Why Slow and Steady is the Way to Master the Art of Kung Fu

The title of Kung Fu Master is an impressive one. Who wouldn’t want to be one? Especially when you consider what a true Kung Fu Master is: an individual with great experience in skills, knowledge and perfection of the art.

However, many people who are looking to become Kung Fu masters may be approaching it the wrong way. In America, for instance, the idea is that the more and the harder you work to attain a goal, the better the chance it is that you will attain that goal. When it comes to many Kung Fu, however, many students are surprised to learn that under-practicing is a better avenue than over-practicing. Of course, that isn’t to say that you don’t have to work hard to become a Kung Fu Master, only that the road is not the same as some other physical disciplines, even many in the martial arts.

The most effective type of Kung Fu training is a gradual process. There is no fast track to becoming a Kung Fu Master. You don’t want to push yourself to exhaustion.In fact, just the opposite. If your training process seems difficult to someone who is new to Kung Fu, it should not feel that way to you. That is because you have steadily adapted to your training over a long period of time.

In most sports and many other martial arts, injury sidelines a great talent. Why? Because that person trained too hard and ended up injured. Kung Fu began at a time when a battle was literally for life or death. And injury meant death. To put it another way, if you trained to the point of exhaustion or injury there was no time to heal so the key was to be calm and healthy at all times. Only then could you hope to dominate on the field of battle.

Persistence and endurance, then, is what allows an individual to master the art of Kung Fu. A Kung Fu Master achieves that slowly and steadily, over years and years. That is why it is so common to see Kung Fu Masters still practicing their art in their 90s. It is also why you will see plenty of hard-pushing Kung Fu students burn out before they master the art of Kung Fu. Kung Fu is truly a discipline that favors a softer approach. And that is the way that it should be.