on my background in I Liq Chuan, which is entirely principle-based and Troy already received lots of tactical suggestions on Facebook so we’re going to focus mostly on body mechanics as opposed to any individual technique and then I want to end the video on a positive note by pointing out three really nice moves I spotted by Troy.
The first tip I want to offer is to make better use of the wrist as opposed to the hand for control which is one of the things I talked about when I was in LA. I caught a couple of times where your hand was laying flat on the opponent’s arm and he was able to use it against you. Maintaining the wrist as the point of contact will help you keep that as a pivot point.
The second tip is getting more comfortable with the lower hand and our lower hand sticky hand drills can definitely help with that. To me it looks like you spent a lot of time and energy just trying to fight for the upper hand position. Working on getting a little better at being able to control your opponent from the lower hand wood go a long way especially when a much larger opponent is basically just posting out on you like we see several times and your match.
Lastly I would work on maintaining the alignment of the shoulders and the hips a little more which we would talk about under the 13 points or the balance of yin yang, but we see here where you move either the hips or the shoulders first, as opposed to both together, winding in and out of the feet, really compromising the position of the spine and limiting your ability to transfer power from the ground to your opponent or vice versa.
On a positive note I was really impressed with how you managed to avoid what in kung fu they call a creeping or osoto gari in Judo despite being totally caught up in the double underhooks, which I think is actually called a Whizzer and wrestling if I recall correctly.
Secondly there’s a point in the first round where you’ll end up with your back turned to the opponent and you use a very bagua kind of stepping and turning to reorient yourself quickly and prevent your opponent from taking advantage of your back and lastly, I thought you did a very nice job of controlling your opponent’s arm early in the first round preventing him from getting that half guillotine after your failed single leg attempt.
That’s it for this week’s on the mats and our first edition of Coach’s Corner. Would you like some feedback on one of your videos? Hit me up on Twitter at lawyer going through or drop a comment below and as always thanks for watching and subscribing and I’ll see you guys next time.
Ashe-What’s up, youtube. In this weeks’ video blog post, I’ve got a very special guest for you.
Prince-Coming up right after this.
Ashe-What’s up, youtube and welcome back to another installment in my video blog series. In this week’s video blog I’m here with Prince Bell a.k.a. Urban Acolyte. He’s got two awesome youtube channels: first one is Urban Acolyte tv and the next one is bad mofo’s movie review channel. Look at the video description below for links or go ahead and click on the i up there, I’ll point you right to those. Prince is in town this week because we had my sifu out here, Grand Master Sam Chin. And so we had an I Liq Chuan workshop, Prince came out to join us and that’s what we’re going to talk a little bit about. Just rap a little bit and get Prince’s feedback from what he thought about the weekend.
This is your second weekend.. second weekend workshop with Sifu, right?
Prince-Yup.
Ashe-So, first of all I should say thank you for coming on the channel with me.
Prince-Well, I’m a fan, so.
Ashe-One of two. So, what did you think? How did it go for you?
Prince- I thought it was pretty awesome. It’s always good to see >>>>Sigong<<<<<(?) and touch hands with him, kind of gauge my improvement. This time I didn’t fall on my face immediately after I touched him, but I liked the talk that we did Friday and getting to see sifu ruey. I was watching him thinking, “Man, if I can move like that when I get to be Ruey’s age like that’s… that’s a bonus of studying this art. He’s still … and he’s spry and up here, the stuff he’s talking about. The tao, and zen and his insights. That.. I wish I was out here to hang with him more even though he lives in BFE.
Ashe- Practically New Mexico. So, you and I are kind of into a lot of the same things: we’re both into kettlebells, we’re both into fitness, we’re both into martial arts, we’re both into meditation. Of course I’m a fan of your channel, too, but we’ve known each other on Facebook a long time so that’s why I was excited to have you out here for the weekend and to be able to shoot a couple of videos together. Basically, what’s in it for you?
Prince-The weekend, or training?
Ashe- All of it.
