SPECIAL WEAPON COURSE 2006
Traveling Dragon Sword
Question
I feel very blessed to have been a participant of the 2006 Intensive Weapon Course. I believe it was a milestone in Kung Fu history to have the participants attain the essence of 7 weapon sets in just 5 days!
— Sifu Lee Wei Joo, Malaysia
Answer
It is classified as a special course, i.e. a Special Weapon Course, which is even of a higher level than an intensive course, like an Intensive Shaolin Kungfu Course. Only those who have attended an intensive course, or those who have attained a similar level, are invited to a special course.
As some instructors have rightly mentioned, our students are so pampered that sometimes they may not realize the opportunities that they are given. Even in an intensive course, students learn in five days, or in three days in the case of an Intensive Chi Kung Course, what most others may not learn in three years or thirty years.
Understandably, those who have not been exposed to the benefits we get in our school may accuse us of boasting or being arrogant. By now we are already used to that type of uninformed criticism, and as I have often mentioned that is their business. We are not going to waste our time arguing with them.
Yet, it would be succinct to mention our justification, more for our students' benefit than for argument with skeptics. Our students in an Intensive Chi Kung Course learn to generate energy flow in just three days, and our students in an Intensive Shaolin Kungfu Coruse and an Intensive Taijiquan Course learn to develop internal force and apply Shaolin and Taijiquan techniques in combat in just five days.
How many chi kung, Shaolin and Taijiquan practitioners today can do these in three years, or thirty years? And here we are talking about basic benefits. We are not talking about benefits like applying our skills to enrich daily life or expanding our spirit into the Cosmos.
In the Special Weapon Course, participants learned seven famous weapon sets in just five days. Students in most other schools would normally take about five months to learn a weapon set. To learn a famous weapon set, like the ones we did in the Special Weapon Course, is a privilege reserved only to students who have been with a master for many years.
As you have implied, learning the sets served only as a base. More important was to learn their essence, like their principles and combat application, and transferring these to enrich our kungfu performance as well as our daily life.
I would take this opportunity to mention an important point. I have always said that our students learn in a few days what most other students may not learn in many years. I have never said that our students are better in a few days learning from us than most students learning many years elsewhere.
Whether our students are better is another issue. In some situations our students are better, in other situations our students are not. For example, in knowing what kungfu techniques to counter various attacks, our students are generally better. But this does not necessarily mean that they can beat other kungfu students who use kick-boxing in fighting.
But it is a fact that our students learn in a few days what other students may not learn in many years. And what our students learn is the essence of the art, like internal force and combat application in Shaolin Kungfu and Taijiquan, and generating energy flow in chi kung.
Students need to practice what they have learnt in the courses. If they do not practice, what they learn is just some novelty.
Thirteen-Technique Spear
This answer is taken from Special Weapon Course: 10 Questions to Grandmaster Wong of the Shaolin Wahnam Institute Discussion Forum.
The answer first appear in the March 2013 Part 1 issue of the Question-Answer Series.
LINKS
Courses and Classes