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| Reflections and lessons from forty years of martial arts training |
I have practiced martial arts for forty years.
During that time I have trained with many teachers, practiced different systems, taught students, changed my opinions more than once, and discovered that some things I once believed were simply wrong.
The longer I practice, the less interested I become in collecting techniques, titles or certificates.
I am much more interested in understanding why things work.
What follows is not an attempt to establish universal laws of martial arts. These are conclusions I have reached through my own training and experience.
Some readers will agree with them.
Others certainly will not.
That is perfectly fine.
Do not allow knowledge to become dogma, and do not allow belief to replace experience.
That principle applies to my opinions too.
Know Why You Are Training
One of the most important questions in martial arts is also one of the simplest:
Why are you training?
Do you want to fight?
Do you want to preserve a traditional art?
Are you interested in health?
Do you enjoy forms?
Are you fascinated by Chinese culture?
Do you want competition?
There is nothing wrong with any of these goals.
The problem begins when the training method and the objective have nothing to do with each other.
Someone interested primarily in traditional forms doesn't need to pretend he is preparing for combat. Someone whose main objective is fighting ability needs training that actually develops fighting ability.
Without a clearly defined goal, it is impossible to judge whether your training is successful.
It Is Not What You Practice. It Is How You Practice It.
People spend enormous amounts of time arguing about styles.
Wing Chun is better than this.
Boxing is better than that.
This lineage has superior structure.
That lineage has the original techniques.
After decades in martial arts, I find these arguments increasingly uninteresting.
It is not about what style you practice. It is about how you practice it.
A technically sophisticated martial art can be trained badly.
A simple system can be trained extremely well.
A famous lineage cannot compensate for poor training.
And having the world's greatest grandmaster somewhere on your lineage chart does not magically transfer his abilities to you.
A lineage can transmit knowledge.
It cannot transmit skill without training.
You Cannot Learn to Swim Without Entering the Water
Forms have value.
Solo exercises have value.
Partner drills have value.
Technical practice has value.
But none of them individually is fighting.
If developing fighting ability is one of your objectives, eventually someone has to resist you.
Timing changes under resistance.
Distance changes.
Balance changes.
Fear changes your behavior.
Fatigue changes your technique.
The opponent doesn't move according to your drill.
And, most importantly, the opponent has his own intentions.
That is why I have always liked a very simple analogy:
Practicing martial arts without sparring is like learning to swim without ever going into the water.
You can practice swimming movements perfectly while standing on the shore.
The water will eventually tell you how much you actually learned.
Technique Is Not Enough
I once expressed this rather dramatically:
“In a real fight, 20 percent is technique and 80 percent is intent.”
I wouldn't pretend today that those numbers represent some measurable scientific ratio. They don't.
But the point behind them remains important.
Technical knowledge alone doesn't make someone capable of fighting.
A person must be able to act while frightened, uncomfortable, exhausted and under pressure.
A beautiful technique that disappears as soon as someone genuinely tries to hit you has limited martial value.
This is why pressure testing matters.
You are not simply testing whether a technique works.
You are discovering whether you can make it work.
Those are different questions.
Kung Fu Must Become Personal
Another principle has become increasingly important to me over the years:
Kung fu is personal.
Your teacher can give you a system.
He cannot give you his body.
You have different proportions, strength, speed, mobility, experience, temperament and age.
You also have different objectives.
At the beginning, copying the teacher is necessary. We need a model from which to learn.
But imitation cannot be the final stage.
Eventually principles have to become embodied rather than merely reproduced.
Two highly skilled practitioners of the same art should not necessarily look identical.
If an art is genuinely based on principles, those principles should permit adaptation.
Your teacher gives you the language. Eventually you have to speak with your own voice.
Simplicity Matters
Martial artists have an extraordinary talent for making simple things complicated.
This becomes especially obvious when people don't regularly test what they practice.
Applications multiply.
Drills multiply.
Terminology becomes increasingly sophisticated.
