Jo Staff training from Kung Fu Living
“Kung Fu – a passion pursued with discipline and a discipline pursued with passion.”
Kung Fu Living is a complete system that incorporates the most efficient techniques with modern teaching methods and takes advantage of the most recent developments in the neuroscience of skill acquisition.
As a complete system for real life combat it includes many weapons and the Jo Staff is one of the most obviously relevant to most people’s lives because a stick is a weapon often available, a longer walking stick or broom pole works perfectly well with these techniques.
While the Jo Staff has a particular heritage of techniques, it has developed, in some circles as a performance art or circus act, brilliant for what it is but no longer a martial art. Please note the techniques taught here are for real life scenarios and not for display purposes, no matter how visually pleasing. This difference will be evident to those with previous Jo Staff training as performance techniques often involve spinning and throwing, even juggling that, while being highly skilled, may not bring a real fight to a speedy resolution.
In this program, you will learn the Tao Te Kung Fu Jo Staff form (a form is a choreographed set of moves that enable you to learn the most useful techniques within the context of other techniques).
You will need:
A large space, a large living room might be sufficient but most people will need to work in a larger space or outside
A practice Jo Staff, foam covered training staffs are available. It is possible to learn with a bamboo staff or other wood, but when training we recommend foam covered plastic.
The 8-part form is short enough to be remembered easily (this is martial arts, not memory training), and should be practiced until it can be done without thinking. Each form is put together in a way that if any part of it were used automatically, in a violent confrontation, it would deliver a conflict winning combination.
The program is set out for you to train every day using several short videos. Adding to your skills in easy to follow steps, you will build superb combat skills that will become second nature to you.
Some videos are called Repeat Drills, these are of simple techniques that you need to learn so that you can do them without thinking. Once you press play, they will simply repeat continuously until you hit stop. This will enable you to practice each movement many times with a constant visual reference to help you get it right. You don’t want to practice until you get it right, you want to practice until you can’t get it wrong.
It is tempting to rush ahead, but you will find that to learn these skills thoroughly, it is best that you master each part as you go even if that means repeating the same day several times. Excellence takes patience and determination. Remember “Kung Fu” means “mastery through discipline.”
