WHAT IS KUNG FU SAN SOO?

As the story goes, Buddhist monk Chin Moon Don left the Kwan Yin monastery in Canton province approximately 15O years ago. He returned to his family with a set of sacred Kung Fu manuscripts dating from the l5OO's. Known as Tsoi-Li-Hoi-Hung-Fut, this powerful art was passed from generation to generation. Using this art, the Chin family became powerful overlords and land-owners in their rural province. Chin Moon Don's great-great-grandson Chin Siu Dek (later renamed Jimmy H Woo began training at age four, doing form in the village marketplace for pennies to buy sweets. By age twenty, Chin Siu Dek was considered a formidable fighter in a country where most confrontations ended in crippling or death. In early half of this century his family sent him to America .

In 1937, Jimmy Woo became the first man to bring Kung Fu to the West. He taught in Los Angeles Chinatown and became quite renown, and in 1962 he opened a school in El Monte California. Since then until his death in 1991, Grandmaster Woo taught thousands what many consider the purest and most brutally effective fighting style surviving today. San Soo is based on five categories or "families" of techniques; punches and kicks (tsoi ga), leverages and throws (li ga), pressure points (hoi ga), the power of the mind over the body (f1ut ga), and physical power (hung ga). Kung Fu San Soo is not a sport or a game, but a warrior discipline based on punches, kicks, nerve attacks, and take-downs directed to the vital points of the body and executed in perfect rhythm. These techniques can be changed instantly to suit the situation and do not necessarily follow a set pattern. Teaching - students the effective use of physics, body dynamics, and common sense, San Soo trains the mind to use the body to generate maximum power while instantly adapting to any combat situation. Though it's application can almost seem magical, Kung Fu San Soo is a savagely effective fighting art free of animal mimicry and mystic psycho babble.

Principles of leverage, momentum, and timing coupled with controlled breathing and concentration give San Soo fighters extreme power. In addition to agility, balance, and confidence in one's self; San Soo strives to develop self-discipline and a strong respect for others. As Grandmaster Woo said, "Best defense is run if I can. I don't want to kill unless I have no choice... Life is more important than anything on this planet".