My name is Vladimir Zlatic. I have practiced martial arts since 1986 and Chinese
martial arts since 1988. What began as an interest in learning how to fight
gradually developed into a lifelong study of Chinese martial arts, their
history, training methods, culture, and the people who preserve them. I hold
master rank in Snake Crane Wing Chun and Yip Man Wing Chun, as well as an
instructor rank in White Crane Kung Fu. For the past 16 years, I have lived in
Taiwan, where I have had the opportunity to train, research, and learn within an
environment in which many traditional Chinese martial arts are still practiced.
I have also made frequent visits to Hong Kong, continuing my training and
research into Wing Chun and other Southern Chinese martial arts. Living in
Taiwan changed the way I look at kung fu. Chinese martial arts are much more
diverse than the small number of famous systems usually encountered in books,
movies, and on the internet. Many traditions remain virtually unknown outside
their local communities, while others are slowly disappearing as older
generations of practitioners pass away. Documenting and preserving some of this
knowledge has therefore become an increasingly important part of my work. My
Approach to Martial Arts I respect tradition, but I do not believe that
respecting tradition means accepting every traditional explanation without
question. Chinese martial arts contain extraordinary accumulated knowledge, but
they also contain legends, misunderstandings, cultural interpretations,
exaggerations, and claims that have been repeated for generations without being
critically examined. I am interested in separating these things. My approach
combines traditional practice, historical research, personal experience, and
critical examination. When possible, I try to distinguish between what can be
historically documented, what is probable, what is oral tradition, and what
belongs primarily to martial arts mythology. The same principle applies to
training. Traditional concepts such as qi, jin, neigong, internal power,
structure, rooting, and power generation should not simply be dismissed because
their traditional explanations sometimes sound strange to modern ears. But
neither should they automatically be treated as supernatural phenomena. I am
interested in understanding what practitioners actually do and examining those
practices through anatomy, biomechanics, physics, physiology, breathing
mechanics, and other relevant fields of modern knowledge. My academic background
has influenced this approach. I graduated from the University of Belgrade in
International Business and Communication, and I also studied physics and
chemistry at university level. Although I did not complete degrees in physics or
chemistry, those studies strongly influenced the way I approach questions:
observe, investigate, compare explanations, look for evidence, and remain
willing to change a conclusion when better evidence appears. Martial Arts and
Real Violence I am also a war veteran and have firsthand experience of frontline
combat. I mention this only because it inevitably influences how I think about
martial arts and violence. Martial arts practice, combat sports, self-defense,
street violence, and warfare are related subjects, but they are not the same
thing. Experience has made me cautious about romanticizing violence or making
easy claims about what constitutes a "real fight." Martial arts can provide
valuable physical skills, discipline, understanding of movement, and methods of
combat. But training takes place within conditions that are very different from
uncontrolled violence. That distinction is important to much of what I write.
Researching and Preserving Traditional Martial Arts My main interests are
Southern Chinese martial arts, particularly Wing Chun and White Crane Kung Fu,
although my research frequently takes me into the wider history and culture of
Chinese martial arts. Over the years I have researched and written about
subjects including Wing Chun history and lineages, White Crane traditions, rare
Taiwanese martial arts, neigong and qigong, traditional weapons, Chinese martial
history, biomechanics, training methodology, historical personalities, and the
relationship between martial arts legends and documented history. Some of the
articles on this website later developed into chapters of my books. In other
cases, material originally researched for books was adapted into articles so
that it could be made freely available to a wider audience. This website
therefore represents more than a collection of occasional blog posts. It is an
evolving archive of my research, experiences, observations, and attempts to
understand the martial traditions I have spent much of my life studying. Why
"The Martial Custodian"? I deliberately prefer the word custodian to titles
suggesting authority or status. No individual owns a martial tradition. Every
generation receives knowledge from people who came before, interprets it through
its own experience, and eventually passes something to the next generation. Some
knowledge survives that process. Some changes. Some is misunderstood. And some
disappears completely. I see my role as one small part of that process: to
research what I can, preserve what is worth preserving, question what needs
questioning, explain what I understand, and make useful information available to
others. I do not expect readers to agree with every conclusion presented here.
Martial arts history is often incomplete, different traditions preserve
different accounts, and new evidence can change our understanding of the past.
Where evidence is uncertain, I prefer to say so. Where something is legend, I
prefer to treat it as legend rather than history. And where traditional
knowledge appears to describe something real using an old conceptual framework,
I am interested in discovering what may lie behind that explanation rather than
either blindly believing it or casually dismissing it. That is the purpose of
The Martial Custodian. Researching. Preserving. Explaining. And, above all:
Let's Explore, Preserve and Learn Together
