Iowa’s Quinn Early explains kung-fu’s place in his life today and what it takes to achieve the highest degree belt.
I practice kung-fu pretty much every day now for about 1-2 hours. I’ve actually been teaching yang style tai chi and Choy Li Fut kung-fu the last 10 years. I have about six black-belt students of my own.
I occasionally write an article for Inside Kung-Fu Magazine.
The first time I appeared in the magazine was in 1996. That article was about how to stay relaxed in football, exactly what my last post was about.
The first article that I wrote was in August, 2006. It was on five animal kung-fu. It talked about how kung-fu emulates animals.
The most recent one I wrote was actually in the October issue. It talked about exercises you could do for overall health and to supplement your kung-fu training.
In our style, there are five degrees of black belt. In essence, there are seven degrees because the black itself and the senior black belt don’t count as degrees. You start with the first degree after those two. We have brown belt, then black belt, then senior black belt.
Some say the black is the hardest test, and others say the senior black test is hardest. The degrees aren’t quite as strenuous. Our grandmaster looks at different things with each test.
I actually just completed the highest degree. I just did it about three weeks ago. That test was about an hour-and-a-half. He basically just wanted to see overall body control and that relaxed power. It’s more about that than it being hard.
The black belt is a two-day test. One day, you do a series of self-defense techniques. The second day is all forms — hand forms, weapon forms, two-man forms, things like that. You have to show that you can grapple, that you can spar, that you can spar with weapons and other things like that.
The senior black belt, which comes just before the first degree is about a a two-and-a-half hour test, so you have to be in pretty good shape. The grandmaster comes in, and you have to do a series of about 30 hand and weapon forms. The funny thing is, at the end of the test, he basically just lets you know that you’ve showed him you know kung-fu.
A Hawkeye receiver from 1984-87, Early is now a motivational speaker residing in California. He is also coaching wide receivers for the Cathedral Catholic Dons (San Diego), last year’s California Division 2 state champions. His son, Chance, is a wide receiver on the team.
Check out Early’s official site here
Got a question or comment? E-mail him here
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