(Click here for even more Tiger Celebration images…)

Chuck has the spirit of the tiger, or maybe it has him...

Ceci and Mary working hard while Ken tries to remember where he parked.

John explaining oneness to Diane.

Josh experiencing the Long Arm of the Claw.

Ted and John working on high level theory, "Say this is my hand..."

The tiger always leave tracks…

More images from our New Year’s get-together…

This is the sad state of affairs I was considering one day when I realized how simple the answer was, the general populace simply needs a code book to decipher all the flack. This may be my version of the code but I assure you it is a representation of what most hard-practicing authentic martial artists think of the whole situation.

Let’s start with those belts to hold up your pants.

A black belt is like a stock certificate, its value depends on the name of the company from which it is issued. A black belt means and means, technically, “no longer a beginner”.

Degrees of black belt can be political awards (service to his style and students) or accrued time in the arts. The best rule is the number of years for each rank between those ranks. Three years more to third degree, six years more to sixth degree, etc. So, if you have an eighteen year old  seventh degree well,… no. The point is that a simple black belt from a responsible teacher does mean something. The others are wall paper.

(Children ranked black and above are, frankly, an embarrassment¨to the majority of the martial community. It is an acknowledgment The persistent hen pecking of parents won and the teachers folded to the pressure. When will my Joey get his black belt?  is no reason to award them. How much would you respect a PhD. in physics from some backwater school in China given to twelve year olds because Western academic standards there are unknown and the parents want the kids to look good? 

The Belt problem comes mostly from the commercial side of the aisle. People regularly gain rank by begging their instructors to up their degree so they can be more competitive in the market place. ¨(This is no fairy tale, I know a number of ranks like this. Sometimes they are at least qualified as “commercial ranks” but that little distinction often floats away with time. I’ve been offered a  number of occasions the rank of 5th or better. In each case the ulterior motive of this compliment was to get me to promote others  higher degrees and insure loyalty.)

Masters of the Universe!

It’s not a martial example but it is a great one. You will often hear people referred to as”Reiki Master” which is, essentially, poppycock. Again we are trading on a word. The first problem here is how do you become a “master” in some art developed by someone in the 20th century who decided he was a Reiki master? Someone once informed Robert Frost that he was a “poet, too”. Frost shook his head and said that the word “poet” was a gift-word and you don’t give it to yourself. How exactly do you count a gift of being called a “master” when you have to pay 200.00 for it? Answer, you don’t.

The word “Master” is particularly objectionable in a  number of ways. It is not a translation from an Asian language unless you think “noodles in water are boil” is a good translation of the back of your Ramen package. Master is a qualitative not  hierarchical word. Some styles like TKD automatically give it to black belts above a certain rank. This is the heart of the problem. If it is a technical word like “journey man” then it really has very little value. Going back to Reiki all it shows is what low standard  (move a little energy, something a five year old can accomplish) and  high social aspirations are in conflict. It is a sad commentary  on one’s standards. The Chinese, in typically dry humor, say , “Call yourself a master and practice alone.” Meaning if you are all that good who could dare enter into your illustrious presence? So go away.  I have a personal solution. I don’t care what other people call me, but I never refer to myself in such a manner and that’s after forty  years in the arts.

(Just as a side car, there are other wrinkles to consider. Ed  Parker, a devout Mormon, used to say that there was only one master and that was Christ. Whatever your religion this is a pretty classy objection. I might expand it to calling the Buddha the Master but not a guy who punches a tire all day. One of my friends and a helluva fighter had the distinction of closing down an entire tournament after getting peeved that all the black competitors were “master-ing” this and that senior Korean teacher. He just couldn’t take that many black people saying the word. People do take offense. Personally my skin crawls whenever I hear the phrase with rare exceptions.)

Grand Master and Great Grand Master, etc. ¨GM actually has two very technical designations. The first is that  you are the surviving lineage holder of a style or branch of martial arts. You can be designated by the previous generation or inherit by default (a trickier proposition). It can also mean you are the¨founder of a style though, precisely put, I believe founder is more accepted and actually more accurate.

Being a GM is a pain. I have a good friend who is probably a GM and is pending a large part of his later years preventing poachers from ¨declaring their own, fallacious master-ships. He doesn’t even want the title, but in loyalty to his departed and it must be said “somewhat opportunistic” teacher he inherited a political cat fight. According to my friend the first generation of student who stuck should all share in the title collectively. But then you have multiple GM’s: another problem.