Explanations become longer.
Eventually an enormous theoretical structure develops around something that should have been relatively simple.
Meanwhile the basic question gets forgotten:
Can you actually use it?
My experience has repeatedly brought me back to two fundamental abilities:
hit well and move well.
Everything else builds upon them.
Sophistication can be useful.
Complexity for its own sake is not sophistication.
Simplicity is the key to efficiency.
There Are No Advanced Techniques Without Advanced Basics
People naturally want to learn advanced material.
Secret techniques are particularly attractive.
I have become increasingly suspicious of that way of thinking.
The difference between beginners and highly skilled practitioners is often not that advanced practitioners possess hundreds of mysterious techniques.
They simply do fundamental things much better.
Their structure is better.
Their timing is better.
Their distance is better.
Their movement is more economical.
Their power generation is better coordinated.
Their reactions require less conscious thought.
This is one reason traditional training can appear boring.
Repeating a fundamental movement thousands of times is not exciting.
But genuine skill is frequently built from very ordinary things practiced to an extraordinary level.
“Internal” Cannot Be Separated From Pressure
I have also become increasingly uncomfortable with the way the word internal is sometimes used in Chinese martial arts.
Relaxation, coordination, breathing, structure, sensory awareness and efficient force transmission can all be extremely valuable.
But if these qualities are supposed to have martial application, eventually they must survive martial pressure.
A body method that exists only during slow cooperative practice has not yet become fighting skill.
The objective is not merely to understand a principle intellectually.
It must become sufficiently integrated that the body continues using it when circumstances become difficult.
In that sense, what people call “internal” training cannot simply float separately from physical practice.
If a principle is supposed to function under pressure, eventually it must be practiced under pressure.
Strength Is Not the Enemy of Technique
Another idea I frequently encounter is that a skilled martial artist does not need strength.
I disagree.
You don't necessarily need to be large.
You don't need bodybuilding-level muscular development.
And strength cannot replace technique.
But physical strength is useful.
So are speed, endurance, coordination, mobility and the ability to generate power.
Good technique allows us to use physical attributes more efficiently.
It doesn't make physical attributes irrelevant.
A martial art should help us make better use of the body we possess—not pretend that we don't have one.
A Teacher Should Explain Why
Over the years I have learned from many people.
The teachers who influenced me most were not necessarily those with the largest schools, highest titles or most impressive reputations.
They were the people who could make me understand.
I don't particularly like explanations that amount to:
“We do it this way because this is the correct way.”
Correct why?
What changes if I move differently?
What mechanical purpose does the position serve?
What problem is the movement trying to solve?
Can it be demonstrated?
Can I test it?
Tradition deserves preservation, but preservation should not require turning knowledge into dogma.
A good teacher doesn't merely give students answers.
A good teacher gives them tools with which they can eventually examine the answers themselves.
I Can Learn From Everyone
This is something martial arts taught me relatively slowly:
I can learn from everyone—from some people what to do, and from others what not to do.
A person doesn't need to be my teacher for me to learn something from him.
Another style doesn't have to be “better” than mine for me to recognize something useful in it.
And discovering that somebody else does something better does not diminish what I practice.
Quite the opposite.
It gives me an opportunity to learn.
The moment we become emotionally dependent on proving that our teacher, lineage or style possesses all the answers, learning becomes extremely difficult.
Ego Is the Enemy
Friendly training should be exactly that: friendly training.
Two people exchange skills and help each other improve.
Unfortunately, ego sometimes changes the purpose.
A drill becomes a competition.
A technical exchange becomes an opportunity to demonstrate superiority.
Someone must win.
Someone must lose.
Very little learning occurs after that.
I have seen ego damage relationships between students, teachers and entire martial communities.
Technical mistakes can be corrected.
Weakness can be strengthened.
Ignorance can be addressed through learning.
Ego is more difficult because it can prevent a person from recognizing that anything needs to change.