Prince-Uh, well, I’m doing a real life Jedi series and when I started Urban Acolyte, the Urban Acolyte brand, the whole idea was I was out on the street working my security job I used to have and thinking I want to do something.. at the time I was reading all these Star Wars books, getting over my grandma’s passing, and I said, “I like this whole Jedi thing. How can I be like the Jedi in real life?” and for me it was the I Liq Chuan path, it was the most direct way. Somebody made a meme saying, “I used to want to be a Jedi but then I started training I Liq Chuan.” And there’s Sigong, a silhouette of him. You know, we’ve got the meditation. Sigong told me a four years ago, when people get to level 4 (well now he says 5), you can’t advance unless you meditate. You have to do the meditation, it’s part of the curriculum. And for me I was like that is what a Jedi is about. You have to do the meditation or the whole code… it makes no sense. Being one with the force and letting it guide your actions, you have to meditate. But you also have to do the physical training. You have to put in sweat equity. And I said well, with the fitness, I got that. Meditation, I need help with that. Yeah, I know how to sit down and meditate, but I need somebody or a system to help me go deeper and to give me a reason to go deeper. You want better kung fu? You gotta meditate. And then an actual system. To me this feels like the best art. I don’t need to go to China and study Yi Quan with Mandrin teachers that don’t really speak English, nothing against them, but why go to China if I can stay home, in the USA and there’s good training here. And that’s for anybody. You don’t need to look to China or any other country. There’s other people here. You just may not know about them.
Really, you know what really sold me was actually the first time I saw Sigong in person because when I’d seen him on youtube before, I didn’t understand his >>>>>Fajin.<<<<<< When I think he demonstrated on some guys in Russia and the video is not good quality, and it looked like he just tapped a guy and I don’t remember.. there’s one of you, he tapped you and you had a bruise. There were some guys in Russia, some pretty big dudes, and it didn’t really look like he did anything and I used to say… look at his size. He’s stronger than the people he’s practicing with and then when I actually saw him, how fast he can move and when I touched him. To me, he didn’t do anything. Just stood there like this and I got ready to spin and I just felt like I was falling in a hole. And he didn’t do anything and I know I’m not hypnotized because I don’t play that game. So there’s something to this. Before then I was just kind of on the outside, looking in, like ‘what are they doing?’ and ‘this seems pretty cool’. [5:58 Something about doing stuff] with you and other teachers online but never really experienced it to that degree. so now I want to know how deep the rabbit hole goes.
Ashe- I think that was one of the things that hooked me on I Liq Chuan y’know because I said in some other videos, I wanted to do something.. I wanted the whole package. I didn’t just want to do the martial art. I wanted something that was going to have a philosophy behind it, concepts behind it. I wanted something that was going to be able to lead into or be a foundation for a whole way of life. Not just something you would just do a couple times a week and then that’s it or you just do it on the mats and when you step off, you leave it all there. So that’s why I was looking for something like I Liq Chuan and I knew that’s why I wanted to Chinese martial arts because.. go check out our Facebook page for I Liq Chuan. We’re going to have some video coming out of my Sifu, Prince’s Sigong, talking a lot more about some of this life philosophy and anyway, in one of these videos he’s going to be talking about the true purpose of kung fu and that it’s more than just fighting. So that’s why I knew I wanted to do a kung fu but at the same time I didn’t just want to be dancing, I didn’t want to be waving my hands around in the air. I wanted to do something real. And so I had questions and that’s when I heard about Ruey. I went to meet Ruey and y’know, I like to say I’m a big guy (not with a capital b, but I’m still kind of a big guy) and Ruey is little. He’s real skinny and he tossed me around like a rag doll.
