By May Go

For enthusiastic kung fu practitioners like me, training can be as simple as just training forms over and over for the sheer enjoyment of sweating hard and feeling the physical being pushed further. Such training will develop stronger bodies, lower stances, tighter hand movements, harder kicks and sharper awareness of the techniques relating to one’s physical surroundings. Training can become even more involved when trying to understand and apply the defense and offense of techniques from forms. When one is at this level, kung fu is purely addictive.

The “Shaolin Long Fist Kung Fu, Advanced Sequences, Part 2” DVD set, produced by YMAA, features Sifu Nicholas Yang, teaching the training theories, applications and advanced form sets for Si Lu Cha Quan (“Fourth Way of Cha’s Fist” and Si Lu Ben Za, “Four Ways of Running and Smashing”). It is a must-see for immediate and advanced practitioners of kung fu — particularly for those who practice northern kung fu styles like my style of Wah Lum Kung Fu Northern Praying Mantis. The training DVDs are thoughtfully created to help practitioners develop kung fu skills — covering basic and advanced footwork “walks” development, distance-gauging skills, how to interact with single and multiple opponents, and individual and partner training to push for better creativity and intensity in practice.

Yang teaches meaningful application of techniques for better skills in freestyle sparring. The pace of teaching is excellent and the explanations are clear and thorough. He is talented and experienced in both his verbal explanation and physical demonstrations. Other talents appearing in the DVDs to perform the visual explanation and physical sequences are also impressive.

This advanced DVD is not ideal for students who are just beginning to explore kung fu. Beginner students should obtain other basic beginner DVD sets produced by YMAA to embark on a more appropriate level of training, which will eventually lead to this advanced training video.

I particularly enjoy the special appearance by Jwing-Ming Yang, Yang’s father, who discussed the social historical development of Si Lu Cha Quan and Si Lu Ben Za. In this modern day of quick rewards and mixed martial arts training, many martial arts students may not be exposed to true traditional kung fu learning or even seek to know the origin of a certain style. Yang sheds light on the characteristics of northern kung fu and acknowledges those great masters who have dedicated their lives to pass down their revered kung fu skills from one generation to another, including his own Sifu.

Learning good traditional kung fu is no longer like the experience of Po in “Kung Fu Panda,” where he has to be accepted to a prestigious school. The world is ever more connected through modern technology and the Internet. To improve our kung fu training, we are blessed with learning from many great masters and practitioners through videos.

“Shaolin Long Fist Kung Fu, Advanced Sequence, Part 2” deserves 4 ½ stars.