I’m sitting here… Wait… I always say I’m sitting here. I’m actually not sitting. I’m walking back and forth between working with different students and on this blog, and I see a message coming over on Kung Fu In A Minute from a gentleman in South America claiming that he can’t learn Kung Fu because he’s very strong (his words, not mine), but not agile. This reminded me about a conversation that I was having with a group of students last week in regards to the debate between nature vs. nurture, which comes up in a lot of different areas in life. Looking at it from the standpoint of training in Kung Fu, to try to answer this individual’s question, all of us are impacted highly by various forces in our lives, things that we can control and things that we absolutely cannot control. The debate between what creates a good martial artist, be it his innate nature, whatever he received in his DNA strand from his ancestral background, height, weight, strength, maladies, and so on, versus what we are exposed to and then become accustomed to, what we’re weaned on, what we’re nurtured with or raised up with. I think both of these factors have major implications on the martial art and the martial artist.
These two extreme factors have a lot to do with stylistic attitudes as well as types of techniques that are employed, utilized, specialized in, and who can apply them and how they can be applied. Certain martial art systems are modified and specialized so that they’re much more inclined for a particular body type, mentality, or even topographical region, as opposed to others that are much more general and broad in spectrum. This also is the case with individuals. All of us as human beings have special attributes. None of us are created equal. Even though we all have basically the same hardware, our software is different and unique and therefor special. Ten people go to the same movie; ten people walk out with ten different viewpoints, all being correct, except for the eleventh guy that always keeps nudging you and asking, “What’s going on? What did he say?”
What many fail to understand is that the differences that we have in both nature and nurture will contribute greatly to how a particular marital arts system is employed by the individual. Many students have said to me, so-and-so is strong, so-and-so is fast, how can I be like them? The truth is, certain people can do certain things based upon their size, their innate flexibility, and their innate strengths and weaknesses. Some individuals are predisposed to being fast and strong. Others are predisposed to being flexible and agile. This by no stretch of the imagination means that any one individual is better or worse than the other, just different based upon their nature. Your nature is what you’re born with, what you’re endowed with. You get a lot of good and you get a lot of bad in the package. That doesn’t necessarily mean that you can’t improve on what you’ve been given.
When you enter into the nurture aspect, i.e., the training that you receive, that which you are exposed to originally has a huge impact. It is a fingerprint on the martial artist that is almost impossible to eradicate. This is just like the initial nurture that you receive as a child, which has a profound impact on your life regardless of your innate nature. It sets a default in the physical and mental nature of the person and sets a course that they will follow even though they may not be aware of it. Your first exposure to martial art training is critical; it leaves an indelible mark on the individual practitioner that will either help or hinder them in their training. The way you perceive things, understand things, decipher techniques and how they’ll be utilized and played with in your training, has a lot to do with that first step that you’re given. I’ve had students in the past who have had other backgrounds in other martial arts. For example, a student that was initially exposed to Karate or Taekwondo has a harder time acclimating himself to the way Kung Fu thinks and moves even though they have a similar background. This is solely based upon that being the individual’s first exposure. It colors everything that you do, so it’s very important that the initial exposure is proper in the sense that it gives the correct infrastructure for the system that you’re studying. (Just as a side note, it’s highly critical as teachers and instructors, that we give the student the best possible basic training in order to set the tone for future training to follow.) If you see a lot of modern day Kung Fu practitioners unable to tap into the inherent strengths, techniques and fighting ability of the systems that they’re involved with, it’s because of the lack of that hardcore basic training coupled with the individual’s nature.
It is very important that the individual understands what his nature is and what he’s capable of doing. I’m not saying that you’re incapable of doing certain things that other people do, but other people will be predisposed to doing things that you can’t and vice versa. I’d like to talk about a student of mine, and for this blog I’ll just call him “Iron Bones.” Everybody in the school knows who he is. When you match up with him to do conditioning or any type of two-man training or sparring, god forbid you come into contact with his shins. He the next to skinniest guy in the school. He’s wiry, muscular but not overtly, and his bones in general are created from iron. This is something that stems from his DNA that is part of his personal nature. No matter how hard you train, you’re not going to be able to emulate this because it’s just not part of your makeup. He can use this to his benefit and can do certain techniques that other people that don’t have this attribute cannot, strictly based upon the nature of the individual. There’s no way I can train someone to be like that. You can’t change your blood type. It is what it is, and you have to work with that. Another example would be where stretching is concerned, you will see some individuals that are innately flexible and are able to do a split, be it right, left or straight in the middle, with little training or effort, and then there are other individuals that actively stretch on a regular basis and still may not be able to attain a full split. This doesn’t mean that one is better than the other; it’s just what they are. The individual Kung Fu practitioner needs to develop a good understanding of his physical and mental nature, the parameters that he has to work within.
