Back in 2019, we released a two-part episode on Xinyi Xuankang Fu, and we did this as a collaboration with good friends to see Fu Jonathan's blue scene. It was a fantastic experience, you know, I personally learned a lot, I think we got a lot of great insight into the art. So what we're doing today is, you know, it's been a few years, so we're taking another look back at it, we're taking both episodes, put it in together in this compilation, and at the end, I'm going to offer a commentary from my point of view a couple years later, how maybe I would even implement some of these techniques and these concepts into my own art of Kempo. So ladies and gentlemen, we now present to you the history of what is Xinyi Xuankang Fu. Hey everyone, and welcome to our very first episode that actually dives into the Chinese martial arts. Now a while back, we released an episode called What is Kung Fu? And that set up a series of Kung Fu videos to follow. If you have not seen that one yet, I definitely encourage you to do so if you want to get a rundown of what defines Kung Fu, the terminology, philosophy, and distinguishing features of the systems. Today we are adding the first art to that playlist with a two-part episode on Xinyi Xuankang Fu. Now I want to thank Scholar and Shifu, Jonathan Blusine, who provided us with the research and presentation of his art, and we're going to use our platform here today to share it with all of you. Now I also apologize to Shifu Blusine ahead of time for my attempt at the Chinese words. I promise I'm going to do my best. So we now present to you part one of What is Xinyi Xuankang Fu. Now this episode is going to be broken up into two parts. Today we're going to focus primarily on the history and theory of the art, and in the next episode we'll dive into the curriculum, movements, and methods and call that. So when and where did Xinyi Xuankang Fu start? Legend has it that Xinyi Xuankang Fu came down to us from the famous Chinese general Yue Fei. Famous and renowned in Chinese history, Yue Fei was one of the nation's greatest generals who lived in the 12th century. Now it's common in Chinese culture that when a wonderful art or skill is created, it is attributed to a great man of the past, as the creator himself is too modest to assume ownership or otherwise to glorify what was created and give both it and the ancestor more credit. Now either way, there's really unfortunately no evidence that Xinyi Xuankang Fu actually came from general Yue Fei, but he is still commonly considered the founder of the art, even though this continues to be disputed today. In truth, Xinyi Xuankang Fu is a martial art which came to us from an ethnic minority. Now when you have a country that has a large mix of minorities, you often wind up with such a wonderful mix of culture, cuisine, traditions, and so is the case in the Chinese martial arts, where Chinese minorities will often have their own unique systems. Now China is a very big place though, so even when you speak about a minority, you would be talking about a very large group of people. One such minority are the Muslims, who today make up for over 20 million people. Nowadays, the majority of Muslims live peacefully among the other Chinese, but for many centuries, they had to protect their closed communities from outside threats. And to do this, they created several martial arts which were essentially secret as only the family and clan members were taught to them. Now they did however keep their religion and martial arts separate. A notable characteristic of the Muslim martial arts in China is that their emphasis is on practical self-defense and effective combat, taking precedent over spirituality. Now initially, the martial arts created by the Chinese Muslims were mostly used to defend the community, teach physical exercise, and have a nice cultural common ground between people. But by the 1700s, these martial arts were being used for business as well. What kind of business? Mostly that of physical protection. You see, China, the 17th through the 19th centuries, did not have what we know as a police force. And in fact, they didn't even have a mail or shipping service. So how do people send envelopes and packages? Well, you had to physically embark on a journey with the caravans to deliver things from point A to point B. This was very dangerous as such caravan parties were easy prey for various gangs and thieves. So the insurance policy of the day was to hire tough and capable martial artists to escort your caravans. This was good business for the Muslims and non-Muslim martial arts alike. Otherwise, for similar reasons, body guards were also in high demand all over. Now one Muslim martial art which shown and stood at the time in northern China was called Xinyi Lui Chun. Over 250 years ago, it was already popular among the northern Chinese Muslims. Xinyi Lui Chun was one of these martial arts which were used by the Chinese Muslims to fend for themselves and as body guards or caravan escorts. Over time, the secrets of this art spilled out though and it arrived to the hands of the rich clan. Now this Chinese clan is called the Dai. They developed the art to their own taste and understandings, creating their own branch of the style with its distinct flavor. The Dai clan kept their own traditional Xinyi Lui Chun to this day, being their family's treasure. Their martial art is still alive and well, taught by many teachers in China and abroad. Now it was from the martial art of the Dai clan that the style known as Xinyi Chun eventually