INTERNATIONAL YIQUAN ACADEMY

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Wishing everybody big and fast progress in Yiquan training!

Easy Tui Shou (no step tui shou) sparring meeting was organized in Warsaw, Poland. Participants were from yiquan, i liq chuan and taijiquan.

Beginning from January 2014 International Yiquan Academy in Warsaw, Poland will have it's own training gym (so far we had to pay per hour for renting gym). This way we will be able to organize more classes, with various profiles and for various levels students. It will also create more opportunities for students learning by participating in our seminars and intensive courses. Arranging the dates of your training will be easier. You can come at any time of the years to start or to continue learning our program (master Yao Chengguang's method) in systematic way (only with exception of some day, when we have other arrangements). Read more ... here ... and ... here ...

Yiquan Academy seminar was organized in Kiev, Ukraine. There were some beginners, who started learning our program. Those in more advanced group focused on counters in pushing hands, hitting bag and hitting pads training.

This is related to a disscussion during one of our seminars in November 2013. 1. MMA is not an ultimate format for testing value of martial arts (even if we are talking only about fighting aspect). In cases of most styles suggestion to prove their value in UFC is off point, as they were usually created for fighting under quite different conditions. So we feel need to develop a format of confrontation, which will be closer to the character of yiquan (and in fact quite many other chinese martial arts). Only then more people will start noticing value and meaning of things which they don't realize or neglect (e.g. tui shou). Similarly as Gracie family started UFC in order to demonstrate the value of what they were doing. I was quite surprised learning that people think that UFC existed first and then Gracie fighters went there to prove efficiency of their jiu-jitsu. In fact it was Rorion Gracie, who started it and was co-owner of the company organizing UFC. Only some time l...

In 2004 we are planning following events: Push Hands - 1st March 2014 You Can Fight - 4th May 2014 The Challenge - 14th June 2014 Easy Weapons - 21 June 2014

3 days yiquan seminar was organized in Warsaw, Poland, focusing on hitting cotton ball, wooden staff, tui shou and san shou training.

This is an excerpt from "New chapter of martial science" from 1939. Wang Xiangzhai's teachings were recorded in writing by Qi Zhidu.   Read more...

"Yiquan breaking hands and methods of practical use" was written by Wang Xiangzhai in 1959. Read excerpt

Yiquan Academy seminar was organized in Florence, Italy. This time stress was put on principles of countering opponent's fa li in pushing hands. Also hitting pads and hitting bag drills were introduced.

From tui shou competition at the yiquan conference organized in October 2013 in Handan, Hebei province. This is called wushu tui shou, not yiquan tui shou, because the idea is making it kind of unified rules for various arts, especially yiquan, taijiquan and shuai jiao wrestling (the foot of sweeping leg should not leave ground though)

First Yiquan tui shou tournament, Beijing 2000. The competitor in yellow shirt is Bu Yi - disciple of master Yao Chengguang.

Demonstration at Yiquan conference in Yantai, Shandong province, 2012.

All China Yiquan Conference was organized in Handan, Hebei province. There were tui shou and san shou tournaments. The winner of tui shou was Ma Yan and of san shou contest Chen Chaoqun.

Everybody knows, that in the first stage of teaching yiquan by Wang Xiangzhai, almost all of his students hand martial arts background already... Read whole article -> ...

Training with master Yao Chengguang, Zongxun Wuguan school, Beijing, September 2013

In September 2013 Yiquan Academy students trained with master Yao Chengguang at Zongxun Wuguan school in Beijing.

Wang Xiangzhai Unarmed combat and using weapons From „Central pivot of the way of fist” Ancient masters said: “When you develop unarmed combat abilities, it is easy to learn using weapons, you should not practice only with sabre and spear”. If you understand essence of combat, functions of various forces, changes in the position of sections and surfaces, empty and full, long and short, diagonal and straight, using three sections and nine parts, paths, directions, high and low, proper timing, when you understand it and master it by intuition, then when you use sabre, sword, spear, stick or other weapon, even someone who is a specialist in that kind of weapon but doesn’t understand and has not mastered those basics will not be a dangerous opponent for you. This is a difference like between an engineer and a worker, between a doctor and a nurse. These are not levels which could be compared. Zhao Daoxin Weapons From „Daoxin's fist theory” Weapons (meaning cold weapons) app...

Students of master Yao Chengguang demonstrating san shou at a conference commemorating master Wang Xiangzhai. Beijing 2005.