Some people can play a form and articulate the innate feeling and play it so well and hit all the marks and make it look exactly what you perceive any one given system should look like, but they may not be able to utilize or fight with it. You may say, “Sifu, what do you mean?” In all honestly, not everyone is a fighter. Nor is everyone a performer or an artist. Some individuals are blessed with the nature and have been nurtured by a high level master and can do both, but most can’t. This is just the cold hard truth. Many really good fighters are not good at performing hand forms or weaponry, and vice versa. In the realm of fighting there are individuals who have the physicality and the mentality to be good fighters, and if provided the proper nurture, they can excel in that realm. A kid with no martial art experience whatsoever who grew up in the streets and had no choice but to learn how to fight to survive already has a leg up on someone that may have the attributes but not that type of experience. There may be an archetype that you want to aspire to, but just because you like golf doesn’t make you Tiger Woods. He’s a product of his nature and his nurture. He’s not just one. There are forces at work on both sides that push you to become what you become.
There is a lot to be said about what you’re exposed to on the nurture side and what you assimilate in your training that accentuates the innate abilities of the individual. All factors, be it flexibility, speed, strength, or mentality, can be attributed to your nature and augmented through the nurture of the training. Coming back to specialized and broad systems of Kung Fu and martial arts in general, some practitioners may be more predisposed to particular systems and styles based upon their physicality, mentality, and also what they’re willing to put themselves through. This is a unique part of the nurture aspect as far as martial arts is concerned. When you’re a child you don’t have a choice other than to accept the nurture that you receive from your parents and/or family unit. But as a martial artist, you can take the opportunity to pick and choose what in your system benefits and/or matches up with your particular character and/or nature, physical and mental. You can also choose how much pressure, or stress, you want to expose yourself to. We were saying the other day that stress is a dirty word – everybody says stress is no good, and I agree with you to some extent, but there are different types of stress. When you’re being “nurtured” in the martial art setting, you will be put through stressful situations, stretching, physical conditioning, stance training, mental training and so on. These are all different forms of stress, but in a positive format that is a nurturing part of the training that forces the individual to reshape and mold his nature to conform to an idea. This allows him to be able to actualize the techniques and physicality of the system that he’s learning. In the case of Kung Fu training, “nurture” is almost too soft of a word. Kung Fu nurturing is tough love.
How does wrought iron become steel? You must understand the properties that iron has. Then you take the raw iron ore and process it to the point that it becomes high grade carbon steel. That’s what you’re looking at when you say nature and nurture; you’re talking about properties and process. That’s what you’re talking about when you’re doing martial art training. It’s not what people like to say, nature VS. nurture. On a personal level, you may have been born with a certain nature and raised a certain way, but with martial art training, at least for an adult, you can take a steadier hand and make choices. The choices are tough sometimes because it’s physically and mentally demanding, but in order to get raw iron ore to become steel, it has to go through a very arduous process. Similarly, the individual, regardless of his innate nature, has to go through the process of the nurture, or training.
The two aspects of nature and nurture in my personal viewpoint don’t go head to head but rather should complement one another. I don’t think these two forces are diametrically opposed, but rather, that they should be seen as almost a yin and yang combination. As I’m writing this blog, and I’m looking at the rattan shield inside the school, it’s also speaking to me about the concept of nature and nurture. Rattan by itself is strong, fibrous and flexible, and because of these inherent attributes, it can be molded into a shape and interwoven into a rattan shield that a knife or spear cannot pierce. Hey, kind of sounds like yin and yang. This is an excellent example of utilizing the nature of the item then nurturing, or molding it to make it into even more. When you’re looking at an individual athlete, be they a martial artist or not, you must take into account the nature of the individual, the properties that are within this one person that make them what they are, as well as the external forces that were placed upon said individual to mold them into what we see.
Understanding your internal nature and what you’ve been given, you make the decision on how to work with those attributes. You have the choice. So, as I look out across the training floor and see all the students working on their drills, I see various individuals. Some are tall with long limbs; some are much shorter. Some are heavy, stocky and well-muscled; others are much thinner and wiry in frame. Yet all of them can come away with something from the training if they are aware of their innate nature and utilize the training to nurture those attributes to bring out the best in themselves. At higher levels in your training, you yourself should become aware of what you can specialize in, things that you’re good at, techniques that become your touchstone, that you can always come back to and know you have in your pocket. That’s a personal thing that each and every one of us has to take time to develop. As we said before, 10 practitioners of the same system will all have a particular look and feel, but each one of them will be unique unto themselves and come away with what they understand and what they can do.
So, now coming back to this individual and his statement about how he’s strong but not agile, and therefor can’t learn Kung Fu. He may not have the agility that he thinks he needs, but through proper training, i.e., nurture, he can acquire agility to the best of his ability. So you can’t say to me that you can’t train. I firmly believe that everyone can and should train in Kung Fu (haha… of course). I’m saying that it’s not nature vs. nurture, but instead a mixture of both. It’s internal attributes and external forces that you align together to make yourself into the best martial artist that you can be. Everyone needs to develop a better understanding of themselves and strive for the best that they can do, utilizing these two forces together.
-Sifu Paul Koh 高寶羅