developed. So let's take a look at how that came to be. Around the year 1845, an outsider arrived at the village where the Dai clan resided. The stranger's name was Li. This man came to the Dai clan with the intention of learning their martial arts secrets, knowing that they had great martial arts and they were very successful with their business. Now the Dai clan was not enthusiastic about teaching the foreigner to say the least. He was not of their clan or ethnicity and he came to them without any prior acquaintance or recommendations. But Li was very stubborn and he set up a shop in the village growing and selling vegetables. Now Li already had a lot of martial arts experience prior to coming to live with the Dai clan and he was willing to buy his time and prove that he was worthy. After several years of this, Li warmed his way into the hearts of the locals and he was finally taught the Dai clan's interpretation of the art. Now after learning from the Dai clan for a number of years, honored farmer Li as he was now called, traveled around northern China and he taught various groups of students. His interpretations of the art was now called Xinyi Chun and from the various groups Li taught arose the various lineages and branches of this new martial art. Now this all happened roughly about 150 years ago. Xinyi Chun. Now what does that even mean? The name is pretty interesting. Xinyi means shape. Any shape you can make kind of like a baking mold which creates a shape. Yi means your mind's intention. So the name Xinyi means to use your intention to create any shape you want. Now this martial art tries to teach people how to understand movement and fighting concepts so that they could mold their mind's intention into any shape. Meaning that no matter how you move or use your body, you could always apply the principles and make it work either for combat or promoting one's own health. So that's the concept in a nutshell and a deeper explanation would be a full discussion in its own right. Now the word Chuan simply means fists. It is common to put the word Chuan or fists at the end of names of Chinese martial arts much like the Japanese will add the words dou or jitsu for the names of their martial arts. Dou means way and jitsu means technique or method. So karate dou translates to way of the empty hand, jitsu translates to gentle method or gentle technique. So with that being said, the name Xinyi Chuan literally translates as the fist of the shape and the intention. Or if you want to get even more broad you could say it stands for the fist method which allows you to use your intention to make any shape work. Now Xinyi Chuan does not approach the learning curve like one would expect from Taekwondo karate or Muay Thai. The people who historically studied this art were Chinese farmers. They were already strong, fit, and flexible from lifelong work in the fields. So although the art does become very physically demanding, it does not begin at that point for the novice practitioner. It assumes that the person is either already versed in the martial arts or at least physically fit. What Xinyi Chuan does instead is teach people the very basics of how to move the body very differently to what is normal and intuitive. So first taught methods are called Jiang Zhuang. These are standing practices. You stand and hold one posture for prolonged periods of time typically anywhere from five to even 60 minutes. Now such postures one holds are initially static but over time they become very dynamic. These postures are used to teach internal body mechanics. The practitioners gradually instructed how to move the body from the inside emanating from the core. Now the advanced result of this after a decade or so of practice can be that the body will move and behave like a miniature, vibrant, and powerful ocean waving its flesh about with minute and subtle motions. Now depending on the lineage there might be anywhere between two to twelve types of standing postures taught and in fact it can even be practiced sitting and laying down in bed if one is injured or sick. It is a form of internal practice which can be used to benefit health, fighting ability, or both. Now after a Jiang Zhuang comes the walking practices and methods. These methods are often called plow stepping or mud stepping. They teach the practitioner to use special bodily skills and structure learned with Jiang Zhuang while you move around. Now this is an important part of the curriculum for beginners during the first two to three years of practice and it serves as a bridge between Jiang Zhuang and their fighting skills. The advanced version of walking methods is called chicken stepping. Chicken stepping teaches you how to rapidly advance and retreat in all directions. The idea is that each step is used to recycle the momentum of the previous one so that the whole body is continuously charged with kinetic energy ready to explode at any moment. Now before we go any further let's review some of the fundamentals about Chinese philosophy medicine and culture because without these fundamentals Jing Yi Chuan would be very difficult to understand. Like any other internal martial art of China Jing Yi Chuan has a strong connection with Taoism. The theories of Yan Yang, Tai Ji, Ba Gua, and others which are part of Taoism are commonly used in the language of these martial arts. Now in the episode what is kung fu we went over the basis of the three main philosophies in the Chinese martial arts and their culture. So aside from Taoism which we will cover in a minute