Kung Fu San Soo has been criticized as being an antique martial art, a relic of the ancient past with limited effectiveness in the modern martial arts world. Those San Soo practitioners who value the art for its purity revere its antiquity and unbroken lineage, as much as for its powerful, brutal, and deadly effectiveness. More iconoclastic practitioners value it for the wealth of techniques that can be mined for application alongside those of other arts in the creation of hybrid styles that they consider superior. Sometimes those efforts are productive, other times not so much, but in either case, they should not call it San Soo because it is not.
The remarkable system that is San Soo does not function the same way without the sum total of its parts in place, and more importantly without the underlying concepts that propel the whole workings. The is no such thing as hybrid San Soo.
Used as it was intended, in the form perfected over centuries, as an instrument of survival in life and death situations, Kung Fu San Soo will always remain deserving of its legendary status as the pure Chinese, powerful and deadly art that it was created to be.
Kung Fu San Soo Chula Vista’s mission statement remains today what it has been since 1979: To preserve and propagate the original style of San Soo kung fu first taught by Chin Siu Dek commonly known as Jimmy H. Woo. For reasons that remain murky at best, and always controversial, Losifu altered his teaching and what is now commonly referred to as “new” San Soo became emphasized.
Some of the best San Soo masters and black belts in the country have passed through our doors and they all have in common the foundational teachings of the old style. An emphasis on smooth, flowing, continuous and natural motion strikes to specific targets creating predictable involuntary reactions, and the practiced ability to take spontaneous and instant advantage of those reactions through timed stance and position creates the enormous power generation that characterizes our fighters. Once this is mastered, the more complex techniques of “new” San Soo can be added, creating a well rounded, true kung fu combat master.
We can never mix in fighting tricks, unnatural motions, strength based techniques or moves from other styles because they constitute jarring out-of-context obstructions to the flow that is so central and fundamental to the true and closely guarded ga-soo, or family, village style that is both ancient and deadly.
Serious, mature minded seekers of the rarest of gems in the martial arts world willing to make a life’s work of this vanishing art, traveled hundreds of miles round trip every week, and regularly from across the country and beyond to study this vanishing art. Our school was retired in 2019 after 40 years of serving the art.
Private Lessons In Kung Fu San Soo,
Chi Kung and Tai Chi are available by arrangement.
Serious aspirants may request an interview.