WHY HAVEN'T I HEARD OF ALL THESE ARTS?

Occasionally people will question our school with "why haven't they heard of one, or several, of the arts we teach. This comes as no surprise to our Instructors.
  • In the U.S. the average person thinks Kung Fu itself is just one style, when it's actually a blanket term for several hundreds of Chinese Martial Arts and Weapons.
  • Others know of maybe the top 4-5 Chinese martial arts styles.
  • Few people could name the top 25 arts, let alone the top 100.​

POPULAR STYLES

The most well know and popular styles of Chinese martial arts in the U.S. can still be traced back to a singular event or person that made them better known. What truly makes an art mainstream or popular to train is often not it's excellence, but that many people can be easily good at it. Few desire to put in 16+ hours of classes a week like students at Imperial Combat Arts. If popularity truly equals excellence than Walmart is the finest shopping establishment in the U.S. Our schools are adults only and challenging. Our advanced toughening and heavy contact sparring will never be mainstream.
“'Everything excellent is as difficult as it is rare.”
– Baruch Spinoza

OUR U.S. HISTORY

Our arts have been taught in the U.S. since the early 60's, before arts like kickboxing were invented, before Bruce Lee became famous, and before anyone here had any idea what Kung Fu was. Over this time and till now we've had numerous schools teaching under the names of our various arts, and thousands of practitioners. The walls of our Headquarters school displays Kung Fu Magazine excerpts, promotional materials, and yellow pages ads from our schools as far back as the early 60's.

THE INTERNET

Now in the 2020's the Masters at our schools, in their 40's-90's, remember when the Internet came out. In the beginning very little information about Chinese martial arts could be found. Still today there is very little information on a style like Dog Kung Fu, even though the last well know Master of Dog Kung Fu and Muay Thai Champion "Iron Leg" had 300+ students just a generation ago. It has been up to us in this generation to create the first website for our styles.

MANCHU & IMPERIAL GUARD

By far our most well know Masters of old are Chinese and in the Wu Tang arts. When the Q'ing Dynasty fell in 1911 the Southern Chinese gained the independence from the Manchu Dynasty, the communists worked hard to end that era and its arts and culture. They decided exactly what martial arts could be taught, and to what extent they could be taught. All arts taught today in China are governed by a communist committee. These arts are mostly Shaolin and Wushu theatrics and acrobatics and have become nothing like a true combat style. China did not want large capable schools of combat fighters.

Our Masters left China at this time, as they worked for the Empire. Few people today understand the extent of push back and ethnic purging against the Manchu that occurred during this period. Today it is said there are only a dozen or so native Manchu speakers alive. Our Imperial 8 Animal System, Machu Archery, Manchu Axe etc. is not well known. Is is often said that the best Chinese martial arts are taught outside of China.
There have been several schools outside of our own to apply 8 Animal Styles to the Pakua, many of them using different Animals from us, and from each other. Most of these 8 Animal Systems were developed in the late 1800's to early 1900's, though the individual Animals Styles are much older.

MYSTICAL AND SECRET?

Occasionally someone sees the fact these arts are lesser known as if we promote some mystical or secret arts. Imperial Combat Arts is largely Kung Fu demystified, and none of the reviews by the hundreds of students who have trained here state we're a cult or anything other than serious martial artists. 
“One is more likely to hear of some styles we teach in a Kung Fu Movie from before the fall of the Ch'ing Dynasty than in China today. They are most all displayed in some way by practitioners of the time including Dog, Rat, Boar, Bat, Lizard, Frog, and all manner of Animal Sub-styles and techniques."

HOW MANY ARTS DO WE TEACH?

While it can seem like we teach and train a huge variety of martial arts and weapons there are really only a few styles taught at Imperial Combat Arts, that all share similarities in their training. These arts are Wu Tang Chuan, The Imperial Eight Animal System, and Battlefield Weapons. These arts are all based on Taoist philosophy and share many concepts and like approaches to combat training. Weapons categories are also broken into just a few categories of study with common cores. For example once one is proficient in spear all other pole-arm weapons can be learned quite quickly.

HISTORY OF MULTIPLE STYLES

Our training system is not new to training multiple styles as one martial study. Our past Masters in the early 1900's combined the Wu Tang martial arts into one study as they all shared similar Taoist and Military histories, there was a lot of exploration of all the top styles of the time. As highly adept fighters they constantly continued to expand their skills into all various facets of martial arts. In the Taoist 8 Animal System distinct arts were retained for various types of people to train.

SPECIFIC STYLES

Not every practitioner at Imperial Combat Arts trains every style or weapon we teach. The 8 Animal System has styles for large strong people, like Tiger, as well as arts for small framed people such as Leopard. Half the styles are designed for technique based fighters with numerous forms, sets, joint locks etc. and half for strong and aggressive martial artists who focus on developing tremendous physical ability with less technique. Likewise not every weapon is well suited for every type of person. Where a very large man may wield powerful weapons, a small fighter will use smaller, lighter weapon to fit their style. This is the basis of the 8 Animal System. Each style however trains to fight all other types of people and against all types of weapons. Each style is considered its own complete martial art. Instructors might master only one Animal, and its supporting weapons, and teach only that. Very few become Grandmasters and teach all of our styles. 
Imperial Combat Arts is not a person but a group of martial artists.