18 Lohan Fist of Beijing - Kungfu Discovery

Interviewing Master Xiang Gui Jiang (项贵江师父), one of the last master of the complete Ji Family 18 lohan fist 纪氏罗汉拳 in Beijing.

18 Lohan Fist is one of the most complete traditional martial arts system barely surviving in China today. It is complete in the sense that it trains in BOTH internal and external with external striking form that includes grappling, wrestling, striking with all parts of the arms and legs as well as pressure point striking. Just like the "Yi Quan", the 18 Lohan Fist focuses first on internal conditioning through qigong in order to strengthen and prepare the body for the external "expressions".

This family of 18 Lohan Fist was passed down since Ming Dynasty when it was taught to imperial guards of the royal palace. It has its qigong basis in the 13 taibao qigong (十三太保功）which was the qigong practised by the imperial guards then which has strengthening as well as hardening properties.

It consists of 18 different forms that builds up each aspect of the art progressively. The first 3 forms, which focuses mainly on the internal chi movements, are introduced in the video by Master Xiang. Names of the 18 forms are: 开天 (opening the sky), 辟地 (Splitting the ground), 浑元 (integration), 连环 (striking combinations), 转环 (throwing combinations), 蹬环 (kicking combinations), 龙形 (Dragon Form), 虎形 (Tiger Form), 凤形(Pheonix Form), 长眉 (fingers acu striking), 比丘(elbow and kness acu striking), 赤脚 (legs acu striking), 降龙 (defeating the dragon), 伏虎 (subduing the tiger), 御风 (low stance), 醉卧 (drunken style), 疯癫 (crazy striking), 破尘 (final form) .

If you wish to check out Master Xiang in Beijing, please feel free to drop me a message through my channel and I would be glad to set you guys up.

Iron Wire Wing Chun - Basic Stance for MMA

This video explains the fighting stance I use for my adaption of Wing Chun for ring fighting, called "Iron Wire Wing Chun". This video explains the fallacies of the traditional Wing Chun fighting stance and the reasons for the Iron Wire Wing Chun fighting stance.



Note: This is NOT traditional Wing Chun I am doing (not even late Master Wong Shun Leong or Bruce Lee does pure traditional wing chun) but Integrated Chinese Kungfu for MMA purpose, so if you are a pure Wing Chuner and you hate what I am doing, please leave my video and comment box alone. (But remember that a narrow mind is what is eventually going to kill traditional martial arts, this is what Bruce Lee kept warning against.)

Note2: Hey, I am no master and I don't pretend to be. I am just a fighter who is just sharing my thoughts and innovations for the martial arts world. To me, master or not is pointless when you don't get into the ring and prove it against other styles.

4 Ways to Deliver Wing Chun Punches

This is a video filmed in Hero Club Beijing on the 4 ways that I know of to deliver Wing Chun punches. Indeed, the method of delivery of Wing Chun punches has been a topic of much debate online and on youtube and there are people bashing other practitioners saying that their Wing Chun punch is wrong simply because they studied it one way from their sifu. Through my interaction and experience with so many different sifus I see almost every sifu throwing Wing Chun punch a different way! Are some of them wrong? I don't think so. I think different sifu or lineage simply have a different focus and method and I conclude that there are about 4 (or more) ways to deliver Wing Chun punches and all of them are correct as they all serve different purposes. So if you learn one of these 4 ways, please remember that others aren't wrong, they are just learnt from different lineages and sifus.

Incorporating Val Riazanov's Ballistic Striking Method...

I chanced upon Val Riazanov's Ballistic Strike (Systema) videos on youtube and it really shocked me. Can punches so relaxed and slow have so much power? Instead of brushing it off as bullshit like most people would, I asked myself, What if its true? The kind of power would have tremendous use in my fighting method. Imagine all my punches turning ballistic!

As such, I visited Val Riazanov's website and found an Ebook titled "Science of Ballistic Strikes" for only $11.95 which was supposed to introduce some basic exercises so that we can get a feel of how ballistic strikes work.   I bought the ebook through paypal and was able to download it instantly. What I got out of that simple eBook blew my mind away. There was no mysticism or "chi gung" or all that kind of esoteric stuff behind that kind of relaxed power but simple physics which anyone can master! The ebook taught me four exercises which allowed me to instantly understand and begin to feel how ballistic strikes work. The first exercise helped me feel the weight of my arms. The second exercise taught me how to tense only specific part of my arm and isolate the other parts. The third exercise helped me feel the difference in impact between a regular punch and a ballistic punch and the final exercise taught me how to deliver the relaxed power.

I practised all the exercises in the gym and to my amazement, I started throwing punches FASTER and MORE POWERFULLY without any effort! What impresses me most is Val Riazanov's approach of helping any kind of fighter incorporate ballistic striking principles in their own style instead of trying to prove that Systema is the only way to go. I too found plenty of strikes from my own arts that I can now perform with ballistic striking principle for more effectiveness. I went on to downloading his paid instruction videos one by one and learning from them progressively. I was even more impressed when Val himself answered questions that arose from my training on Facebook right on the very day I asked it! Check out Val's Facebook.

So, does all these work in MMA?

IT DOES!

To my amazement, MMA legend Fedor Emelianenko's crazily strong but relaxed looking punches are Systema ballistic strikes!!! That is how he so effortlessly knocks over his opponents with a single relaxed punch and why his "ground and pound" is named the most effective ever in MMA! Every single of his punches are ballistic strikes! You really need to feel it to know!