Closed Door Internal Instruction [Archive]

gazza99

08-29-2002, 10:04 AM

Mr. Colangelo is a coward who will not answer simple questions about himself, his training history/teachers, or his art. He was hostile with me after some very nice emails asking honest and simple questions. For the complete thread click Here (http://forum.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=14898&perpage=15&pagenumber=1)

Since you are insistent upon giving us "testimonials" all of the time here is real review of a Video by Mr. Colangelo, the review is by a real Neijia practictioner. Now either answer the questions posed on that thread or go away!

Gary

"Weird Al's tape review -By Chris McKinley
I've just had the opportunity to review the Multiple Attackers videotape by Al Colangelo recently. I thought it might shed some light on the current slow-motion demise of his credibility taking place in this forum. Before I get to it, it should be noted by potential customers that this tape is in no way an instructional video, even though that fact is not revealed in the advertising on Al's website. It is, in fact, a 1 & ½ to 2 hour long infomercial for the Al Colangelo system of combat. This of course begs at least 2 questions: 1) why is the consumer asked to spend $60 merely to see an ad for Al's material? This brings to mind the term "chutzpah". 2) Let's assume I'm a completely naïve consumer with no martial arts experience and, for whatever reasons, I'm absolutely sold on the Al Colangelo system....lock, stock & barrel. Now what do I do? I have just ordered, purchased and received what I thought was Al's method for dealing with multiple attackers only to find out that it's an AD for Al's method for dealing with multiple attackers. At what layer of purchasing do I actually receive the "how-to", the instructional portion of the system? There are three other videos that Al sells....are they too further advertisements for Al's methods?

To make what was originally a very long post substantially shorter, I'll cut right to the chase and reveal what Al touts as the Dim-Mak Poison Hand Death Touch Iron Palm (a confusing if not contradictory title at best that attempts to fuse Taoist and Buddhist unrelated concepts together). Here it comes folks, drum roll please......it's a friggin' basic flat hand, cupping palm strike from Baguazhang delivered in a diagonal forehand manner with the right hand exclusively. Not that it really matters, but it's executed from a Tiger posture, which in Al's case means a crude typical bow stance with the weight on the front leg and the strike delivered with the opposite side hand.

Now, quite literally, this is something I teach to my brand new beginner students of Baguazhang on either the first or second day of their training. Is it because I too, like Al, believe that genuine internal striking ability can be taught/learned in a matter of hours instead of years? Well, no.....not exactly. Real neijia skill still takes dedicated effort over time, typically many years. I teach that strike so early in a student's training because there simply isn't much of anything more simple or basic that I could teach them. The move is hardly the pinnacle of advanced internal skill that Al hypes it to be. There are only two differences between what Al does throughout this tape as Iron Palm and what I teach my new students: 1) Al does use a little bit of anjing, which to those unfamiliar with neijia concepts, means an expression of wavelike energy. "Follow through", to put it oversimply, though in Al's case, a more sophisticated definition is not called for. 2) I teach my students a helluva lot better structure and mechanics than anything Al displays anywhere on this tape. For someone claiming to be an internal artist capable of reproducing his skill in others in mere hours, his internal structure.......hmm, what's the appropriate word........ah, yes........sucks.

For the first ½ to 2/3 of the tape, we are shown repeated demonstrations of the same basic "attack" on Al by the three grapplers. What this means is that the three line up facing Al and each, in turn, one at a time, advances on Al at a moderate speed. Al delivers the basic Bagua palm strike to the head or shoulders of each grappler, causing the man to list ever so slightly to one side in reaction to the blow. After the strike, the grappler continues moving away from Al in order to give the next man in line the opportunity to approach Al and be "taken out". Now, maybe it's just me, but I've actually taken out an opponent on more than one occasion and, to a man, they were rendered at the very least unable to prosecute the attack further, if not worse. Maybe my definition of the phrase is a little different than Al's though. We do get to see one major variation on this pattern of attack. That is, each grappler approaches Al as before, only this time holding a large Thai-style pad which Al strikes. This is apparently to prove that even through a heavy pad, Al's strikes will still "take out" three grapplers.

Still, after all this, it's somehow hard to be mad at all the demonstrated nonsense. Sure, the "grapplers" were merely big men demonstrating not even a shred of high school level grappling skill. Sure, they "attacked" Al one at a time instead of all at once. Sure, they not only weren't taken out, they could have easily continued their attacks as if they hadn't been struck at all. Sure, they wildly exaggerated the effects of Al's blows in each series of testimonials with comments like, "if it can stop me, it can stop anybody". Yet....through all this, there's a certain something about the whole mess, maybe just about Al himself. If nothing else, his infectious enthusiasm for what he's doing makes it hard to be mad at him about the fraudulence of it all, like a new puppy adopting a wounded look when you scold him for chewing up your shoe.

Al treats his discovery of one of the most basic palm strikes of Baguazhang with such genuine giddy enthusiasm that it reminds you of a young child finding a brand new training-wheel special under the tree on Christmas morning and declaring, "Wow! Gee, Mom & Dad....this is the most fastest bike in the whole world!" In other words, watching Al is kind of cute, albeit in a somewhat nauseating way.

So there you go, folks. I've let the martial arts magic bullet cat out of the bag now. You can all collectively end your current memberships, sell your uniforms, and quit training in whatever obviously inferior methods you have currently been employing and march on down to Al's place to sign up. Line forms on the right. Do remember though, Al isn't doing it for the money....he's quite particular about whose money he'll take in exchange for video advertisements. He only wants YOU, not just anybody.

In the interest of fairness and perspective, I should mention that under most circumstances, I normally do not take the time to call out or otherwise debunk those I've run across in my 27 years of martial arts experience whom I consider to be suspect or outright frauds. I have normally neither the time nor the interest to do so. Like everyone else who takes this stuff seriously, there's too much training to be done. What makes this particular occasion different is not the goofiness of the material reviewed thus far. That was merely entertaining enough to share. What to my mind justifies the public commentary is a short little portion near the very end of the tape in which Al demonstrates his methods for going empty hand against a knife-wielding and then a short club-wielding assailant. A method which he claims will allow the practitioner to not be touched by the weapon. As "proof" of this, he uses the age old demonstration of having the attacker come at the defender with a magic marker, a method used to safely illustrate just how many times a defender might be cut during a typical knife attack.

Despite the fact that we are never clearly shown how much or how little the defender got marked up during the mock attack, the real problem I had with the material shown is that the next person who attempts it in a real knife attack will likely be killed. The attacks shown were woefully unrealistic, with the knifer attempting only one or two strikes or cuts over the span of about 5 seconds, and with those attacks swinging short of the target anyway. For those of you who do any realistic knife training or who, like me, have faced a blade in a real-life encounter, you know the utter fallacy of Al's presented scenario. It is precisely because I have been there that I take exception with Al Colangelo's material as shown on this videotape enough to write such a lengthy post. It is my opinion that the material shown (if not ever actually taught) on this tape is potentially dangerous and even life-threatening to students who may attempt to use it to save their own lives in a real street attack involving a knife. If not for this section, I could easily have ignored the overhyped silliness on the rest of the tape. Caveat emptor, my friends