I had been watching videos of Gregory Fong’s Yiquan and Taijiquan for three years before moving to Portland, Oregon from Rhode Island. Sifu Fong’s style was unlike anything I had seen. At first, I thought it was a little bizarre and quirky. But I could tell from the videos that there was some real speed and power that wasn’t really visible in the videos themselves. I could tell that if I saw this man, in person, I would be able to see the real power. That’s why I kept watching and why I reached out to him when I did move here.
I had emailed him a few months before we arrived with interest in Baguazhang and Xingyiquan. But Sifu suggested that I come instead to his Yiquan class. After living in Portland for a month, I came to a Thursday night Yiquan class. That first class was possibly the most painful martial arts class I had ever experienced. Not because I got thrown around or bruised by powerful strikes.
That first session with Gregory Fong was the longest two hours I had yet experienced. First, he made me and my partner stand. He shook his head in dismay when he saw my stance. He corrected me and then left me to stand for an indefinite amount of time. Yiquan’s basic and most important training exercise is called Zhan Zhuang, or post standing. It looks easy, but after a couple minutes, one’s quads begin to tremble painfully. After twenty minutes, I broke stance to shake out the pain. Sifu glared at me and said, “Don’t ever let me see you do that again!”
Back to standing. I stood for at least another forty minutes. Finally, he asked us to shake it out. He told us, referring to me, that at first, our legs tremble and shake. But as they grow stronger, access to all the other muscles becomes available, making our standing more rooted. He then said that the five elements weren’t what we thought. Instead, the “real” five elements were: 1) skeleton – alignment was fundamental; 2) muscle – without muscular strength you will NOT be able to tap into your qi (that qi flow was dependent on healthy muscles); 3) qi – you won’t get good qi flow without all those other things first and “I’m not even going to get into microcosmic orbit”; 4) yi – that is, intention – this is fundamental to using your strength and alignment to express power; only then there is finally 5) shen, or spirit – “but never mind that because nobody is ready for it.”
Then, for the rest of the evening, we trained by engaging all the muscles necessary to lift a large barrel. This is also a fundamental training exercise in Yiquan. It helps to strengthen one’s intention, especially when recruiting all the resources of strength and power for any movement, including those in various martial arts forms, like T’ai chi or even Praying Mantis kung fu. I left feeling both elated and sore.
That first evening in August 2012 left a deep impression on me. What I’ve come to realize, now that Sifu has been gone for over a year, and having trained with his various senior students since his passing, is that Gregory Fong was a perfectionist. He was always striving to access, more deeply, all the power and strength in his body in a most efficient way. He created a culture of perfectionism and fundamentalism among his students. Even during what are seemingly the most mundane warm-up exercises (like hip rotations), there is always this instruction on making sure that our alignment is such that we are able to connect all of our muscles and tendons in order to recruit as much full-body activity in the movement. The legacy of Sifu Fong does not allow for cheating. One has to be all in.
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