You have two responsibilities as a Martial Artist.

Meet new people & make new friends.

Do this for yourself.

Your art was not created in a vacuum and you cannot grow in one either. Get to know people who train different arts and you will get better because of it.

Do this for your art.

People discover other martial arts through the people who embody them. no-one can discover and appreciate your martial art unless they have friends who are highly skilled in that art.

Do this for the Martial Arts.

Segmenting the martial arts by style, lineage or method only weakens us all. Bickering, infighting and petty politics drives people away from all martial arts.

Seek out opportunities to meet martial artists you would not normally interact with.

Find events that are dominated by Martial Arts Styles you have little or no experience with and get to know the people there.

The more people you get to know the better your art will be.

This is why Kuntao & Silat are as effective as they are. Because of all the mixing, intermingling, “cross contamination” and exposure to the arts from India, Tibet, Thailand, China, The Philippines and of course Indonesia & Malaysia among others.

Now a lot of that exposure was through warfare, piracy and other forms of violence.

Ideally we use other methods. Like friendship and cooperation to get that exposure.

Of course, you need to train hard and study good material so you can be a quality representative of these arts.

I recommend starting here:

www.clearsilat.com/internal-combat-arts

The Internal Martial Arts are Incredibly awesome.

Anyone who understands this will study them for the rest of their lives.

This is fact.

Undisputable.

A teacher’s most important job is to communicate this fact effectively to their students.

That’s the hard part.

…but if the teacher can find some way to get that fact to sink in then their work is done.

The student will take over.

Take charge of their education, learn, seek out new facts and information and boldly go where no martial artist has gone before.

The teacher may continue to facilitate that process, but they are no longer a required component.

If the teacher disappears the student will find another way to continue their studies.

That is our goal.

To find an effective way to communicate how incredibly awesome these arts are.
That’s what each class, seminar & workshop and DVD is about.

Every youtube video and facebook post.

That’s what the Internal Combat Arts Course is for. http://www.clearsilat.com/internal-combat-arts

That’s what each and every blog post is about.

Sharing information is simply a tool that teachers use to empower their students and communicate awesomeness. So that one day the student will take the art to a new level. One above and beyond anywhere we’ve gone before.

…and if you teach, that is your job.

Just that one task.

Figure out how to communicate the incredible awesomeness of the Internal Martial Arts.

You won’t reach everybody all the time.

In fact, you probably won’t reach anybody most of the time.

…but that’s ok.

We’ll just keep practicing and try again tomorrow.

Training methods have an expiration date.

Like a piece of uranium.

Now, a single atom of uranium is highly unpredictable.

It could break down and release it’s energy in the next second, or it could hang around for billions of years. If you get a chunk of uranium things get a little more predictable.

We still don’t know when exactly the whole thing will decay but we do know that in 704 million years half of it will be gone.

704 million years is the half life of uranium.

Your training methods also have a half life.

The half life of a training method is the amount of time it takes to gain half of all the skill you can gain from that training method.

This is a very important.

…because from here on out you will never gain as much skill from this method as you already have.

And the amount of skill you gain will continue to become less and less.

Your progress will slow and stagnate unless you learn something new.

Of course it’s easy to find someone who will tell you to you should continue to learn.

But that’s not enough.

An open mind, an empty cup, going to workshops…

…these are the prerequisites. By themselves they are not enough.

You also need to know WHEN to learn something new and WHAT to learn next.

The first requires training logs and journals to track your progress. The second requires research and study.

I recommend starting with the 16 week Internal Combat Arts Course for a step by step study of Tai Chi, Bagua, Xing Yi, Qigong & Kuntao Silat.

http://www.clearsilat.com/internal-combat-arts

Every skill also has a learning curve.

That’s the amount of time it takes to develop functional use of that skill.

Some skills you can learn today and use tomorrow. Others could take 10 years of training to become usable.

The length of that learning curve depends on where you start.

So here’s the cool part…

Say I have a skill that takes six months to learn from scratch.

You could start now and spend 6 months of hard training before you begin to be able to use it…

OR we could find a second skill. One that’s related to the first.

Say… something with a 1 week learning curve and a 3 month half life.

So you have something you can use after 1 week.

…and you’re experience with second skill will cut 4 or 5 months off the learn curve of the first skill.

This is why learning from someone who is skilled in Kung Fu is a whole lot different than learning from someone who is skilled at teaching Kung Fu.

I was sitting at my desk last night (couldn’t sleep) when my eye fell on a Kung Fu movie that I had been neglecting to watch for months.

Turns out it was a perfect example of the eclectic Kuntao Silat philosophy in action.

A young man, obsessed with kung fu, is torn between the only two kung fu schools in town.

He can’t decide which to study with and both schools strictly forbid studying with the other.

Fortunately for our young hero, he’s saved from The Bad Guy’s Henchmen by none other than Sammo Hung. Who gives him this advice,

“This situation is like food.

Some people like chicken,
others like fish,
others prefer vegetable and bean curd.

I like it all.

As long as it’s edible, I can eat anything.

I don’t care, that’s why I’m so fat.”

So, he takes the advice. Learns from both schools, and he does quite well for year.

Then, inspite of his new skill, he’s beaten up by The Bad Guy’s Henchmen, found out by both his teachers and kicked out of both schools to fend for himself.

Fortunately, The Man Who Eats Everything is still around running a wine business.

So, after a grueling training montage with his new teacher, our Young Hero beats up the The Bad Guys Henchmen, kills the Bad Guy and beats up the Bad Guys Brother (who’s been training in Manchuria for last three years preparing for revenge.)

Oh, and the feuding kung fu schools realize the error of their ways and are reunited.

The moral of the story?

When Sammo Hung says to eat everything, you eat.

…and when you’re looking for teachers, look for ones who don’t limit themselves by style or affiliation.

That’s why the Internal Combat Arts course contains Bagua, Xing Yi, Kuntao Silat, Tai Chi and Qigong.

Each of these arts can work just fine by itself,

…but they’re so much more powerful when you let them support one another, and feed off each other and grow together.

Listen to Sammo Hung.

Click the link and join now.

www.clearsilat.com/internal-combat-arts