Legends of Kung-Fu #20 Ku Lian - Bitter Training In my last column with John Wai, he recounted his teacher, the late Lee Koon-Hung, always exhorting his students to "fu leen", which means to train hard in the Cantonese dialect of Chinese. In the dialect I speak, Mandarin, it's pronounced "ku lian". The concept of ku lian takes on a lot of different levels of meaning. Literally, "ku" means "bitter", and "lian" means "practice" or "training". Thus, the idea is to train in a way that's harsh to the body, as a bitter taste is to the mouth. Let me explain that further to you, since some of these Asian expressions don't make a lot of sense to an American audience. On a physical level, bitter training can take the form of practicing a single technique over and over until the simplest fraction of a movement is perfected, and then meticulously linking that movement with other movements until they become a combination, either in fighting or in a form. Or it can mean taking the form as a whole, and practicing it at a variety of different speeds or at different tension levels up to 100 times in one session. For example, Wing Chun kung-fu's Randy Williams once told me that he would sometimes workout practicing the three hand forms of his system 108 times each without pausing between repetitions. And northern stylist Daniel Yu Wang told me of times when he'd practice with his teacher, Jiang Yu-Kun, and learn only one movement at a time, spending the next hour or two just perfecting that single technique and then go back to his dorm room and continue to practice that technique for hours at a time. While this may not seem completely bitter to you at first glance, try going out to practice just a single movement 100 times with full attention and power, never mind doing that with a whole form. It's not as easy as you think. The mind gets distracted so easily. In western society, solitary confinement is one of the more severe punishments doled out by the prison system, but to someone who knows how to sit in silence, that's just time to clear the mind, re-evaluate, and learn how to improve. Buddhist monks sit for hours, sometimes days in silence, trying to free their minds from the distracting noise that comes from within, trying to reach enlightenment. You can do the same thing in the middle of training. Once I was reading an article on the Tien Shan Pai style of kung-fu and Huang Chien-Liang, the current leader of the system. I can't remember where I read the article, but it had a great quote in it about how the practice of that style affected Huang's demeanor, making him seem very serene to the writer. The idea was that practicing martial arts helped Huang to understand peace through enduring and mastering the harshest arts of war. Instead of thinking to yourself, "God, this is so boring. I've already done this form 23 times, and I have to do 77 more?" Just don't think. That's the goal. No matter what sensations occur to your body, no matter how uncomfortable it may seem, you still continue full-bore into the next repetition. My master, David C.K. Lin, told me that the best times to practice Shuai Chiao are in the coldest time of night and the hottest hour of day. When you can practice with power, with intent, and with real continuous concentration no matter what occurs around you, you'll find out what real enlightenment is like. You suddenly find yourself coming to a point where your motions are better, crisper, and more fluid than they've ever been before, and your mind is suddenly so clear that you feel like you're floating. Runners talk about the runners' high. This is our version in the martial arts. Doing this develops endurance, reflexive and thought-free combat responses, and greater clarity of mind and spirit. It's the dividing line between just working out, just trying to learn some movements, and then doing real kung-fu to the point of artistry. Real artistry is when you start doing your chosen pursuit with such love that you can endure the pain of really intense, really long, really harsh training, and not perceive it as bitterness, but as time spent in joy. That's the dividing line between people who are better than average at their chosen style, and people who inspire by their excellence. Go and watch John Wai perform a Choy Lay Fut kung-fu form, and you'll see what I'm talking about. The bitter training is a test. It's a test to see how much you love what you do. If you don't love it, don't fool yourself about it. Be honest and make changes. When I taught the UCLA Kung-Fu program from 1993-1997, the class was known for having the most physically demanding workout of any of the martial arts classes taught on campus at that time. I made a t-shirt that said, "Excellence is about having the strength to cut away your weaknesses and make yourself exceptional." But the first step is to look inside and see what makes you weak. That's a bitter chore. It's not just about what physical attributes you lack or have. It's about all the things in your past, in your mind, and in your emotions that keep you from training and living life in a way that's productive, positive, and powerful. If you look inside like that, with honest eyes, you're going to see things that are ugly, weak, and negative. Instead of seeking out someone or something to stroke your ego and tell you how good things are, deal with the bitter chore of introspection and growth. Taking a long, hard look at yourself will affect not only your martial arts training, but every other facet of your life as well, and if you implement the necessary changes, you might find yourself among the legends of kung-fu.
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