Chaquan is a very old martial art. Through historical documents, it can be traced back to the Tang dynasty (618 – 906 AD). But in the “Seven Military Classics” the beginnings of this style are referred to as far back as the “Times of The Legendary Emperors” (around 2852 BC). According to such documents Chaquan, by the time of the Tang dynasty, was already well developed. It was used by the militaries around the central Asian plains and eventually used extensively by the Caravan Guards of the ancient “Silk Road”. It was also notably the first style of martial art practiced by the monks at Shaolin (to this day Chaquan forms are still an important part of all authentic Northern Shaolin schools).

It was during the early Tang Dynasty, when China could not defend its borders, that it invited these fighters and armies to help. They succeeded easily and the martial art of Chaquan, and many other things from outside the boundaries of the Tang dynasty, became assimilated.

Chaquan established a designation of martial arts called “long fist”. This is because the arms and legs move in an extended manner. The whole body is continuously mobile. The idea is to use the flow and momentum that is generated by the unified movements of the entire body to generate power. The whole body becomes a fist – “long fist”.

Amazingly principles such as this, determined so long ago, are only recently understood by sport science. For example, Verkhoshansky in “Supertraining, 1990”, a staple for training of high-performance athletes explains that, ‘only when the joint angles of the limbs are mostly extended can the power of the entire kinetic chain (including the torso) be expressed fully at the extremities’. To be clear, this very succinctly describes the signature method of power generation used in Chaquan and its family of styles. There are no other martial arts that have exploited this to such depths. No other martial arts have this power! It is unique and ultimately effective.

Our Chaquan curriculum comes to us through the following path. Ma Laowei and Zhang Jintang taught it to Yang Hongxiu; Yang Hongxiu taught it to Yu Zhengshen. Yu Zhengshen (the head “Long fist” and Sanda instructor at Huang Pu Military school in the 1930’s) taught the entire art to Xu Gongwei, who in turn taught it to John Spak, the founder of the “Fists of Mystery and Truth” Kung fu School. It is this curriculum that is being presented here.