there's also Buddhism and Confucianism. Now I recommend checking the episode out for an overview and understanding of how they may overlap with each other as part of a person's beliefs. Now in Taoism there exists the idea of as above so below. Taoism holds that the human body for example is a reflection of the heavens. So for instance in Chinese medicine there are 10 major internal organs and 12 main meridians. These are called the 10 celestial stems and the 12 earthly branches. Now this is all Taoist theory. The 10 celestial stems and 12 earthly branches are not solely the 10 internal organs or the 12 main meridians. They are thought to be the human embodiment of the five main planets that affect the earth and the 12 main constellations that we see in the sky. Now we said 10 celestial stems but we only mentioned five planets. Well that's because the so-called 10 celestial stems are made of both the yin and yang aspects of each five planets so that brings the total to 10. Xing Yi Chuan is based on this Taoist theory. Its curriculum is structured around the 10 celestial stems and the 12 earthly branches via what are called the five phases and the 12 animals. Now let's break down how that philosophy applies. Everyone knows the game rock paper scissors right? Easy peasy you've got three options either creating or destroying the other. We all know the rules. Scissors cuts paper, paper covers rock, rock smashes scissors. Now some people also know the more complex version of that game known as rock, paper, scissors, lizard, spock. Now many of you might have known this from the sitcom Big Bang Theory but it was actually a game invented by Sam Kast and Karen Bryla prior to the show using it. Now in this version of the game you have five options instead of three and once more each option is either created by or destroys the other. Now the five phases of Taoism and Xing Yi Chuan is very similar to the game of rock, paper, scissors, lizard, spock. With the five phases of Taoism we also have five options and they can be many types of five things for example. The classic five phases often mistakenly called the five elements are metal, water, wood, fire and earth. Metal creates water, water destroys wood. Water creates wood and destroys fire. Wood creates fire and destroys earth. Fire creates earth and destroys metal and so forth. But in fact the five phases can be many groups of five for instance the five organ pairs of the body, the five major planets affecting the earth, the five senses etc. It's in all these five groups that you have the similar dynamic of influence of creation and destruction or some prefer to say creation and restraint. Now an old farmer Lee created Xing Yi Chuan he wisely used the same model he picked five basic movements to serve as the base and basics for his entire martial art. Now these five movements correspond to the five phases and each either creates or restrains the other. These five movements are called Pi Chuan, Duan Chuan, Bong Chuan, Cao Chuan and Hung Chuan. These are collectively called the five fists of Xing Yi Chuan. The five fists of Xing Yi Chuan uses the structure and internal methods from Zhuang Zhuang and the stepping skills that we discussed before to create the combative framework of the style. Now these five fists can be practiced as single exercises or solo practices or with partner Talu. Now if you're unfamiliar with what Talu is it is a very similar Chinese counterpart Takata but with some distinctions. We also cover this topic in What is Kung Fu and you can find a direct link to that section in the description below. So this concludes part one of What is Xing Yi Chuan? In the next episode we're going to take a dip into the training practices of the art and explore some of the movements and combative ideas that make Xing Yi Chuan what it is. Now I would like again to extend my greatest gratitude and appreciation to Shifu Johns and Bluestine for his role in this project. He provided us with the research and the script for me to present to all of you today. Shifu Bluestine is also the author of two great books of the martial arts called The Research of the Martial Arts and the Martial Arts Teacher. Now we've recommended these books before and they're a really great read and you can find them in the description below. He is also the headmaster of an international martial arts organization called Blue Jade. In Blue Jade international schools is taught the art of Xing Yi Chuan alongside several other arts. To reach Shifu Bluestine search for Shifu Johns and Bluestine on Facebook or click the link in the description. For Blue Jade international schools we have a link for that below as well. Hey guys don't forget to pick up your own colors of combat t-shirt. We've got a brand new collection, 22 designs over multiple different martial arts. That way you guys can wear your art with pride. It's a way for us to support the channel without resorting to sponsorships while you guys have some really cool souvenirs. So get your own now check out the link in the description artofwindouge.com slash store. Hi everyone welcome back to Kung Fu what is Xing Yi Chuan. Now this is part two of the series so we have not yet seen the first one. Please be sure to go check that out as we talked about the history and development of the art that leads up to this point. Today we're going to get an introduction of the curriculum itself and see how a lot of the methods developed are applied in practice as we continue to explore the history of the fists of the shape and the intention. So