“Slowness is the mother of all good movement. Slowness is the mother of speed because slow movement allows you to be mentally serene, dynamically smooth, intrinsically strong, & interactively safe. Even in an art like swordsmanship (where most fixate on speed), slow training allows you to observe strategy with suppleness & subtlety, giving you a pathway to learning supremacy.” – Dr. Mark Cheng
One of the first times I really interacted with Dr. Cheng, or “Doc” as Guro Inosanto calls him, was at the Inosanto Academy before our Thursday morning Filipino Martial Arts class. Doc was offering Guro some perspective on movement, and he was demonstrating the postural effects and challenges most adults have with something as familiar as crawling. Though I had seen Doc at the Academy before, this was my first exposure to his deep knowledge and vast skill set.
Doc’s resume speaks for itself. In volumes. As an accomplished martial artist he has studied under and trained alongside some of the world’s most renown and sought after teachers. He’s been at the forefront of modern movement giants such as Pavel and Gray Cook, and carried on centuries old traditions in Chinese Medicine. He’s emphasis on excellence, on fine details, of acute mechanics and on universal concepts make him one of the most well rounded, widely recognized and immensely respected authorities in multiple worlds. Yet just last year, he was starting another martial art humbly and enthusiastically as a White Belt. His attitude of study, of scholarship and of genuine passion for learning is a tremendous inspiration to me. It’s my privilege to know him, to train alongside him and to call him a friend.
LAKAS FILIPINO MARTIAL ARTS 