So it was like I had questions, he had answers. He could touch hands and show where the rubber meets the road. So that’s when I knew that this is real. It had everything. It’s got the philosophy behind it that’s going to lead into, show you how to understand yourself, understand your life and find a little bit of peace with that understanding. If not to the full degree ‘well now I’m going to reach enlightenment’ but at least in a practical sense, like I said, it is going to help you understand things a bit better, have that better perspective that gonna bring more peace in your life. But also had the skills behind it. I knew I wasn’t going to be wasting my time when it came to ‘okay now pow. I can touch hands’. I can show. So that’s why for me I’ve been doing this for fifteen years now and no end in sight. For me, because I don’t know about you, of course you started as a young man in your 20’s, I’m 40 now so I’m not totally preoccupied with just being a badass anymore. So now that I’m a bit older, I’m not training just for fighting not that I was at the beginning, but in the beginning my emphasis was still mostly on fighting.
Now that I’m older, I’ve been doing this for a long time because it’s like really, if you’re learning something effective, right, it comes back to that 10,000 hours thing. You don’t need to be 10,000 hours just to be proficient, you only need 200 hours. You want to learn how to fight, a 6 week intensive class should teach you the basics on how to punch, how to kick, right? Some basic entries for things. Boom. Self defense; done. That fast. Then you want to be a decent fighter especially in a sport martial art context; three years. Tops. 18 months and you should be ready. Competitive at least, right, to start entry level competitiveness. So learning how to fight – done. Quick. So why am I still doing it 15 years later? It’s because it’s like, what the heck was that box called from that horror movie… with Pinhead. What the heck was it called? [Prince hasn’t seen it.] But the point is that it’s like an endless puzzle. It’s like the further you go, the more there is to go and that’s why it still interests me [ILC] because it requires such a high degree of coordination and in order to have that coordination you have to have that super high degree of attention, awareness of yourself, that concentration and then you can turn that back on yourself to study your own thoughts, your own feelings on things. Why do I react that way? Why do I react this way? And then, for lack of a better way to put it, if we want to get into the whole karma thing and the wheel of samsara that’s another thing, getting deep into the philosophy. But for my level of understanding, my level of perception, my vision doesn’t go that far. For me I’ve got right now. I’ve got one life to live and no matter what, even if we had multiple lives, like next life I’m not going to be me. I got one shot at this right now, this formation of me. I want to make the most of it. I’m trying to do it right.
Alright, guys, that’s it for this week’s video blog. I want to thank Prince for coming on the video with me. Again, if you want to check out his channel, look in the video description below or click the i for links. Thanks for watching. I’ll catch you guys next time.
How lean do you need to be to be a great martial artist? Do you need to be shredded? Do you need to be swole, or are we asking the wrong questions when it comes to such things?
Thanks to TV and the movies, many people look to the martial arts as the pinnacle of physical fitness and performance, but is this really the case?
In this weeks video blog I make a different case than the conventional wisdom when it comes to martial arts and fitness.
I’ve put together a little highlights clip of the workshop we had with my senior, Alex Skalozub and some of the training we did to be able to use I Liq Chuan as a martial art.
Our Tempe, Arizona student Josh had this to say about the weekend –
” To start, the workshop was really great. Sifu Alex’s prowess in the art shows through his knowledge of the minute details that can make all the difference in what you’re doing in your own practice. I was also “warned” that Sifu Alex’s attitude is an infectious one, and he certainly gushes with enthusiasm. However, he still exhibits the tell-tale sign of a good and wise teacher by being both enthusiastic and stern with students. For me, this makes all the difference because I’m personally not looking for somebody to direct me so much as push me to my limits. Secondly, though the workshop was deemed an applications of internal power workshop, I certainly found a great deal of refinement in the basic exercises and qigong, as well as new exercises to promote further flexibility and looseness in my body. It was also a real treat to go through the workshop pushing my limits. My experience with martial arts workshops is often only going through the motions without experiencing new sensations and forms of movement, and this was quite the contrary with Sifu Alex’s workshop. He sought to bring out weakness (at least the way I saw it) and make it clear just what we each needed to work on individually.
Thank you Sifu Ashe Higgs, Sifu Alex Skalozub, and the ILC crew for making it a memorable and challenging workshop!”