It should be obvious that this is not so much a commercial thing as
an ego thing. A fellow teacher just told me about meeting another martial artist a while back. They hadn’t seen each other for years. My teacher friend asked how the other one was ding and got the reply, “You know I’m a grand master now. I’ve founded my own system.” Well, ¨how nice for you” was my friend’s thought. Again the problem here is of devalued lineage. Creating your own style of martial arts is sort of laughed at in Asia and, because we like words like “new” and “improved” in the west it is a big deal here. It’s not like the days when  you would definitely have to defend your ascension tooth and nail and I mean with your life. Such challenges are illegal nowadays and the attitude is, what the heck, everyone has to “fill his rice bowl.” Ancient martial artists did not run around calling everything a style. There are about 350 styles of Kung Fu but that’s dispersed over more than a 2000 year span. You do the math. Only in America do we have multiple versions of a “World
Championship”.

Basically, anyone can pirate anything and call it a style. The older generation often resorted to calling what they did a this or that style out of respect for their own teachers. They didn’t want to claim anything that could reflect poorly, sort of like saying, “This is MY version of things don’t blame my instructor.” One of my teachers, a widely respected  instructor, will indeed leave a “style” behind him even though he is  only trying to teach correct Kung Fu. The problem is that there is  so little of it now that his method will end up being unique enough to be designated a style. That is a founder, not these self-promoted mediocrities.

Professor Plum.

The term “professor” came mainly out of the Hawaiian martial scene.
In those tough years you had to be very careful what you claimed. A
number of top notch instructors decided to use the title “professor”.
It was a version of sensei or teacher. People often associate this
with GM but, in reality, it is just a title. Think about it. A
professor means a teacher. Since I have taught at the university
level and am a professor and most of the current group, technically, are not.
Really it is not a very important title now especially since it has
 devolved from greats to some very small people.

Sifu, that’s not a fish dish.

This is interesting. In Northern China it bears the original meaning, namely someone who has a hands on skill (not book learning, Otis) and may guide you through that or not. Bus drivers, chefs, taxi drivers, massage teachers and Kung Fu instructors are all Sifu. In
Southern China more respect is given and the term could have a
fragrance of “master” but that’s an individual choice. A Si Gong is
your teacher’s teacher. Sifu and Si Gong are family terms like “uncle” and there is a little interesting etiquette about this. You should never address a teacher as Si Gong unless he is your grand teacher. It’s like calling someone else’s grandfather “gramps.”.

I think you get the idea. These “traditional” words have become almost meaningless in the marketplace. The martial virtue of humility has transformed to arrogant titles and claims. In an environment like this a black belt that was at lest rewarded by someone else’s standards at lest claims  a bit of objectivity and may well be worth more than all the “professorships” you can plaster on a wall. The best approach is to call the studio, talk, get a feel for the  school and the method. In short, before you decided if the teacher is “really” a Grand Master Professor Multi-art Super Double Reverse Red Sash, decide if he or she is even a person.

As for me I’m going back to deciding if I should break down this year and send in my eighty bucks so I can be “voted” a member of the Black Belt Hall of Fame. Now all I have to do is pick which category I want  to be honored in.

The food spread—”bring your own, take it away”—was more than enough for the attendance which began at 6:30 and lasted an hour before everyone sat for the cinema. Students who had shared the same floor for years met and greeted each other,  in some instances for the first time. People traded experiences at the school, snapped pictures and discussed which Pink Floyd Album could be synchronized to the Wizard of Oz.

Shaolin Little Guys, part deux of the Shaolin Trilogy, was unlike a typical Kung Fu flick. A delightful plot tells the story of two family, one of girls who study the WuDang style and the other of Shaolin orphan boys and how they live across a river form one another, feud and, eventually, get together. A big production from China, it was spiced with animation, a huge amount of humor, and absolutely amazing fight scenes.

A number of attendees expressed the feeling of family and belonging they felt at the Academy.
(Click on each picture to see full size.)

You know and I know that I’m going to answer with a resounding, brick-smashing “YES!” to this. What you don’t know is that if I thought you couldn’t get anything from martial practice I’d just as soon yell “NO!”

Actually the question isn’t really about the  student. It should be focused on the  teacher. Better framed it would read, “Can the right teacher using the right method of martial instruction be of service to you irrespective of your age?”