stick around for the good stuff. In the previous video we summarized the role that Taoism played in the art particularly the concept of the 10 celestial sems and the 12 earthly branches. Xing Yi Chuan is based on this Taoist theory. Its curriculum is structured on the 10 celestial sems and 12 earthly branches via what are called the five phases and the 12 animals. Again please check out the first video for more information on that. So what comes after the five phases are the five fists of Xing Yi Chuan. Now you might remember that the five fists stand to represent the 10 celestial sems. Now this leaves us with the 12 earthly branches. Now the representation of the 12 earthly branches comes to us in the form of 12 animals. These 12 animals are dragon, tiger, monkey, horse, alligator, rooster, swallow, sparrow hawk, snake, eagle, bear, and tie which is a mythical bird. Now are the 12 animals of Xing Yi Chuan something like the animal systems of kung fu that you need to learn? Hmm not exactly. The different animals are either combinations of movements or talu and typically each animal has several of these combinations or forms. For each of these animal combinations or forms there are of course numerous ways supplied in combat. Interestingly every lineage of the art also tends to feature small or even possibly major modifications for the animal movements and it is common to find variations among schools and teachers. The animals of Xing Yi Chuan also use the mechanics of the five fists in novel and interesting ways. Now just to reiterate the five fists or five movements are p-chuan, dwen-chuan, bong-chuan, pao-chuan, and hung-chuan. The five fists laid a foundation for the techniques and body methods whose more advanced versions are studied through the animals. Now the idea is not to make oneself appear like the animals. This is not an animal mimicking martial art. The concept of having the animals in the system is for the practitioners to borrow two things from them. First their specific fighting spirit and second their strategies and tactics. The practitioner is supposed to adopt the psychological framework of the animal and adapt its unique way of moving for human combat. Now here's just a few examples of some of the animal concepts. The monkey is quite agile quick and sneaky. It presents you with a facade and then seemingly randomly goes in another direction. The monkey is therefore unpredictable and playful with arguably even itself not knowing where it may come next but it easily adapts once it does. The monkey is light rather than heavy, fleeting rather than committed and it uses the opponent like a branch to hang on to and thus turns itself into a weight which the opponent is forced to carry. It also prefers using open palm heel strikes over fists. The rooster is direct and unrelenting attacking continuously without retreat but forks in itself through openings rather than via brute force. It is vicious and it does not surrender. It has the characteristic of sharp pecking through penetrating action and its beak is the phoenix eye fist. The rooster can also suddenly and violently flap its wings causing the opponent to lose his footing. Its strength is found in its courage and intensity more so than its physical prowess. The alligator is a heavy beast which sways from side to side as it advances. It waves its massive tail left and right and it can slam into somebody causing massive damage. The alligator can also bite or grab into someone with its mouth and it aggressively pull him sideways and break him apart. It is powerful and oppressive but it achieves its goals by adhering to circular movements and the acceleration of its own weight horizontally to drag down and drown his opponent. It also preserves conserving energy only exploding when the timing is right. The swallow has the characteristic of soaring and then diving. While it soars, it is totally committing upwards. When it dives, it turns sideways. The swallow then goes up and down swiftly changing direction. As it dives, it reaches between passageways like walls and trees spiraling among them and shing each when the trajectory of the flight pathways of the swallow have therefore been adapted for upward drilling movements aimed at the head and lowering of the body to topple the opponent. Swallow movements may also incorporate jumping forward into a sideways takedown and borrowing from this animal's character. Now apart from the five fists in the animals, there are also various talu for solo and partner practice. Now talu is sort of the equivalent of kata and karate but with some distinctions and we talked about this more in depth than what is kung fu which you can find above or in the link below in the description. Now these talu tend to tackle a very specific topic. Some will focus on connecting all the five fists and adding some combinations to them. Others link up together all the animal movements. There are even forms which combine the entire curriculum into a single, well-organized choreography. Though the talu may differ between lineages, typically there are at least four of the five of them in each school. Some forms are even specifically designed to bridge the gap between cooperative partner practice and full blown sparring. Though the main emphasis on shing each when is the practice of single movements and single combination, forms are still important especially for beginners and intermediate practitioners. Accompanying the forms are various partner drills which are semi-cooperative or freestyle culminating into