Formosa Neijia

This is famous Taiwan mantis and taiji teacher Wang Chieh doing push hands with Mike Martello. I’ve pushed with Wang and can definitely say he has skills.

This is his son, who teaches in the States. As you can tell, his son is keeping up the family tradition as far as skill goes.

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This training was popularized in the West by Jou Tsung-hwa, if I’m not mistaken. I know that Jou took some flack from some people for this practice, because they thought it was “made up” or something. But it is a legitimate practice that I’ve picked up bits and pieces of from various taiji and bagua […]

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This is the preview for Mike’s 2008 camp, and it looks great. The focus seems to be shuai jiao (Chinese wrestling) this time, and they couldn’t have found a better teacher. This footage was mostly taken from the teacher’s 2-disc DVD on shuai jiao. This is the best instructional video I’ve seen out of […]

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This is one of my favorite forms as done by Zhou laoshi. This is xiaohuyan — little tiger swallow. What I like in this performance is his absolute command of the form. He has so made this form his. Whenever I think of someone who has an intense sense of “presence” in their form, […]

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The recent discussion of tongzigong here brought back a memory. Tongzigong is type of flexibility and basic training given to kids when they are very young. It produces that flexible, springy body that is ideal for Chinese martial arts. But this term, like a lot in Chinese, needs to be….. um… finessed a bit in […]

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(Warning! Beautiful Brazilian women moving rhythmically. Proceed with caution!)
So here you have gyrotonics — silk reeling as a workout. This is also known as “yoga for dancers” although that seems a little redundant. If you look at the moves in this system and in the gyrokinesis system, you’ll see that they are basically […]

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Mokuren Dojo is running a blog carnival in celebration of MLK Day. The theme is being a peaceful warrior and conflict resolution. My submission was this post on Aikido-like Chinese IMA.
Thinking about this theme, I’m struck by the focus on violence that most people have when thinking of warriorship instead of focusing on stopping violence […]

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So I pushed with a new friend yesterday, and he was bigger than most of my push hands partners. I like pushing with bigger, stronger people so the challenge was welcome.
During our second session of the day, I had my left hand on top of his right arm near the tricep. My left thumb was […]

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KMT presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou called a press conference this week to show how he uses the taichi technique of wardoff to keep his political opponents at bay. However, pundits warned Ma that he should consider dropping his elbow, lest rival DPP candidate Frank Hsieh slip in a punch to Ma’s exposed ribs. 

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It never ceases to amaze me — every time the issue of opening a school comes up, someone will mention kids classes and then someone else will go on a rant about how that destroys the arts. I’ve never heard this angle argued in Taiwan nor in Japan when I lived there. It seems to […]

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