Li Zi Ming, one of China's strongmen and master Kung Fu teachers

Sarcasm aside, schools like this serve people at a very important level. They are the entrance to the martial world and its wide open. The real objection raised against them is that seven year-olds receive black belts; thousands are spent by students on such necessities as patches; high ranks like 4th and 5th high low levels of skill; and any class with Dad and his 10 year-old son beside him might be fun and all that but someone in it has got to be taught wrong somewhere.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that on the opposite side of the mat stands a bunch of effete martial snobs who only guard secrets that would make the Da Vinci code look like semaphore. It’s just that an enthusiastic teacher of, say, art may have to feel it best to start everyone off with crayons but knows full well that there’s time to break out the water color sets. Bringing people to the core of things isn’t a crime, though in an increasing dumbed-down culture it is treated as such. It is an imperative for real teaching.

After all, if you are 30+ and you still want to perform the side splits in a martial art then this is a psychological problem, not a valid goal. Actually it never was a valid goal even for cute little girls. Why? because though I’m entertained by Jerry Lee Lewis having the ability to play the piano behind his back I wouldn’t really care if the music were bad. Stunts is stunts, not art.

A mature person looking into the martial arts should be searching for something intellectually stimulating, culturally authentic, humanly responsible, technically engaging and spiritually challenging. This may mean breaking a single board with a spin-hook kick and receiving the patronizing applause of the class, but I doubt it. And by “mature”  I decidedly am not thinking of Tai Chi, which so often seems the booby prize of martial ambitions. I’m talking about a teacher student relationship which brings everything from the teacher’s knowledge and the student’s experience into play. I’m talking about engagement.

Professor Howard Slatoff started with use when he was 63 and became one of our top Tai Chi students. Vital and dynamic he lived a billiant life and inspired many fellow martial artists.

Believe me, I know whereof I speak. I’ve seen entire schools burn themselves to the ground with interpersonal shenanigans that would disgust anyone over voting age. My own experience is that if your style produces seven year-olds that are as good as their teachers then there has been a little tailoring done somewhere along the line. Eventually the hollowness of the cheerleader approach catches the heart. Then the dys-functionality begins to rise like dampness. The head instructor gets promoted to Great Grand Maestro; some of the teachers leave suddenly while others are advanced at a dizzying rate. Sparring class develops an edge to it like the whispered conversation of a husband and an ex. Kids stand in the vestibule as though permanently abandoned. Mom always shows up late after the Young Warriors class and her little warrior sits on the bench in his uniform fiddling with his stiff belt and looking at the front door for thirty-five minutes.

Can you get good instruction, worthwhile guidance, after the ages of 30, 40, 50  and above? Yes, there is a growing group of instructors who are “returning to their arts” and looking for mature, patient students who bring a lifetime of interest and questions to the practice.

The only question left  may be  can your get any really top-notch training before the age of 30?

TWM

The first happened while watching a match fought by a relatively new champ named Chuck Norris in pre-movie days. His reputation was still building and everyone at this large San Jose tournament sat forward to watch this rising star pitted against a talented local black belt. The match’s first minute was disappointing, the great Norris didn’t seem that special, nice kicks but a little slow. A sort of distracted style of fighting. Then a moment fell over everything. Chuck had thrown a front kick and widely missed his mark almost turning his back on his younger opponent. You could see the spark in the black belt’s eyes, “God, Norris completely missed. I’m going to get him.” With that the young black belt lunged forward with a beautiful punch that never reached its mark as Norris threw a devastating, perfectly timed rear kick that never could have occurred if his opponent had not assumed the kick and placement was a mistake. From that point on the “schooling” continued until Norris took the grand championship which he, really, already owned.

On a second occasion I was walking through San Jose’s Japanese section, near the Buddhist temple there. I noticed a poster announcing that a martial exhibition was in progress at that very moment. I walked in. A group of women were performing Naginata kata. Their movements were graceful and precise, the long handled weapon ending in a large blade perfectly controlled by the demonstrators. (I found out years later that this was the All Japan team making one of their rare visits to America.)

After the forms demo the fighting began. The host Kendo team supplied the competition. The first swordsman was a tall, somewhat out of place, blonde white man about 6’3”. His opponent was a visiting Japanese Naginata-ka, pretty, young and very short. Remember, this was forty years ago and such martial matches were still rare. The guy was pretty quick. He parried the first attack by his petite opponent knocking the blade off at a wide angle, offering a path for entrance. Big and quick he figured he’d passed the danger area of the blade and now was the opportune moment to get inside. He rushed— bamboo sword suspended to cleave—when the girl trapped him between her weapon’s shaft and her thigh. She tossed him beautifully, expertly, directly onto his head. He’d gotten her right where she wanted him.