full sparring, traditionally without protective equipment. Now the method for developing whole-body sensitivity through partner grappling is called rolling hands as opposed to the pushing hands of taiji shouen or other arts. It is an effective measure of learning how to transition between both grappling and striking movements and rather than being technique oriented, rolling hands thus teach the movement mechanism which are taught between techniques. The art and its unique outlook are further explored with the practice of weaponry. Chief among them is the big spear. So for training purposes such giant spears can be three to five meters long and they're usually made from a flexible white wax wood. The spear is important for learning how to generate the arts famous and formidable vibrating power, connect the entire body as a single unit and guide movements with ones dan tian or energy center. Other weapons vary between lineages and they might include staves, swords or specialized daggers. The spear is the most important weapon because the mechanics used to wield it are used in all the five phases and 12 animals. Many are of the opinion that the primary inspiration of creating Xing Yi Chuan was the use of the spear. A common mistake uttered by many is calling Xing Yi Chuan a linear art. That cannot be further from the truth. Now while it is true that Xing Yi Chuan prefers a straightforward manner of attacking as well as viewing narrow steps and postures, it is not all linear. Proper traditional Xing Yi Chuan contains small circles and spirals in every single movement. Such minute articulations of the body might be large but they're often miniscule and undetectable to inexperienced observers. They cannot be understood and put to use unless much time is invested in the practice of single movements and Jiang Jiang. Using these tight circles and spirals allows a seasoned practitioner to either control the opponent or slide past his defenses. To the opponent though these mechanics feel like a strong force or vibration. Now fighting Xing Yi Chuan exemplifies two Chinese idioms. The first is that one should do combat like he is on fire and the second one is fight the opponent attempting to wear him like a shirt. When a person is on fire he tends to run a muck and get through any person and obstacle in his path. Trying to wear the opponent like a shirt is a metaphor for feeling the enemy as being pliable in your hands something you can rip apart manipulate and draw very close to your body while still maintaining control. Now this is all different from sports fighting in which there is often the touch and go dynamic or a play of giving and receiving. Xing Yi Chuan being oriented towards self-defense rather than sport strives to engage the opponent with a continuous committed flow and barrage of blows until either winning or survival of the encounter is achieved. Xing Yi Chuan is further more famous for its shocking explosive power which can be used from short or long ranges alike. This type of method is called power emitting or Fajin in the Chinese language. Only quality traditional instruction will lead to the development of such power. To have the ability to Fajin means that the practitioner can put power into a technique without the need for withdrawing the arm or foot back to gather extra momentum. Now as we all know in those of you who fight this can be very very useful when every second counts. So this concludes our series on kung fu what is Xing Yi Chuan. Now I hope you enjoyed the presentation and please feel free to share your thoughts and experience in the comments but please try to do so respectfully. Now there's so much more we could talk about in this art but we've got a lot more martial arts topics to cover as well and for those of you who enjoy this and wish to learn more should find a qualified teacher and seek hands-on instruction. And as before I would like to give my extreme thanks to Shifu Jonathan Bluestine for providing us with the research and a narrative in both of these episodes so that we could present them to you today. His contribution is valuable and very much appreciated. Shifu Bluestine is also the author of two great books on the martial arts called Research of the Martial Arts and the Martial Arts Teacher and you can find a link to them both in the video description. Now he's also the headmaster of an international martial arts organization called Blue Jade. Now in Blue Jade International Schools is taught the art of Xing Yi Chuan alongside several other arts. To reach Shifu Bluestine search for Shifu Jonathan Bluestine on Facebook or you can click the link in the description and as for Blue Jade International Schools we also have a link for that as well. First and foremost I would like to extend a great big thank you to good friend Shifu Jonathan Bluestine you know for his writing efforts and his providing footage for this episode. We really appreciated working together with him it was a great experience overall so I can't thank him enough for his contributions to this episode and this was the first episode that we really looked deeply into a Chinese martial art. You know I don't have as much experience in Chinese martial arts as I do as the Japanese and the American arts so this was a very big eye-opening experience for me personally because what I really found to be a defining feature of a lot of these Chinese martial arts is just how old they are and how far back they go to the point where a lot of these arts go back so far that even their origin can sometimes