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| Shaolin monks training kung fu |
How Was Kung Fu Really Taught in the Past?
When I began martial arts, joining a school was simple.
I first practiced Judo and Karate. I visited a club, watched a training session, talked with the instructor, asked about the fees and joined.
When I later began practicing Kung Fu, the process was much the same.
Today we consider this completely normal.
Martial-arts schools advertise publicly. Teachers have websites and social-media accounts. Potential students can watch classes, compare schools, ask about prices and sometimes attend trial lessons.
But Chinese martial arts were not always transmitted through institutions resembling the modern martial-arts school.
To understand how Kung Fu was taught in the past, we first have to understand what martial arts were for.
There Was No Single Traditional Kung Fu School
The first mistake is imagining a nineteenth-century Chinese martial-arts school as essentially a modern Kung Fu school without electricity.
Martial arts existed in many different environments.
They could be transmitted within families and villages, military organizations, security and escort companies, militia groups, religious communities, theatrical groups, secret or fraternal associations and relationships between individual teachers and students.
The method of teaching naturally depended upon the environment.
A village militia preparing men for local defense had different requirements from a professional armed escort.
A family transmitting a particular method to relatives operated differently from a teacher accepting paying students.
A soldier learning weapons did not necessarily train like a civilian martial artist.
There was no single universal method of “traditional Kung Fu training.”
Personal Relationships Mattered
What was very different from today was the importance of personal relationships.
In some traditional environments, simply appearing at a teacher's door with money would not necessarily make someone a student.
Introductions could matter.
Reputation could matter.
Family and community relationships could matter.
And in some traditions, formal acceptance as a disciple involved much more than paying for instruction.
This makes sense when we consider the society in which martial skills were being transmitted.
A teacher might be giving someone knowledge connected with his livelihood, family, community or personal reputation.
Teaching the wrong person could potentially create problems.
Consequently, trust could be part of the admission process.
Martial Arts Could Be a Profession
Today, most people practice martial arts recreationally.
Historically, martial skills could have direct economic value.
People with martial training might find employment in the military, local militias, armed escort services, security work, law enforcement or other occupations where the ability to use force mattered.
Martial instruction itself could also provide income.
In such circumstances, knowledge had value.
A technique wasn't necessarily a mysterious secret because ancient masters loved secrecy.
Sometimes knowledge was simply professional capital.
A craftsman did not necessarily teach every detail of his trade to every stranger.
Neither did a martial artist.
This helps explain some of the secrecy associated with traditional Chinese martial arts without resorting to stories about deadly techniques known only to chosen disciples.
What Did “Closed Door” Mean?
Modern martial artists frequently hear expressions such as “closed-door student” or “indoor disciple.”
Unfortunately, these concepts have accumulated considerable mythology.
Different teachers and traditions used such relationships differently.
Sometimes there genuinely were distinctions between ordinary students and formally accepted disciples.
Certain material might be reserved for trusted students.
But we should be careful about assuming that every historical martial art consisted of a useless “public system” hiding a secret, deadly “real system.”
That idea is extremely convenient because it is almost impossible to test.
If historical evidence shows something ordinary, one can simply claim:
“The real art was secret.”
Absence of evidence then becomes evidence of secrecy.
That is not a useful historical method.
Secrecy existed.
But secrecy itself does not prove the existence of superior hidden techniques.
How Hard Was Traditional Training?
Old martial-arts training was undoubtedly physically demanding in many contexts.
Strength, endurance and the ability to use weapons required physical preparation.
Traditional systems developed numerous conditioning methods using bodyweight exercises, heavy objects, repetitive practice, striking equipment and partner work.
But here again we should resist romantic exaggeration.
We often hear stories about students training until their hands were destroyed, being beaten constantly by teachers, practicing until they collapsed or fighting almost to the death every day.
Some individuals undoubtedly trained brutally.
That doesn't establish that everybody did.
And oral tradition naturally remembers extraordinary stories more readily than thousands of completely ordinary training sessions.
There is also an important distinction between hard training and intelligent training.
Damaging a student's body is not evidence that a training method is superior.
