The Many Masks of Kung Fu

There’s a reason Kung Fu movies are awesome – they are great theater.  There are so many quirky styles of fighting, so many animals to imitate and so many weapons to fling around – the variations are endless.

While the martial arts we do at the school is (hopefully) more practical than most of the stuff you’ll see in a Hong Kong Kung Fu flick, we appreciate the theatrics of it.  In fact, we believe that part of being a good martial artist is being a good actor – someone who has the ability to move in many different ways, depending on what the occasion calls for.

One way to get a student to appreciate a variety of movement styles is to have them practice forms that have different focuses – fluidity, power, closest weapon to closest target – to name a few.  Another way is to have them do fighting drills while shifting focuses.  Tonight we switched back and forth between these two modes: do a form with a particular focus and then see if you can take that “feel” and bring it to your fighting drills.