That is why one of my strongest conclusions after all these years remains:
Ego is one of the few things capable of truly killing kung fu.
Titles Don't Make Masters
I have never been particularly impressed by martial-arts titles.
Master.
Grandmaster.
Great Grandmaster.
Sometimes the title seems to become longer as the ability to demonstrate what it means becomes smaller.
Skill doesn't require a title.
Knowledge doesn't require one either.
If someone is genuinely knowledgeable, years of interaction will reveal it.
If someone is genuinely skilled, touching hands usually reveals it much faster.
A title may describe someone's position within an organization or lineage.
It should never substitute for evidence of knowledge or ability.
Experience Is Not Just the Number of Years
Another claim I hear constantly is:
“I have practiced martial arts for thirty years.”
Fine.
But what happened during those thirty years?
Time alone does not produce expertise.
If somebody repeats the same mistakes for twenty years, he has twenty years of experience repeating those mistakes.
Practice has to produce adaptation.
Understanding should deepen.
Questions should change.
Methods should improve.
Sometimes conclusions should be abandoned entirely.
After forty years, I don't consider the fact that I started training in 1986 proof that I am right.
If anything, those years have shown me how often certainty disappears when you learn more.
Experience has value when experience produces understanding.
Martial Arts Are Not About Glorifying Violence
This subject is personal to me.
I frequently see martial-arts material filled with quotations about being a “warrior.”
War is romanticized.
Violence becomes a test of masculinity.
People who have never experienced either speak enthusiastically about warrior mentality.
My perspective is different.
I have experienced war.
That experience did not make violence more romantic to me.
It made it less so.
Sometimes violence is necessary.
Defending yourself can be necessary.
Defending another person can be necessary.
Defending your family or your country can be necessary.
But necessity doesn't change the nature of violence.
People get injured.
People suffer.
People die.
There is nothing mystical about that.
Martial arts should prepare us to deal with violence when necessary, not teach us to fall in love with the idea of it.
For me, kung fu has never been about finding an excuse to hurt somebody.
It is about having the ability to stop somebody from hurting you or someone you need to protect.
That difference matters.
Martial Arts Don't Automatically Make People Better
There is another romantic idea I no longer accept: that practicing martial arts automatically produces good people.
It doesn't.
I have met wonderful martial artists.
I have also met highly skilled people I would never want as friends.
Training can develop patience, discipline, courage and self-control.
But those qualities are not guaranteed.
Martial arts can also reinforce arrogance, obsession, tribalism and aggression.
Years ago I described kung fu as a catalyst.
I still think that metaphor has some value.
Training can intensify qualities already present in a person.
What we become through martial arts therefore depends partly upon what we bring to them.
Technique and character are related far less automatically than martial mythology likes to suggest.
Don't Turn Knowledge Into Belief
Perhaps this is the principle connecting everything else I have written here.
Don't believe something merely because your teacher said it.
Don't believe it because an old book says it.
Don't believe it because your lineage has repeated it for five generations.
And certainly don't believe something simply because I say it.
Listen.
Study.
Practice.
Compare.
Test what can be tested.
Research what can be researched.
And when something cannot currently be established, become comfortable saying:
I don't know.
There is no shame in that answer.
False certainty is much more dangerous than uncertainty.
After forty years in martial arts, I have accumulated many answers.
But perhaps more importantly, I have learned to ask better questions.
And I have learned that sometimes the most valuable question is still the simplest:
Why?
A Personal Note
These thoughts were written at different points during my martial-arts journey. Some originally appeared as short observations, comments or notes to myself. Looking at them together many years later, I don't agree equally strongly with every word I once wrote.
That is exactly how it should be.
If forty years of training left me with precisely the same understanding I had after ten years, those additional thirty years would not have taught me very much.
My martial arts have changed.
My understanding has changed.
I expect both to continue changing.
The objective was never to preserve my opinions unchanged.
It was to keep learning.
Research. Practice. Question. Test. Learn.
And then begin again.