As the aggressor reels, Sergio continues
forward, dropping an elbow into the
opening, through his opponent’s chest...
...then following with the shoulder charge
(a whole-body strike common to internal
kung fu styles).As his opponent is knocked back and tries to
regain balance, Sergio follows, stepping through
and rising up with a chopping strike to the face...FEATURE STORY |ƫ333ċ (%06) #ċ*!0ƫđƫ^23a student, nobody knew about
it. So now people know about
it and are getting interested
in it because of my book, so
many associations in Europe are
starting to teach Tang Yick pole.
But of course they don’t come
to me — they ask, ‘Where did
Sergio learn it? Oh, in China.’
If, to protect my business in
Europe, I say to an instructor,
“Can you not teach that
association, or that guy?”, he
says okay, but you have to pay
him more than the other guy
who wants it. So with all that
interest, I cannot do that — it’s
out there — but people are
slowly forgetting that it was me
who brought it out in the open.
You’ve had lots of instructors
and people influencing you
at different times of your
journey, but who would you say
influenced you the most? Which
teachers gave you something
that was really vital for your
kung fu journey?
You know, every one of them
gave me something, and it was all
important. It’s like some universal
force took me by the heart and
said, now you have to go there,
now you have to go here, because
it all clicked together. So, my last
teachers are just as important as
my first teachers.
Even the Leung Ting system
that I regard not so highly now,
it still showed me how you
systemise the method, how you
make it teachable, how you order
the sections and how to present
it. And now, my last teachers
all teach internal kung fu. They
also do Wing Chun, but are also
highly skilled in different internal
arts. Through my research, I
discovered that Wing Chun was
once really an internal art, on par
with tai chi or bagua from the
north, just before Wing Chun
split into the three-set format
— and now I’m ready for that. If
you’d tried to teach it to me 10
years ago, I wouldn’t have been
ready for it, not mentally and not
in my soul.
So, all my teachers were
important; I cannot say one of my
teachers wasn’t important for me.
For example, my second teacher
in the Leung Ting system: I was
a kid and I was scared of getting...followed by a
palm-heel, from
where he can take
complete control of
his foe’s head, and
thus his balance.(^456)
7
FINISH