You Can Fight! & Stand Up Elite at www.yiquan.co

"When you meet opponent, your body is like fire. You destroy him easily as if there was no barrier for you. What is attack? What is defense? Attack is defense, defense is attack. Each action is in the right place. The only thing which you can plan in advance is unexpected changes. Spirit must be in each movement. You must be cruel, only then you have chance to win. What is dodging? What is moving into opponent? Dodging is moving into opponent, moving into opponent is dodging. You don't need to seek something unusual. You don't need to seek visual aesthetics." Wang Xiangzhai - "The right path of yiquan"

YIQUAN.COmpetitions Stand Up Elite 2014 Warsaw, 14 June 2014 This will be first time YIQUAN.COmpetitions Stand Up Elite event, using full contact elite san shou rules. It will consist of a series of sparrings between pairs of opponents of similiar weight and skill level. Only those who participate in all formats of YIQUAN.COmpetitions You Can Fight 2014 will qualify to this event. The cost will depend on number of participants. Preliminary registrations should be made together with registrations for You Can Fight 2014. After that the registrations for Stand Up Elite will be confirmed. http://www.yiquan.pro/news.php?readmore=70

Beijing 1998. A lot of people, when they see this clip think that this stuff is total shit... I just received such a private message: "I love Yiquan and I respect to master Yao Chengguang, but these two warriors are not a good example of what I would get developed yiquan. I preferd make this opinion privated, because i understand that we are yiquan brothers, so i try to not offend." Recently I wrote several posts trying to make people understand better. If you have not checked it yet, please read carefully: http://www.yiquan.pro/articles.php?article_id=54 http://www.yiquan.pro/articles.php?article_id=55 http://www.yiquan.pro/articles.php?article_id=56 Still a lot of people are not able to understand... Their thinking framework is kind of limited by perspectives of fighting taken from elswhere (other sports formats) or in some cases are completely illussory. Some had already chance to check their ideas of fighting against yiquan, inlcuding against Bu Yi, who is...

Fifth day of the course. Third level of Wang Xiangzhai's 10 sections of moving exercises for health.

Fourth day of the course. Sitting postures, lying postures and second level of Wang Xiangzhai's 10 sections of moving exercises for health.

All China yiquan tournament will be organized in Handan city, Hebei province, 2-4 October 2013. There will be demonstrations, lectures, tui shou and san shou competitions. Tui shou tournament will be open for people from outside yiquan - for example taijiquan, shuai jiao etc. San shou tournament this time will be open only for yiquan practitioners. There rules are not announced yet. Media covering this event: "Zhonghua Wushu" martial arts magazine "Boji" martial arts magazine "Wudang" martial arts magazine "Shaolin yu Taiji" martial arts magazine "Wuhun" martial arts magazine "Quanqiu Gongfu" martial arts magazine Handan city and Hebei province newspapers Hebei province television station Handan city television station Handan city radio station

Third day of the course. Practice included basic wariant of Wang Xiangzhai's 10 sections of health cultivation moving exercises.

Second day of this course.

Today a course of Yiquan for health and well-being started.

This was written as reply to questions on one of Facebooks groups. It happens quite often, that people seeing yiquan sparrings or competitions (not too many of those were organized so far though) comment and criticize yiquan people for not protecting their head and not keeping proper guard or tight guard and generally lack of defense. Very often they comment: "this is just like very bad, low level boxing or kick-boxing" or "they should rather learn some boxing or kick-boxing instead wasting time for this shit".

A new book about Yao Zongxun's contribution to the development of Yiquan was published. Contains text written by himself and also by his students and other Yiquan experts.

Some goal oriented sparring exercises

Variants from basic to a bit more advanced.

This is in reply to a question after posting previous 4 parts. Question was: "If openness and competition are such a good thing for the CMA's, why set up a separate competitive format (like Yiquan PH comps), where the level of competition will inevitably be lower than in other established formats? Why not just train for and enter judo, boxing, MMA comps etc.?" Practitioners of various CMA should think for themselves which is the way more suitable for the art which they are practicing. Do they want to practice that art in depth or do they want to switch to those modern established formats instead? I was already addressing this issue above. So some would practice a traditional art, and they would not engage in tournament testing, because their art is not suitable for this. Then because of the same reason, some would rather give up that art and switch to training for modern established competition format. And some would try to do both, training some CMA and par...

