Customer Reviews

Stone Warrior- Chinese Strength & Health Program

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Provocative title yes. The green dragon studios is probably the 2nd most controversial subject/school/system next to 18 daoist palms. What I will add outside of the politics is that you can do the system without tension. Something is better than nothing. The thing which defines most of the green dragon sets is the obsession with tension which I dont agree with. Saving the iron vest form which I have taught from Kwan fu. I have the iron palm form by Kwan fu too. Oddly enough its better than the green dragon iron palm video I saw. The latter was a combination of two tapes and was incomplete. I heard other things about other tapes by them. I cant comment unless I see two different teachers teaching the same thing differently. In this case it was chicoine and john allen. Whats missing from this is allens drill sargent method of instruction to what always seems to be an imaginary audience of seminar students. I say this because no one ever seems to cough, talk, drop pencils or anything. Its like they are mute or perhaps too intimidated to even dare interrupt. Criticisms of this form are that it can indeed make your arms as hard as rock but at the cost of speed. What I have to say is that indeed within the set are exercises when done singly or in combination can literally make not just the arms hard as rock, but the whole body. But we are talking a more esoteric, or legendary or dare I say spiritual side effect. #1 #3 #4 #7 #9 #19 stand out as the important ones for reasons I really cant get into. The postures with the arms crossed is called in shaolin "key lock arts" and increases physical strengh in a manner which would be hard to convince people with a "rational mind". Other techniques are thrown in, not all are technically geared towards the "stone body" effect. Some might help cool the body. For the record high blood pressure is called "liver wind" in chinese medicine. People with blood pressure issues should be careful with this set. Some people teach tension forms to apply tension only after movement. But i've seen a test on sanchin that said it was no more strenuous than deep knee bends. Two herbs that will help with hypertension are tibetain mulberry fruit (morus alba) and xia cu cao (prunellia vulgarius). Both are superior herbs and safe. When the arms cross in front of the chest you should face magnetic north. I guess thats all I have to say about this one for now.

Great form of exercise and definitly a challenging form of qigong for the advanced practitioner, martial artist looking for some form of expansion to their training. The only downside is you will not find any of the internal basis or what have you on about the Stone Warrior or Iron Wire/Thread qigong on the disk, but it is the advanced portion of their system so they probably expect you know about the internal or historical aspects already.

I'm sorry that you were not happy with the production. If the DVD is faulty, please send it to me for a replacement.

No, not filmed in the basement but in a 5,000 sq ft hall where we were hosting the seminar.

Yes, out of breath because the exercises are under full tension and demonstrated at full tension. If you're not out of breath with the exercise, you are not pushing enough.

Iron Vest is the internal set, Stone Warrior is all external. Please visit my site for more details on the complete Chinese Strength & Health Program.

We will refilm this DVD to make the atmosphere more appealing.

Thank you for your help.

Sincerely,
Thomas Keen
Keen's Martial Arts

First of all, this form costs $100 through another organization, so thank you Prof. Keene for presenting this form at a great price. After sitting on this dvd a couple of years, I returned to it after doing my own Dynamic Tension exercises for a couple months. Combined with pushups this form offers an incredible strength program for anyone with a love of the classical martial arts. I'm dedicating the next several months to this (with pushups)as a stand alone strength routine. Originally I gave a bad review to this dvd, but looking back at what I wrote I can only offer my apologies to the Sifu, and I was incredibly ignorant of Stone Warrior at that time.