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Kung-Fu
San Soo
by Bob Ellal
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Kung-Fu San Soo—Street-Wise Fighting Art
“Three eighteen-year-old thugs had shaken down my
fourteen-year-old son for money—then they’d hurt him. They
loitered around my house, looking for more and I confronted
them. The leader put his hands up in like a boxer, a challenge
-- I stuck a thumb in his throat as his hands raised. He was
surprised at this, and he knew he was vulnerable. I told him
if he ever touched my son again, I’d kill him. More than
hurt, I had intimidated him. They never came back.” This
anecdote, told by Master Paul Borisoff, illustrates the true
nature of Kung-Fu San Soo (www.sansoostudio.com).
Kung-Fu San Soo is a fighting system that arose in the Quan-Yin
monastery in China hundreds of years ago and was brought to
this country by Grand Master Jimmy Woo in 1935. It is an art
designed for street survival; it teaches no-holds-barred,
offensive fighting tactics and the use of psychological
techniques to intimidate opponents.
“We don’t believe in the sport aspects of the martial
arts in Kung-Fu San Soo,” says Borisoff. “Safety
equipment, padded gloves, rules of combat, referees, opponents
of the same weight class and skill level—none of these exist
on the street, in real life. Remember, when you use gloves in
a fight you can take punches—but one punch on the street can
knock you out. An attacker on the street could be twice your
size—and he won’t follow any rules. You can’t be
conditioned to follow rules, and that’s what sport fighting
does.
“If someone approaches me like a boxer on the street, Kung-Fu
San Soo dictates that I do not square off to fight
him. He may have been boxing ten years—that may be his
forte. Instead, perhaps, I’ll grab his lead arm or stomp his
foot, or both, moving against his weaknesses,” says
Borisoff. “Then I’ll sidestep or move inside, but I’ll
work close, and in combination—he won’t see what I hit him
with. Real combat is close combat—tournament fighting is a
long-range affair, often by necessity, very linear.”
Kung-Fu San Soo students are taught the basics of striking
and kicking by repetition and through forms (katas, in the
karate arts). This sets up conditioned responses to attack.
Further, during first four or five months of basics, students
participate in designated aggressor workouts, in which they
practice lessons with a designated partner in multi-step
combination movements. Students take the elements they’ve
practiced and learn to block and counter, learning good
positioning. Then they learn the next step: How to bring the
fight to the opponent, blocking and moving them into a
disadvantaged position. A wide variety of punches, kicks,
throws and leverages are utilized. Next, they learn to parry
and counter at the same time. Eventually they’ll learn how
to move out of the way and strike without parrying or
blocking.
“Timing is everything in Kung-Fu San Soo,” says
Borisoff. “We teach our students to use their bodies in
different rhythms in free, non-prearranged workouts, such as
having an opponent throw punches at different speeds and
rhythms. Then we’ll use simulation drills, such as “Bull
in the Ring,” in which we place a student in the center of
the other students and have his classmates come at him from
different angles to strengthen his use and knowledge of
distance and range. The student has to react on the fly and
adjust his responses to a variety of attacks. This gives the
student a taste of what can happen in the street.”
As he or she advances, the student will learn fighting
strategies using tactics based on the Bakwa, (although in
Master Borisoff’s School, it is called the “form
diamond”), a symbol based on the Taoist symbol of the eight
trigrams and the Buddhist eight-spoked wheel. The Bakwa, the
basis of the “form”, is used to teach the Kung-Fu San Soo
fighter how to react properly to a fight situation on any of
these eight directions in an automatic and natural way. At a
more advanced stage the Bakwa is subdivided into spheres and
triangles and used to accomplish advanced strikes, throws,
leverages, footwork and geometry in a fighting situation (Bakwa,
Master Jim Benkert, www.geocities.com/san_soowushu/San_Soo.html).
Kung-Fu San Soo is an ancient art that is well suited for
the crime-ridden, violent streets of the modern world. It is a
complex, many-layered art that requires many years to perfect
and is beyond the scope of a single article to explain. But
one thing is certain: San Soo’s emphasis on street survival
gives students a realistic arsenal of tactics and offensive
techniques they can use against any attacker. This knowledge
provides students, regardless of size or gender, a
psychological edge they can use to defuse situations before
they escalate into a conflict. In the words of the late great
Grand Master Jimmy Woo, San Soo can give you the absolute
confidence to “freeze a man’s heart.”
Bob Ellal
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