A Brief Interlude

In a fit of nostalgia I spent this evening cruising through the Kung Fu Dorks blog archive. It's almost embarrassing to see how hard I used to train and look at myself now. My training over the past year or so has been haphazard at best: a couple months of every other week training punctuated by a three-week frenzy of kung fu hysteria. Sometimes I am working like a maniac, others I am just plain lazy. But every time I go back to Temple I am reminded how much I love kung fu and how much it has meant in my life.

I stopped blogging- why? I'm not sure. All us dorks are still around; maybe the internet has finally lost its novelty... Blogs are not so hip, if they ever were hip? I guess in the end I thought I had run out of things to say, and I'm not especially fond of when my posts became "Dear Diary" moments. Reading back though, I am realizing that this blog was good for helping me anchor my training in consistent reflection, even when we were talking about Chuck Norris Action Jeans. It's easy to train without thinking and lose the thread of your journey. Blogging didn't make me train more, but it did help me get more out of my kung fu by doing some cyber meditation at the end of every class and getting to share the saga with my compatriots.

This post is quick and dirty and not especially articulate or insightful, but just throwing down this bit of fluff makes me feel tapped back into training - and I haven't even been in three weeks. Sharing our thoughts through the blog, even though it is just with the same people we train with every day, helps magnify the amazing community of friends and Shaolin family the temple has provided. Possibly no one will see this post because the blog is all but dead these days, but it's nice to breathe a little life back into it, even for a moment, and know that the rest of the dorks are out there carrying on. So to sum up: yay kung fu dorks and yay memories. Amituofo, kids.

Battle for the Soul of Kung Fu

A great article on the current Shaolin Temple and Shaolin Kung Fu. Does anyone know anything about the people in this article? Yang Guiwu, Hu Zhengsheng, and Shi Dejian? And the new temple that Shi Dejian built? I'm really happy that not all Shaolin wisdom has been lost to the new touristy-side of the Shaolin Temple in China.

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/03/shaolin-kung-fu/gwin-text

Watch the video and look at the picture slide show too. Pretty amazing!!

Amituofo!

Dumb, but fun!

Maybe some of you are old enough to remember the '80s classic, "Gymkata," a dumb action movie starring gymnast Kurt Thomas, who sports a cute almost-mullet.  In this scene, he wanders into the town square where there happens to be a pommel horse type structure that he employs to defend himself against a crowd of attackers.  I remember enjoying this movie when I was a kid.

Watch his technique -- aside from the unbelievability of having a pommel horse right there, do you think his gymnastic manoeuvres would translate well into actual fighting?  Obviously he's a strong guy, but can his kicks be that effective without getting his full body behind them?  And what's up with those random backflips?

Discuss.


(Thanks Wawa & Dave for the video.)