Teachers Didn't Necessarily Explain Everything
Another interesting difference concerns teaching itself.
Modern students expect explanations.
We ask:
Why does this work?
Which muscles are involved?
Where should the weight be?
What is the biomechanical principle?
Historical teaching could rely much more heavily on demonstration, imitation, correction and repetition.
A teacher demonstrated.
The student copied.
The teacher corrected.
The student practiced.
This doesn't mean Chinese martial teachers never explained anything or that students were universally forbidden to ask questions.
But the educational environment was different.
Modern scientific terminology was unavailable, literacy varied enormously, and many physical skills were transmitted in the same way other practical crafts were transmitted: by doing them repeatedly under someone more experienced.
That approach has strengths and weaknesses.
A person can learn highly sophisticated physical skills without being able to explain them scientifically.
But explanations can also disappear during transmission, leaving later generations repeating movements whose original purpose they no longer understand.
Weapons Were Far More Important Than Today
Perhaps the greatest difference between historical and modern Chinese martial arts is the importance of weapons.
Today we usually think of Kung Fu primarily as empty-hand fighting.
Historically, that picture can be misleading.
For soldiers, guards, militia members and others engaged in serious armed violence, weapons obviously mattered enormously.
Spears, sabers, swords, staffs and other weapons occupied important places in Chinese martial practice.
An empty hand is useful.
A weapon is generally more useful when the opponent also has a weapon.
Firearms gradually transformed this environment, although the change did not happen overnight. Traditional weapons continued to be used alongside firearms for a considerable period.
Civilian martial arts also contained empty-hand traditions long before the late nineteenth century, so it would be incorrect to say that empty-hand Kung Fu appeared only after firearms replaced traditional weapons.
What changed was the social environment in which martial arts existed.
As modern weapons, policing, military institutions and eventually modern sport transformed Chinese society, the reasons for practicing martial arts changed as well.
From Practical Skill to Cultural Practice
This transformation eventually helped create something historically unusual:
martial arts practiced primarily because people wanted to practice martial arts.
Fitness became important.
Sport became important.
National identity became important.
Health became important.
Performance became important.
Cultural preservation became important.
Personal development became important.
And eventually martial arts became an international recreational activity.
That doesn't make modern Kung Fu less authentic.
It means its social function changed.
A twenty-first-century office worker practicing a spear form after work lives in a completely different world from someone whose livelihood once depended upon carrying a weapon.
We should expect their training to be different.
The Past Was Probably Less Romantic Than We Imagine
Traditional martial arts culture often presents the past as a lost golden age.
Masters possessed secret knowledge.
Students trained relentlessly.
Nobody questioned the teacher.
Every technique was tested in deadly combat.
Modern practitioners supposedly inherited only fragments.
I am increasingly skeptical of that picture.
The historical reality was almost certainly much more complicated.
There were excellent teachers and poor teachers.
Hard-working students and lazy students.
Practical methods and useless ones.
Open transmission and secrecy.
Professionals and amateurs.
Innovation and conservatism.
Exactly as we find among human beings today.
If we want to understand how Kung Fu was really practiced in the past, we should not begin with the assumption that everything was better.
We should begin by asking:
Who was training?
Why were they training?
Who was teaching them?
What social environment did they live in?
And what problem was their training supposed to solve?
Once those questions change, the meaning of Kung Fu training changes with them.
Sources and Further Reading
Kennedy, Brian, and Elizabeth Guo. Chinese Martial Arts Training Manuals: A Historical Survey. Blue Snake Books, 2008.
Lorge, Peter A. Chinese Martial Arts: From Antiquity to the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge University Press, 2012.
Morris, Andrew D. Marrow of the Nation: A History of Sport and Physical Culture in Republican China. University of California Press, 2004.
Acevedo, William, and Mei Cheung. “Analysis of the Chinese Martial Periodicals Edited During the Republican Era.” Revista de Artes Marciales Asiáticas, Vol. 6, No. 1, 2011.
https://revpubli.unileon.es/index.php/artesmarciales/article/view/84