On Sunday 15th May 2011 Sifu Paul Burkinshaw and a number of his students made the short journey to the Royal British Legion Club in Wigston, Leicester for the eagerly anticipated launch and signing of the book ‘Fightmaster - The Man Before Bruce Lee’ by Peter Smith and James Bedford-Stradling.
The book is about Bob Johnson, a martial arts pioneer who is widely regarded as being the first person to openly teach Kung Fu in the UK. The book is of particular interest to our association, not least because the authors have been instructing closed door training in Bob Johnson’s White Tiger system to disciples and senior students of Sil Lum Hark Fu Mun since January 2008.
There is a chapter in the book called ‘The Black Tigers’ that describes how Si-Gung James Bedford-Stradling and Si-Bok Pete Smith met with Sifu Paul Burkinshaw in mid-2007 to interview him as part of their research for the book and how from this initial meeting they have continued regular training sessions with us to pass on Bob Johnson’s White Tiger teachings. Sifu Paul Burkinshaw was awarded his White Tiger instructorship in 2010 by Pete Smith and James Bedford-Stradling and they are continuing to hold regular training sessions with us to this day.
The book signing bought together many of Bob Johnson’s former students including many of the senior White Tiger practitioners mentioned in the book. Although I hadn’t read the book at that point it was nice to be able to put faces to names once I had chance to start reading. After some brief introductions the book signing got underway whilst footage from some of Bob Johnson’s classes from the 1980’s was projected on to the wall. Next up was a demonstration led by Martin Bayliss of some of the White Tiger forms and applications which I enjoyed immensely. It was interesting to note the speed with which they performed the White Tiger training form (which we call Baak Fu), something to aspire to for me at least. I was also impressed with the application of the individual techniques by the enthusiastic participants (aided by some pre-demo liquid refreshment I think), on many occasions the recipient of a technique had to take a moment to recover before they could return the favour and demonstrate the next technique on their training partner who in turn had to take a moment to recover! Great fun to watch.
Having now read the book there’s no doubt that Bob Johnson was a hard man with a vast working knowledge of practical self-defence techniques. It sounded like he could also be a hard task master as well, from the various anecdotes in the book it’s clear that I wouldn’t have lasted the course in one of his classes, although as many people in the book comment, those were different times: society as a whole has changed much since the 1960’s and 1970’s, so it’s perhaps unfair to compare training methods from then, to those of the present without taking this in to account.
Before we began training in White Tiger, self-defence in our club was taught in a much more adhoc fashion. The techniques that were taught would vary depending on who was instructing, as each instructor would naturally have their own tastes and preferred moves. With the benefit of hindsight it’s easy to see now that the teaching of these usually discrete techniques made it harder for the student to develop their self-defence skills: there wasn’t much thought provoked about what happened after the initial block and counter strike; there was no natural flow from one technique to the next; there was no particular style. Thanks to our White Tiger brothers we now have a bench mark to measure ourselves against! There has been a greater overall emphasis on self-defence with greatly increased practice time spent on this aspect of the arts. There is a natural flow - the 2 man unplanned response exercises that we now perform have greatly helped in this area and there is greater realism to our practice. There is a common and consistent message being given out now and all students have a platform of complimentary moves that they can use and build on to develop their own ideas. A strong foundation has been laid down thanks to the White Tiger teachings of Pete and Jim and I’m sure that it will continue to grow stronger.
By Sean Krauth
Student of Sil Lum Hark Fu Mun