Rooting Skeptic
/How did I become a rooting skeptic? Twenty years ago I was giving private Northern Shaolin lessons to a high school football player. (His father happened to be on the public school board of one of the wealthiest school districts in the USA, so from a business point of view this was a high pressure gig.) The student had been training with me for a couple of months and I decided to work on rooting skills with him. The method I chose came from the Xingyi taught by Kumar Frantzis. It involved a progression of challenges where the two of us hold opposite ends of a staff and root against each other. The progressions involve stepping and twisting, opening and closing, bending and straightening. Frantzis had instructed that these exercises should be done until both people's root is so good that the staff breaks. Normally it takes a lot of practice to get that good.
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