Our Philosophy

What Is The Focus Of Our Teaching?
The belief of Sifu Richard Chow is that Kung Fu is designed for the purpose of training your body to react instinctively to situations as they arise. Generally in Martial Arts training, you will learn hand forms, weapons forms and fighting. Some styles focus heavily on fighting while others focus on hand forms. Our belief is that all techniques and reactions are built by repetitive training in forms and enhanced by practicing fighting in controlled sparring situations. Sifu Chow’s main focus in training is on practicing techniques correctly. Until your body is trained correctly to step, strike, block and kick by practicing your forms, free sparring is of very little value to your development. Once students are proficient at a series of forms, they will be introduced to sparring.

How Are The Classes Run?
We run 2 hour classes that are divided into one hour halves.

The first half of the class is for development of the core competencies needed to properly learn our styles of Kung Fu. This includes footwork/stances, strength training, cardiovascular development, stretching, basic techniques, body conditioning and sensitivity training.

The second half of the class is normally focused on forms training. This part of the class is designed to allow students to improve their forms while receiving individual instruction from the instructors and senior students. We try to get around to each student during the second half of class and introduce some corrections to make for next class.

What Can You Expect?
Our classes are designed to be fun and enjoyable but everybody is expected to try hard. Sifu Chow’s teaching philosophy has always been to try to make training a fun experience. He does not believe in the military style of attitude that is used in some classes today. We treat everyone as an adult and expect each student to build the self-discipline to push themselves to try their hardest at all times.

We do appreciate that each person is different and try to develop each person’s individual strengths while improving on their weak areas.

Is This The Martial Arts Class For Me?

We cannot properly answer this question for you. For our group of students, this is the Martial Arts Class that is best for them. We do recommend that you come try a class and possibly discuss your goals with one of the instructors when you are in the class.

There are several areas that we can definitely address at this time.

- If you are only interested in learning how to fight quickly, we are not the Martial Art for you. All Martial Arts are designed to train people how to defend themselves but Kung Fu is quite complex and it takes some time before you are able to easily utilize the techniques in fighting situations.
- If you are seeking a children’s class, we unfortunately are not able to help you at this time. Our classes are currently only open to adults.

- If you are looking for a Martial Art that will allow you to perform acrobatic techniques, we are not the class for you. We do not teach a style that frequently involves flipping, jumping and spinning. Although you will need to occasionally perform these techniques, they are not a major part of the styles.
- If you are seeking a kicking style, we are not the class for you. Our belief is that kicking is an important part of all Martial Arts but the styles we teach are Southern Kung Fu styles that focus less on kicking and more on hand techniques.

If you are looking for a full time school that you can attend every day, we are not the class for you. We run 3 classes per week (2 open classes and 1 advanced class).

- If you are looking for an internal style of Martial Arts (such as Tai Chi), we are not the class for you because the styles we teach are external styles of Kung Fu.

If you come and try a class and we are not exactly right for you, we are happy to try and recommend other schools to you. Our instructors know quite a few other instructors in the GTA and would be happy to make a recommendation.