INTERNAL FORCE TRAINING WITH DUMBBELLS
Grandmaster Wong Kiew Kit demonstrating a Choy-Li-Fatt pattern
Question
Sifu, I remember you mentioning at the last Winter Camp that at the Choy-Li-Fatt course you plan to include internal force training with dumbbells. Could you please elaborate?
-- Sifu Markus Kahila
Answer
Yes, the Choy-Li-Fatt Course at the 2012 Winter Camp in Norway will be very special. Course participants will learn what many Choy-Li-Fatt practitioners hope to learn but very few have the chance to.
As usual, other people would attack us for being arrogant. That is their business, not ours. Anyway, my answer here as well as the coming Choy-Li-Fatt course is not meant for them; it is meant for our own Shaolin Wahnam students. We have been very generous, even allowing other people to learn our secrets, but if they don't appreciate this gesture, we are not going to waste our time on them.
Choy-Li-Fatt is an external art. Only very few great Choy-Li-Fatt masters have internal force. These masters started with external methods, but over many years of dedicated training their external force became internal.
Hence, internal force is a highly desired ability in Choy-Li-Fatt -- in fact in any art. It enables the practitioners to achieve what other people using external force cannot achieve, like sparring for a few hours without feeling tired or panting for breath, and having vitality in our daily life irrespective of gender, size and age.
Yes, I shall include internal force training in the course. The training methods, like triple-stretch exercises and exercises from the Eighteen-Lohan Art, were those used by Choy-Li-Fatt masters in the past. Our course participants need not train for many years to develop internal force; they develop internal force during the few days of the course itself! This is incredible, but true.
How do we know that our students have developed internal force during the few days? They are able to do what internal force enables one to do, like sparring for a few hours without feeling tired irrespective of gender, size and age. If they use external strength, they will be unable to achieve this.
Using dumbbells to develop force is external training. Many Choy-Li-Fatt students do this. This is nothing special in Choy-Li-Fatt, though it may be special for students of other styles. But we shall use dumbbell training in an internal way! This is special.
How do we differentiate that most other Choy-Li-Fatt students use dumbbell training in an external way, whereas course participants in our coming Choy-Li-Fatt course use dumbbell training internally? They use muscles, whereas we use chi. They become tired after training for 15 minutes, whereas we can go on training for an hour.
How do we know that what they develop is external force, whereas what we develop is internal force. Their force is limited by gender, size and age, whereas our force is not limited. For example, their female, smaller, and elderly students will be unable to match their male, bigger, and young students in force, whereas our female, smaller, and elderly students can be more forceful than the male, bigger, and young counterparts.
In the course, we shall let our students train dumbbells in an external way first like most other Choy-Li-Fatt students do. Then our students train dumbbells internally. In this way they can compare both the different training procedures and the different results.
Combat application, of course, is an important part of the coming Choy-Li-Fatt course. Many kungfu practitioners complain that they cannot use their kungfu techniques in combat because they have to wear gloves. This is an excuse. Even when they take off their gloves, they will be unable to use kungfu to fight.
Choy-Li-Fatt is an excellent art for fighting -- with or without gloves on. Indeed, if all other things were equal, Choy-Li-Fatt is more effective than other martial arts for combat in present-day free sparring conditions. Students who wish to take part in free sparring competitions or who wish to have friendly free sparring with practitioners of other martial arts but are unfamiliar with their ways of fighting, will find this course very useful.
-- Grandmaster Wong Kiew Kit
Combat application is an essential part of the Choy-Li-Fatt Course
The above is reproduced from the thread
20 Questions for Grandmaster: Choy-Li-Fatt and Kungfu against Other Styles
in the Shaolin Wahnam Discussion Forum.
LINKS