Shun Shifu

In this lesson, we introduce the concept of Pre-Sense and going with the opponent’s energy. Pre-sense is the development of the kinesthetic senses to such a degree that you can feel an opponent’s intent. Sensing the positioning and direction of all other parts of his body through a single touch.  This lesson just touches on the concept. If you have ever seen Push Hands or Sticky Hands exercises that is the intent of those exercises.  It creates a way of controlling your opponent that is extremely confusing to the opponent. Always one step ahead. Enjoy!    

  In this lesson we cover proper distance line on an inward block.  A common mistake is to move in to before blocking possibilities. This creates a big problem. Crowding your own weapons and also putting your own targets closer to the opponenets weapons.  This mistake necessitates the need for extreme speed in weapons. The speed is needed to make up for the technique. And speed is no substitute for positioning. Obviously speed is good but a trained fighter should not rely on it to cover for positioning mistakes. That’s a very dangerous ground. With proper positioning everything becomes effortless. It feels as if the opponent is moving in slow motion. Part of that feeling is our brain going into a high adrenaline, low GABA state and our primal brain (Firmware) taking over. The other part is the magic of positioning. Once the blocks have been made then move in fast. Take the opponents centerline and prevent him from making further attacks by centerline manipulation and magic hands principles. Oh, we haven’t covered Magic Hands principles yet? Don’t worry we’ll get to that soon  About the Disciples Workshop This is a course I decided to do to “teach the Magic”. The underlying principles of martial arts. My Grand Master always “encouraged” me to teach the magic. One of the last things he said to me was “Phil, always teach the magic and never let anyone change what I have taught you”. That was just prior to his passing and when he said it I knew he was pretty serious about what he was saying. For various reasons, the finer details of the martial arts rarely get taught. Yet these finer details are what make it work. Without them, your techniques have very little chance of saving you if needed. Without magic, they are worse than useless.  Put a little magic in your training.

In the Beast Magic series, we take Shou’ Shu’ (Beast Magic ) demos and explain the nuances of what’s going on. You will: Begin to understand how 7 individual beast arts combine to become one art Begin to understand how the 3 principles are present in each and every move Shou’ Shu’ is a difficult art for the camera. It’s subtleties go unnoticed. It has very little dramatic appeal. Its entertainment value is lost on most. It just gets the job done quickly. Which is what is truly needed in a fighting art. In this episode, Shifu Matt Miller shows a Mongoose evasion followed up with a Tiger attack. Showing how the beasts are quickly transitioned through or combined to form an entirely new beast motion.  

In this lesson, we take the dynamic tension we have learned to create in our legs and release it into the hand as a weapon.  To make this happen a few things have to be correct. 1) Reinforcement – If the arm is not at a reinforced position it will not be able to handle the power created by the legs. Bone alignment principles must be used of the arm will simply collapse and the energy will not be delivered. However, with the principles of bone alignment applied the arm will have the required reinforcement to deliver the energy. 2) Timing – The principle of weapon before body must be used. With this timing, the majority of the velocity is created with the arm while the mass movement is predominantly from the body. You can think of this as a twist on the Newtonian energy equation. E=1/2mv^2. Except in this case plug in the velocity of the weapon and the mass of the body. This is achieved because of the reinforcement and the uniting of the body and weapon at impact. We’ll cover that idea more in future lessons because it is a critical understanding. Through the principles of the horse and these principles of reinforcement and timing, immense power can be created. When it feels like nothing you will assume that you got it wrong. That’s when it is right. Your mind simply will not be able to accept that it is right (at first) because it is too easy. About The Disciples Workshop This is a series of lessons that teach the underlying magic of martial arts. These principles can be applied to any martial art. They are the details that often get left out due to the nature of commercial martial arts schools. Schools rarely have the resources needed to go into this level of detail. We are creating these lessons to help future martial artists make sure that they get these all too important principles.

Disciple’s Workshop – Lesson 4   One Leg Step Correct with Resistance   In this lesson we begin to introduce two principles.   1) The Step Correct   2) The Floating Foot   Neither concept is introduced fully here but we will use what we learn here to introduce them later. Right now we are just building in some muscle memory.   In this lesson, while moving wider, we are doing something similar to the floating foot principle. The idea here is that we maintain the stance even while our foot is changing position. In other words, we do not take the weight from the foot before moving it. We just release the tension and let it move.   Sounds easy right?   We’ll see!   While moving from wide to narrower we do something similar. We maintain the stance and we do not shift the weight before moving the foot. We spring the foot from the ground.   The floating foot principle allows us to make our hands as heavy as our feet. Applying all of our mass into our weapons. It’s one of the hidden secrets and without a doubt, many will be a bit miffed that I’m teaching it publicly. Can’t please everyone.   The step correct is a footwork that comes from the Shou’ Shu’ Mantis. It is amazingly fast and allows us to do many useful things. Such as adjusting fighting distance precisely. Also not well known as far as I can tell.   This is barely an introduction to these principles. It won’t make much sense at this point why it is useful. That will be revealed in future lessons. But it will build the muscle memory necessary to learn them well when we get there.   About the Disciples Workshop   This is a course I decided to do to “teach the Magic”. The underlying principles of martial arts. My Grand Master always “encouraged” me to teach the magic. One of the last things he said to me was “Phil, always teach the magic and never let anyone change what I have taught you”. That was just prior to his passing and when he said it I knew he was pretty serious about what he was saying.   Because martial arts schools are so financially pressured it is nearly impossible to teach the finer details of martial arts. Yet these finer details are what make it work. Without them, your techniques have very little chance of saving you if needed. Without magic, they are worse than useless.   Put a little magic in your training.    