be contested and even in debate where it's to the point where it's best guess theory and you don't see a lot of that in the Okinawan arts the Japanese arts the more contemporary American arts because you know history has been around long enough it's recorded and the lineages are more clear when you're talking about arts that could go back hundreds maybe in some cases thousands of years old you know there wasn't as much as you know recorded written records so it's a little bit harder to determine the origin so a lot of times in this place myths come up or folklore comes up you know sometimes it's true sometimes there's elements true sometimes it's completely fabricated there were elements of this episode you know when we were doing preliminary research I know that there were some legends of the yellow emperor that had come up that you know there's the mythology around that and and Jonathan Blucine was basically telling me like no let's leave that out because it's really not pertinent to the information so there's a lot of folklore out there that I find fascinating because the martial arts have been around for so long that sometimes this folklore gets embedded and we don't see that in a lot of contemporary arts so it becomes sort of its own mythology and kind of interweaves itself in with the culture of the art so I think that has a lot of color even if you have to kind of take a mindset of trying to separate fact from fiction just having that color and flavor and and cultural impact in there you know I think adds a lot to to the romanticism of the martial arts now what's really cool too is looking back at this episode I'm on my own personal journey with Kempo you know I'm looking back at my own material I'm trying to determine where I want to kind of set my focus of study and a lot of it is my desire to take a lot of the academic side of Kempo which is immense and it's deep and it's robust but I'm trying to bring a lot of that academic stuff to the surface and taking it and saying okay well now that we're learning XYZ how do you apply it in a real situation how do you apply it you know it's any given scenario and looking at this episode I see there's a lot of concepts that I like that intrigue me enough that could possibly overlap that I could actually bring into my own Kempo training and part of that is looking at the arts name Xing Yi Xing means shape and Yi means minds intention so basically you're literally taking the shape of your mind's intention and I think as a concept that can apply to just about any art across the board but how would I apply that to Kempo well the first thing is I would have to look at is watching this again is the whole concept of the Zhang Zhang those minute details and those core movements that you practice over a slow amount of time and you really make yourself cognizant and aware and and you just pay a close mind attention to each individual the minutiae of your movements because over time you can train your body to move in a bunch of different ways and I like this concept because this is part of one area I'm studying myself is you know when you add you know Kempo power principles we know we have a lot of torque we have a lot of rotation and I've been trying to break this down into my own personal study of further action where it's not just you know rotated into the hips you've got you know you're pivoting on the balls your feet you've got your knees you've got your hips you've got your waist but you also have rotations in your shoulder your elbow your wrist everything works together and I'm finding this to be a very good drill to stop and slow down and breathe and slowly go through the motions and like pay close attention to the individual rotations now and Xing Yi when they do this drill you know they spend hours you know just focusing on these core movements these internal very intense basic core movements and I think that that approach could work for a lot of arts if you're trying to fine-tune something if or you're even trying to hone into something in my case I am trying to sharpen and tighten a little bit of my my put some compactness in some of my strikes in my personal opinion is I can do that by focusing on the individual parts of my body that are rotating and finding that synchronicity and in terms of the timing and the striking and the energy and a drill like this I think would be incredibly beneficial for me to carry over to Kempo you know I'm not doing the same rotations same movements but I can apply the mindset to the movements we do have so I can take my time I can breathe and not worry about actually striking the pad or actually delivering the move but just focus on my rotation and movement so that was a big part that's kind of stood out to me rewatching this again I'm thinking that's that's a great concept you know that's definitely something I could carry over and it's definitely something a lot of you could carry over to your arch too if you wanted to break down the minutiae of specific movements you know spend some time Wing Chung as a master of this they spend a lot of time on the basic movements to get it down and make it like natural and I think that is an excellent way to train an excellent method to implement into your own studies and I also like the way the animals are implemented you know a lot of kung fu systems you know they're animal based you hear this lie you know crane snake you know you hear these styles of kung fu I like that in the context of Xingyi that it's not necessarily a whole system based on an animal rather