A few minutes from Yiquan Academy Summer Courses 2013.

This was part of disscussion in one of Facebook groups. Planned to make a proper article based on those notes, but it would take quite a work, so finally decided to publish it in original form. Again about the practical verification, testing of skill, as important part of the learning process. When talking about regular testing of skill, I don't mean everyday hard full contact fighting. That would be something crazy. Even boxing training is not just all the time hard fighting, it is only one part of the whole training, and still it is possible to this extent due to relatively limited scope of possible situations, with keeping tight guard with big gloves, which makes it relatively safe. And in Muay Thai, training regularly like they compete would create too many injuries. So in fact in Thailand they don't really do full contact sparrings regularly. Usually they spar light contact, and only with bags and pads they hit full power. Their tests of hard fighting are at com...

Handan city Yiquan team led by Xie Yongguang (master Yao Chengguang's disciple) participated in 2013 Beijing International Wushu Culture Exchange Conference.

A few minutes from July 21st. Yiquan Academy Summer Courses.

Just a few minutes from Summer Course, July 20th 2013

This was part of disscussion in one of Facebook groups. Planned to make a proper article based on those notes, but it would take quite a work, so finally decided to publish it in original form. So with traditional chinese martial arts we have situation that even if they are very good in a way, they were created for fighting in conditions different from present day sports formats, and they are just not good for this. But this means, that basically practicing them you will not have opportunity for regular testing your skill in conditions for which they were designed, so your perception of your skill and your ideas about fighting might be illusions. Of course people might practice some of such styles, just because they like practicing it, learning it. But if you are serious about seeking the truth, you should not deceive yourself, you should understand things like: you cannot be sure about something, if you are not testing it, you cannot really understand it, until you put it in p...

This was part of disscussion in one of Facebook groups. Planned to make a proper article based on those notes, but it would take quite a work, so finally decided to publish it in original form. You can touch hands with someone, and be impressed, feeling something unusual. But then, will this person will be able to exhibit what you expect under conditions of actual violent fight? Now, Wang Xiangzhai's thinking, especially in later years, when he called himself "Contradictions Old Man", was based on dialectic philosophy. In situation of contradict ions creating some balance, which creates next level of contradictions and so on. Relating it to developing fighting abilities and skills: when you start, any opponnent can destroy your "balance", hitting you, projecting, throwing etc. You develop some basics, and it turns out that you can deal with some opponents easily, maintaining your "balance", but still there are some who are able to destroy this ...

Xie Yongguang (disciple of master Yao Chengguang) published a new book "Introduction to Yiquan fighting method").

This was part of disscussion in one of Facebook groups. Planned to make a proper article based on those notes, but it would take quite a work, so finally decided to publish it in original form. You can practice yiquan or taijiquan or other art for various reasons, not necessarily the fighting efficiency. But as the question is about this aspect, I will focus on this. As in many discussions I hear various people expressing oppinions which come from looking at this subject from various perspectives, I will try to talk at least about a few aspects. Some people have kind of very idealistic and unrealistic view of asian martial arts. Actually the popularity of traditional asian martial arts in the west is in very big part due to this unrealistic ideas about them. There wouldn't be that big boom in 1960s-1980s if people were not nurturing unrealistic dreams... But later quite many became disillusioned and disappointed, in time of growing popularity of mma, muay thai, k-1 etc, wher...

Yiquan seminar was organized in Moscow, Russia.

Second yiquan seminar was organized in Barcelona, Spain.

Yiquan seminar for beginning and advanced students was organized in The Hague, The Netherlands

Master Yao Chengguang's disciple - Xie Yongguang opened his school in Handan, Hebei province.

Very good opportunity to start our program leading to Instructor and then High Level Instructor certificate would be Summer Intensive Courses, which will start in Warsaw, Poland on 6th July and will continue until 31st August. The program can be learned by participating in our summer, winter and spring courses, weekend seminars (various locations in Europe) and also training at individually arranged dates in Warsaw. The course program is very flexible, as for times and periods of participation. Some people can come to learn for longer periods (for example 2 months during summer), some could learn by coming repeatedly for periods like 2 weeks or 1 week, or just for weekends intensive trainings. For example with a series of only 2 week courses, it is possible to go through the basic level program by taking 4 such courses over some period. Instructor's licence can be obtained after completing basic level course and passing exam. Then you can teach the basic level program (t...