Grandmaster Wong demonstrates a serious mistake some martial artists make when they attack. Do you know what it is?

We are very proud of our students, especially those who learned kungfu the first time, at the Introductory Shaolin Kungfu Course held in Japan from 16th to 18th December 2007. They achieved in three days what many other people may not achieve in five years! They worked very hard for it, and they also had a lot of fun.

Of course, and as usual, many critics will accuse us as being boastful – that is their business. But we are not afraid to say the truth, and we say the truth not because of vainglory but to remind ourselves that there is much more in Shaolin Kungfu (and Taijiquan) than what most kungfu practitioners today think there is.

How could we justify our claim? Let us look at the three hallmarks of great kungfu, namely internal force, combat efficiency and spiritual cultivation. All the course participants achieve these three wonderful benefits. But not many kungfu practitioners today after five years of training experience internal force or are able to use kungfu in free sparring.

We must have no illusion that we can be great fighters after just three days. This has never been our claim. But we do claim that we can use kungfu patterns for combat, irrespective of whether we win or lose the fight.

But what makes us very pleased with our result is our spiritual cultivation. As it is evident in the video clips shown in this series, our students are happy and relaxed even when sparring, and they help one another to progress. Today many other kungfu practitioners are angry and stressful, and hurt one another even in friendly sparring.

This series is presented in four parts. This is the first part, and is divided into the following sections which follow the order the course was taught.