they're taking a whole bunch of animals and they're looking at specific attributes as inspiration and they're thinking hmm how can this context work you know apply to these motions you know like the alligator for example using its weight and everybody's got a different build and I do believe that by studying some of these attributes that you could take those attributes and and take your body mass and your building structure and find out what works for you in my case I think I'm particularly drawn to the monkey in the alligator style that was kind of talked about in this video the monkey you know focuses on sneak your strikes and and it grabs and holds onto the opponent and that you make them bear your own weight and also a lot of open-handed strikes um these are things I'm personally a fan of I I do have mass I do have weight and I do try to use it in sparring a lot of times if a jab comes in I'll try to trap or I will hook and I'll pull down but I'll try to use my weight and I also try to you know use my weight as sort of a disruption to their balance and the open-hand strikes are great you know Palm Hill society the head a lot of you know Palm Hill strikes and hooking so I kind of think there's elements of that conceptually that I could bring into my own Kempo thinking that you know that mentality of you know moving like the monkey sneaky attacks making them bear my own weight the alligator is definitely a heavy beast and I like how it describes that it uses its body to slam to its opponent and it grabs it tears it rips it pulls that's definitely in at least in my head where a lot of my fighting mechanics are again I'm a bigger guy I do use my weight you know I you know there's a joke to inspiring they call me the wall because I am big but I'm also solid and I'm also able to brace myself so when I take a hit even if I take the hit they're bouncing off of me so I've got that weight that I could actually use into them and I've even had instructors tell me use my weight in my mass to my advantage if I can get in close to them and get my hands on them it's overwhelming and especially if I can do the grabbing and pulling the disruption and that's where like a lot of the judo and jujitsu training comes in from and a lot of the takedowns and twisting and Kempo is really good close range to hands so I kind of like I like the constant of myself adopting the monkey style and the alligator style to kind of modifying it and bringing it into my own training of Kempo and it's even goes the same with the rolling hand concepts like the hole that the grab that they have or you know these hand drills when once you make contact you go you roll from you know grabbing techniques to strike techniques I'm really big into that Kempo already has its own version of sticky hands and it's not it's not like cheese style it's not quite the same but it's a very similar concept of once you make contact with your opponent you should be able to feel their movement anticipate their reaction ride with it and transition from from breaks and strikes and parries and grabs and grappling and back forth keep it free flowing I do love that concept so and that is something I'm working on as well so when I take a step back I look at the big picture and I see that you know Xing Yi Xiu Wen is focusing on x y and z I look at these attributes I'm like you know this this commonality here between a lot of different arts and I think that's a lot of things we could cherry pick conceptually wise and take out of the context of one art and go to your art whether it be BJJ or boxing or Muay Thai or Taekwondo or whatever your art is I think it's a healthy practice to look at elements of other arts even if you don't agree with how the art trains or you don't like the art to begin with there's got to be a nugget in there somewhere that you can take and adapt there's got to be something you go okay not a bad idea take it test it modify it put into your own into your own regimen and see what you can do with it I think that is one of the best things the martial arts have to offer is that there's so many flavors make your own recipe you know try things out that's definitely what I'm doing and I'm having a blast personally and I just want to say again that this was a fantastic experience this was a really eye-opening and educational project for me and I really thank seafood Jonathan Blucine so much for your help with this collaboration it was a great experience and if you guys are interested I definitely recommend his books he's got a lot of great insight you know he's he's got his website thebluejadesociety.com check it out get his books he's a wonderful scholar a wonderful gentleman very very insightful and knowledgeable and I just thank him so much for being my friend and for helping us out with this episode and I hope that this compilation brings this content to more eyes because I do think you know we need to make the effort to get it out there and if you like these history episodes I'm going to invite you to check out our playlists we have a whole bunch you know we've done Shotokan we've done Kyokushin we've done even Bujjakan American Kempo we've looked at a bunch of different arts so you can check out our playlists right here there's a lot to chew on for all your history buffs out there and let us know any history arts or any art history that you'd like us to delve into because we're always looking for more content we're always looking to expand and as always we thank you so much for your viewership and we hope you all have a wonderful day.