PARTICIPATING IN AND WINNING FREE SPARRING COMPETITIONONS
Grandmaster Wong and Sifu Manuel Tirado, an international Taekwondo free sparring champion before he learned Taijiquan from Grandmaster Wong
Restoring the glory of kungfu is one of the two themes we set ourselves to achieve in 2012, the other theme being helping those with so-called incurable diseases to regain good health.
Except for those who have experience in free-sparring with other martial artists, if you enter free sparring competitions now, many of you will be beaten. This is not because you lack skills and techniques, but because you lack confidence and experience. In other words, even though you have practiced combat applications amongst yourselves, because you have no experience in uncontrolled and full contact sparring, many of you will be defeated if you participate in free sparring competitions now.
So, how are you going to win free sparring competitions? You have to prepare yourselves. In line with our scholar-warrior concept, you should not enter a competition and hope to win, you already know you will win before you enter a competition. You also ensure that, even in the unlikelihood that you lose, you will not be hurt in the uncontrolled, full contact fighting.
The three requirements, in their order of importance, to win free sparring competitions as well as not to be hurt are as follows
- Confidence and experience.
- A lot of internal force.
- Skills and techniques.
Most of you have internal force, skills and techniques to participate in free sparring competitions. What you need is confidence and experience in uncontrolled, full contact free sparring with other martial artists. Our 30-Opponent programme is excellent to help you attain this confidence and experience. This programme is a close-door secret. So ask your sifu about it, and you must keep it confidential.
Our newly set-up Free Sparring Competition Committee will also help you in this programme. The Committee comprises of the following. Please contact any one of them.
- Sifu Markus Kahila -- Co-Chairman
- Sifu Robin Gamble -- Co-Chairman
- Sifu Tim Franklin
- Sifu Anton Schmick
- Sifu Matt Fenton
This 30-Opponent programme will enable you to progress systematically so that by the time you complete the programme you will have more than 95% chance of beating your opponents even when they may have 95% chance of beating you at the start of the programme! You may find this hard to believe, just as other people find it hard to believe in the many things we say, but find out for yourselves whether this is true. Please bear in mind that this 30-Opponent programme is a close-door secret, and if you have the opportunity to learn it you must keep it to yourselves.
Only when you are confident of having 95% chance of beating your ferocious opponents and remaining uninjured yourselves, should you enter free sparring competitions. If conditions are ideal;, you can complete this programme in a month. But we shall allot ourselves six months for this programme so that by July 2012 you should be participating in and winning free sparring competitions.
To make your victory doubly sure, you should spend some time further developing your internal force. The Iron-Wire Set is excellent for this purpose. If you do not know the Iron-Wire Set, another excellent method is Golden Bridge. Start with a comfortable period of time and progress to being able to remain at Golden Bridge for at least 15 minutes. Your opponents, irrespective of their size and gender (particularly for our female students whom we hope will win free sparring competitions against male opponents), will find you very powerful.
In terms of force, when your opponents are like children despite their age, and you are powerful adults, irrespective of your size, you will find it easy to beat them.
To make your victory triply sure, you should choose the best skills and techniques for the purpose. As most people today use Boxing and Kick-Boxing and sometimes grabbling, the best skills to use are those specially tailored made against these arts. You can find these skills at Shaolin Kungfu against Other Martial Arts and Taijiquan against Other Martial Arts . If all other things were equal, the best techniques for this purpose are those from Choy-Li-Fatt.
The first three kungfu courses I shall conduct in 2012 are all specially geared towards this purpose:
- Kungfu against Other Styles
- Choy-Li-Fatt
- Iron-Wire
The Kungfu against Other Styles and Choy-Li-Fatt courses at the Shaolin Winter Camp in Norway from 6th to 13th January will provide the best skills and techniques for winning free sparring competitions. These two courses will enable you to realize Sun Tzu's advice in winning combat, namely:
- Don't hand in your defeat -- this is provided for at the Kungfu against Other Style course
- Exploit your opponents' weakness to defeat them -- this is also provided for at the Kungfu against Other Style course
- Create your victory -- this is provided for at the Choy-Li-Fatt course.
The Iron-Wire course at the Shaolin Velentine Festival in Ireland will give you a lot of internal force so that in free sparring competitions in terms of internal force you will be like adults fighting against children.
The 30-Opponent progranne, coordinated by the Free Sparring Competition Committee. will give you confidence and experience.
With our emphasis on winning free sparring competition in 2012, have we shifted in our philosophy on practicing kungfu? No, our basic philosophy is still attaining good health, vitality, longevity, mental freshness and spiritual joys.
Nevertheless, we say that kungfu is effective for combat, and we have to walk our talk. Winning free sparring competitions is an excellent way to do so. It also fulfils our aim of restoring the glory of kungfu.
Grandmaster Wong Kiew Kit
28th December 2011, Sungai Petani.
Sifu Robin Gamble using Taijiquan in a free sparring competition in which he won