Grand Master Woo’s teaching methods, the early years!

There is much misunderstanding of what and why Jimmy taught in the early years, I will attempt to lay out the progression of what I know, saw and heard so future students will also know. Both on his building and his business cards he used the words “Karate Kung Fu” but he did not teach Karate, he had a plan and a purpose. Very few Americans had ever heard the words “Kung Fu” and had no idea of what it was. He felt that people would come in thinking it was Chinese food but many knew the word Karate and what it meant.

At that time his school was half the size of what the school became in later years and much of that was hard tile over concrete, a small portion had carpet. People have denied that he used punching bags in the early years but he did, one was a regular type bag (about 4 ft,long) hanging from the ceiling. He also warned against using that type of bag too often as it could lead to Arthritis. When a student had trouble striking, kneeing or kicking, he would take them over and made that bag dance then let the student try. The second bag was a bladder bag filled with air and was attached to the ceiling and a hook in the floor by two elastic cords that bounced back when you struck them.

All of your training was with him,(one on one), he would show you half of the lesson, then you performed the lesson on him until he was satisfied that you had learned it properly, you got the second half next time you came in. When you came in he sometimes asked what lesson you were on however he usually knew which I found amazing, each of us was on a different lesson. When we signed up we filled out a form with our information and he put it into a notebook, when he kept payment information he would flip through the book finding your form. Since he could not read english and did not seem to look at the names on those forms we could never figure how he found the right form. Back then we were a little afraid to ask, he was still a proud fighter and to adults he was not shy with cuss words if he did not like something, later all that disappeared. The next progression is the lessons and how they were taught.

Here is an example we did years ago of Basic lesson 9, if anyone shows you lesson 9 any other way, they are wrong, we memorized the basic 45.

Ron Gatewood