Kung Fu
There are life lessons everywhere, even in the most unlikely of places. For the Evolving Martial Artist, fighting is a metaphor for life. Engaging a daunting adversary who hits and inflicts pain is like entering the every day battles of life. Hell, it hurts. Tough lessons are often employed by Shaolin kung fu masters to [...]
Martial artists train to prevail against an assailant. As such, practicing with a partner has a competitive spirit expressed when sparring and during two man drills, like arm toughening or punching mitts. Am I stronger, faster or tougher than my opponent? A healthy competitive attitude is natural and necessary for progress. At the same time, [...]
Hi All, TanDao Fight Lab’s Within the Flow, introduces Tan’s Dazzling Hands (TDH, the internal stage of TanDao) dynamic free flow movement. Graceful and fluid. “Hao kan, bu hao yong,” is a Chinese phrase that means: “it looks good, but is useless.” We realize that to modern reality based fighters, who view martial arts through [...]
A thank you to Iain Abernethy, the prominent karate author and teacher, for an insightful observation about martial arts. Woke me up. It’s a truth many martial artists discover, but rarely talk about. This secret is obscured by the obvious focus on self defense training and perfecting technical skills. When we think of martial arts [...]
In Enter the Dragon, a karateka (Bob Wall) shatters a wooden board with his punch to intimidate Bruce Lee before a fight. Lee gives his famous retort, “Boards don’t hit back.” A somewhat similar comment was made regarding the animal and TDH strikes on our loyal training dummy, Big Wang, who endures punishment without complaint [...]