  The horse stance is the most fundamental of all stances. It is used in virtually every martial art. It links all arts. We’ll probably never know if this is due to common ancestry or if it simply evolved separately. Regardless, it is a common thread. One would be wise to not overlook the subtleties of the horse stance. Many other principles are built upon it. And truly you are only as good as your basics. This is where the basics start. More than once I’ve seen seasoned veterans of martial arts grok the workings of the horse stance even after decades of study. Martial arts can be like that. It’s very easy not to see the essence. To pass it by unnoticed. Searching for the secrets when they had already been placed in plain sight. There are really two fundamental horse stances. More once you bring in the workings of the other beasts. But for the bear, there is the square horse and the heel-toe horse. For our purposes, we will start with the square horse. The square horse is not a fighting stance and is rarely used even in a transitory way in fighting. It is, for the most part, an exercise and a basis for other exercises. It is also a teaching device. However developing it will build the foundation for the heel-toe horse, also called the fighting horse.  As an aside, the horse is not one of our beasts. We only call this stance a horse because it looks like you are riding a horse. Some call it the horse riding stance. Having a background in horse riding I can say that it also feels the same as proper form in riding a horse and has several commonalities with riding. What is important in the development of the horse stance is the static tension. The knees push outward but the muscles around the ankle push inward. This creates tension between the two as well as stability. The ankles should not roll outward. Instead, the balls of the feet and big toes should push down into the ground to flatten the pressure into the ground. All toes grab as if they were claws. It should feel as if you are grabbing the ground and attempting to rip it apart. This static tension can instantly be released into a weapon. It is important to practice this stance as wide as you can go with the knees pushed out until they are directly over the ankles. And yes you are right, I haven’t seen anyone actually do that in the video, only approach it. So it is something to strive for. About the Disciple’s Workshop “There is no magic in magic, the magic is in the details” ~Walt Disney The magic is in the details. Without the magic, martial arts is not nearly as useful. Lack of skill can only be covered up with brute force. Making the art useless for those without size and strength.  With the magic, the arts work for anyone. It becomes an equalizer. With great skill, the magic actually appears to be magic. As Arthur C, Clark said: “Technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic” This is body technology sufficiently advanced. Modern-day martial arts teachers rarely have the opportunity to teach the magic. Such is the economics of martial arts skills. So we are putting it out there for those who want it.  You can’t buy it with a credit card, although many try and some sell a cheap substitute. You CAN make it yours by carefully paying attention. If you want to own it you can. It just takes an inquisitive mind, discipline, and humility. The rest is free.

Disciples Workshop – Lesson 2 Six Inch Drills This is a simple drill that is great as a warmup. It not only develops the muscles needed for a horse stance but also builds them in to muscle memory (pain is a great teacher that way) Note the discussion at the end about building up an internal brace. Whenever I do or teach this I am reminded of the scene in the pilot for the tv series Kung Fu. Where the young  seeker stood outside of the temple enduring harsh weather and boredom while the others quickly gave up and wandered off. That scene had an impact on me even as a child. It speaks of the sacrifice that is necessary to get what we want.  I heard it said recently that it is not the strength of your desires, it is what you are willing to endure to achieve them. What is you “WHY”? What are you willing to give for it? About the Disciples Workshop In this lesson series I am “teaching the magic”. In today’s world instructors rarely have the time to put in the finer details. Yet without them any technique is worse than useless. So, as a service to the martial arts community I’m documenting them in this series. This will mainly cover only one beast, the bear. That is because the principles of that beast are used in almost every martial art. So this should be helpful for anyone. Practice each lesson and slowly you’ll start seeing how they all come together to form a strong foundation. The foundation you need to make your personal defense skills highly effective.   

Teaching The Magic In this workshop, we are breaking martial principle down to its fundamentals. That’s where the magic is “There is no magic in magic, the magic is in the details” ~Walt Disney My Grand Master always told me “Teach the magic” and that is what this series of lessons is about. Without the magic, martial arts becomes just techniques. No more than dance moves. But with it…well obviously…magical. Unfortunately, the magic seems to go missing a lot. We’re going to fix that. Good for the beginner and expert martial artist alike. The beginner will gain a firm grasp of principles and if they should decide to go find a school they will do so from a place of knowledge. That changes everything.  For the expert. Well, I am going to make a bold claim. If you follow along for just a few lessons you will come to understandings you have never had. You will understand your own art deeper than you ever have before.  How do I know that? Because I spent 20 years teaching and I’ve taught martial artists from every discipline imaginable. From beginner to master. And every single time they had the same reaction. they said they had never been taught in such detail. They had never understood the arts so deeply.  Become more of an expert at your own art by grasping the fundamentals at a deeper level. Follow along through each lesson and feel your skills develop. Every lesson in the disciple’s workshop will be primarily from the first beast. The bear. This is because the fundamentals of the bear run through every art. It is the beast that we all have in common.  Or for the beginner, it is the place to start. Bear first. Dragon last. The order in between doesn’t matter. Enjoy! Salute SSW P.S. Why am I doing this? Because it needs to be done. Or the ancient fighting arts will be lost forever.