With Kung Fu Living you will be benefitting from the most modern teaching concepts. This means you will be able to develop new skills quickly and efficiently.
Often instructors have great personal skill in their chosen style but without any understanding of how to teach those skills to others. How many parents, who were able to pass A levels or university degrees, have discovered, while their children have been at home during the Coronavirus pandemic, that they have no idea how to teach the simplest things to their children. The most skilled driver may not be a good driving instructor ( I’ve heard of couples getting pretty close to divorce as a result of an interspousal driving lesson). Many martial arts are taught in a way that is entrenched in ancient tradition. Some styles developed within a military context and the teaching style was suitable for large numbers of young men learning simple skills without understanding concepts. Other styles were only really taught to individuals as a sort of apprenticeship and would live with their teacher, their Sifu, for years. The training methods in some styles still reflect these origins because each generation replicates the previous without taking into account changes in culture or indeed improved understanding of psychology or neuroscience. Tao Te Kung Fu as Taught through Kung Fu Living, is not just a martial arts style but represents an entire approach to teaching and learning. We have carefully analysed all techniques and skills that the style incorporates to develop a program in which skill acquisition accelerates through a spiral curriculum. That is to say, you will find that when you learn some of the more sophisticated techniques, that they are easier for you because you have already mastered similar, though easier, techniques taught to you earlier in the program.
So, with a modern understanding of neuroscience, psychology and physiology, it has been possible to develop teaching strategies that enable students to more easily acquire advanced skills as well as the strategic concepts involving their use. Using these accelerated learning protocols, it is possible for you to become an expert in the shortest possible time.
The right training methods enable you to make the transition from performing actions consciously to being able to perform the same action unconsciously or intuitively. These methods combine the development of what is often referred to as muscle memory as well as transferring the neurological commands from the cerebrum to the cerebellum thus techniques can be performed without conscious thought. This is especially important in martial arts as the high anxiety of a real combat situation makes it impossible for you to use any skill that you still have to consciously think about.
Your progress has been strategically planned, which is why we can offer a course that will take you to an advanced level of proficiency, instead of merely the opportunity to participate recreationally.
You will advance through six levels of skill acquisition that combine these three aspects:
- Cognitive (intellectual capacity, knowledge, thinking),
- Affective (feelings, emotions, attitude) and
- Psychomotor (manual and physical skills) domains.
The different aspects of domains overlap to a great extent and one domain can be advanced beyond others depending on prior learning.
Levels of skill acquisition
- Knowledge: The student develops the movements needed. Initially this is by imitation, but quickly they can be performed independently.
- Understanding: The student appreciates how, why and when a particular action is used. This understanding of the movement can then be developed with precision. (A stage that continues thereafter and is never finished) Here, the student often first becomes aware of how the emotions impact on physiology.
- Application: This is the ability to use a particular and appropriate technique in response to a given attack. The movement/action is integrated into muscle memory so that the technique happens fully once the decision is made. This continues until the action becomes automated (and beyond). Here, the student usually begins to be able to manifest some emotions to add power, stay aware and in control, rather than be subject to uncontrolled emotions.
- Analysis: Picking apart any learned technique to see just exactly how it works to make it work better or optimise it for you. Perfecting of muscle tension and whole-body application of simple movements. Being able to combine with other skills and make adjustments to compensate for particular context. This level also Includes the development of the most appropriate emotion and students begin to understand how to deliberately generate such emotion.
- Evaluation: Comparing and contrasting different techniques and their relative effectiveness within varying contexts and for different people facing different opponents. You might use the term ‘adaptable proficiency’. Competence at generating a chosen emotional content with control.
- Synthesis: The stage of creating and modifying one’s own technique. The point at which one moves beyond mere technique and the real artistry takes over, when it’s not simply what you do, but what and who you are… At this level serenity becomes a choice and when needed, controlled aggression becomes an automated response.