I present these two incidents because what they teach is nothing incidental. They show, among other things, the not-so-obvious nature of what has become the dumbed down goals of martial training. Martial humility, for instance, is not the overly polite, mechanical and utterly insincere “Yes, Sir!” and “No, Sir!” we hear so often in young people’s classes. It is a humble willingness to look the fool to obtain the prize, despite others’ perceptions. This humility, while a virtue in its own right, is also a useful tool in the martial arsenal. Sun Tzu, the great military writer, defined war over two thousand years ago as, “The art of deception.” In this era of bloated egos and self advertisements humility might be more useful than it seems.

Liu Feng Cai, Bagua expert

They call it the mother of martial arts, Kung Fu. Considering its age and the powerful influence it has had on all other martial arts on the planet, this is probably true. On the other hand, as we all know, the designation “mother” isn’t always positive as in “That’s a mother of a problem.”

And Kung Fu IS a problem because, over a period of thousands of years, it has taken on so much more than the average person can even imagine. It’s like the difference between studying math (ugh!) and learning just enough numbers to make change.

Here are just a few reasons you want to avoid this wonderful art:

1. It’s about life, not just fighting. People always call martial arts a way of life but they really aren’t sure what they mean. Here’s a clue: a way of life challenges, not reinforces, simplistic rules and regulations. Kung Fu does not claim to have answers, just a method.

2. It doesn’t teach confidence. Confidence has become a product which just about everyone guarantees. To be truthful, if you have confidence all the time you’re probably not paying attention or, more likely, you really don’t have much confidence at all. But every commercial martial arts school in the world will promise you confidence: just squeeze and turn.

3. It’s complex. People don’t really like simple; you can tell this from what they do to their own lives. But they like to think they are simplifying. Kung Fu? Sorry, the most complex and varied of all martial arts. How big is Kung Fu? Well it pretty much equals all the other martial arts in the world combined .

4. It’s cultural. When you stand in a Kung Fu stance the space beneath your feet feet is China. Let’s be honest, the whole idea of an Asian art being superior grates on a lot of people’s nerves. Best thing is to just keep re-framing the discussion so whatever smacks of someone else’s culture just sort of drifts away. We only have room for our folk heroes, our viewpoint. Other cultures just think they have something of importance to preserve.

5. Kung Fu is customized. No belts, no tournaments, no overall plan, no super-grand-ultra-master ranks. Oh, sure, some people have grafted all that stuff on but it’s not Kung Fu, it is Karate redux. The Chinese have a pithy saying, “If you call yourself “master” you can practice alone.”

6. Weapons. Why would anyone want to learn a weapon one thousand years old? Well, guess what, we KNOW they are no longer used. Kung Fu has for many centuries utilized weapons to teach specific skills, not necessarily the weapon itself. But mostly I get calls from people who want to get into weapons because “they’re cool” with no interest whatsoever about what they represent or the purpose of their practice. It’s just another version of cultural xenophobia, that’s all.

7. Kung Fu is not perfectable. Old saying, “Three lifetimes is not enough.” Absolutely true. Who wants to do stuff where you can’t get an “A”, a certificate, or your picture up on the bulletin board?

8. Kung Fu, unlike many arts such as Tae Kwon Do, refuses to give up the Asian view of life. Yeah, that’s right, yin and yang, harmony and all that stuff…

9. Kung Fu is beautiful. There are a lot of very skilled, acrobatic, aerobic and strong martial performers nowadays, especially when some schools actually specialize in “movie audition” philosophy. But in reality the quality of performance is all muscle and little brains. Back flips are barely comparable to the flick of an expert’s wrist. The trouble lies in the fact that the aesthetic is Asian and therefore discountable. We want to see that flip flop into the splits! (as though every Asian girl past the age of six couldn’t already do that.) It’s very simple the aesthetic has moved from the experts who know what they are looking at to the the audience who loves thrills, of course, especially if they are performed by young family members. Martial arts as entertainment, not a study.

10. Finally, and the worse yet, Kung Fu invests in loss; definitely not a hi-five, sports/entertainment philosophy. The Chinese are into enduring, not endurance: enduring. This is not just some Asian philosophy. The nature of Kung Fu goes opposite to what is known as “intrinsic skill”–In other words the guy with big shoulders who can punch hard the moment he walks into the school. Kung Fu, real Kung Fu, has for over 1000 years concentrated on basically undoing the learned attributes of the student. To really study Kung Fu you have to unlearn almost every way you move, nothing is intuitive. The point of this is that Kung Fu is no fun if you want, as children often do, to start jumping and kick and spinning before you’ve learned any basics.

So that’s it. At this point we realize you should probably click to another site. Oh, well.