The Lineage Behind MyChowGar: Why Transmission Still Matters in Kung Fu

An evidence‑based look at why direct transmission, hands‑on correction and a structured curriculum preserve Chow Gar Southern Praying Mantis — and an announcement of two MyChowGar cohorts starting September 21, 2026.

Lineage in traditional Kung Fu is more than a family tree or a name on a certificate. In Chow Gar, it provides continuity, reference and a living connection to the method being taught.

The word *lineage* appears everywhere in traditional martial arts.

It is written on school walls, listed on websites and printed on certificates. Sometimes it becomes almost a badge of authority: a way of saying, “Our history is better than yours.”

That is not how we see it.

A lineage does not automatically make someone skilled.

It does not mean every person inside that lineage understands the system equally well.

And it certainly does not replace practice.

What lineage can provide is something much more useful:

a continuous reference for what is being trained, how it is being trained, and why.

In a traditional system such as Chow Gar Southern Praying Mantis, that matters enormously.

A martial art is more than its visible movements

If martial arts consisted only of choreography, preserving a system would be relatively easy.

Record the forms.

Write down the techniques.

Measure the stances.

Document the curriculum.

Then future generations could reproduce everything from the archive.

But anyone who has trained deeply in a body-based martial art knows that this is not enough.

Two people can perform almost exactly the same movement and produce completely different results.

One bridge feels empty.

Another feels connected.

One practitioner appears strong but becomes rigid under pressure.

Another uses very little visible effort, yet the whole body can be felt at the point of contact.

The external movement may be almost identical.

The internal organisation is not.

This is where transmission becomes important.

What cannot be captured completely in a video

A video can show you where the hands go.

It can show the stance.

It can show the timing of a movement.

It can demonstrate Saam Bo Gin from several angles and explain every visible detail.

All of that is useful.

But some of the most important information in Chow Gar is experienced through correction and contact.

How much tension is too much?

Where should the pressure actually be felt?

Is the bridge connected to the body or merely held in the correct position?

Is the waist participating, or is the practitioner compensating somewhere else?

What changes when another person puts pressure into the structure?

These things can be described.

They can increasingly be recognised through good video feedback.

But their original reference comes from something physical.

Someone has to know what the correct quality feels like.

And they usually know because somebody gave that feeling to them first.

Transmission is not simply explanation

Traditional teaching can sometimes seem frustratingly simple.

“Connect the body.”

“Do not use the shoulder.”

“Sink.”

“Keep the bridge.”

“Relax, but do not become empty.”

A beginner can understand every sentence intellectually and still be unable to perform what the teacher means.

The words are not necessarily incomplete.

The student's experience is.

This is something we discovered repeatedly in our own training.

An instruction heard early in the journey can suddenly make much more sense several years later because the body has changed enough to understand it.

The sentence did not change.

The practitioner did.

Good transmission therefore involves much more than giving information.

It involves demonstration.

Correction.

Physical experience.

Repetition.

And returning to the same principle again when the student has developed enough to understand another layer of it.

The Ip Chee Keung lineage behind MyChowGar

MyChowGar grew out of long-term direct training with Gatekeeper Grandmaster Ip Chee Keung.

For more than two decades, the founders of MyChowGar have trained with him through regular hands-on practice in Hungary and Hong Kong.

That relationship is important to us not because it gives us an impressive name to put on a website.

It gives us a reference.

We know what his bridge feels like.

We know what his power feels like.

We have experienced his corrections, partner work, forms, Qigong, conditioning and power exercises directly.

And, perhaps just as importantly, we have spent years getting things wrong and being corrected.

That process is part of transmission too.

You do not receive a system in one moment.

You grow into it.

Why correction matters so much

One of the dangers in a system like Chow Gar is that an error can look surprisingly convincing.

A stance can look right while the internal relationship is wrong.

A hand technique can follow the correct path while the shoulder is quietly doing the work.

A practitioner can feel powerful while actually compensating with muscular tension.

Without correction, these patterns can become stronger simply because they are repeated more often.

This is why direct teaching is not only about showing students what to do.

A large part of teaching is recognising what they are actually doing.

The experienced teacher sees the compensation.

Feels the missing connection.

Recognises when the student is trying to create a later-stage quality before the foundation exists.

And then gives the correction appropriate for that particular stage.

That is much harder to preserve than a list of techniques.

A curriculum is part of the transmission

Lineage is also preserved through sequence.

What comes first?

What can safely be introduced later?

Which quality must exist before the next exercise becomes useful?

When should the student stop concentrating primarily on external position and begin paying more attention to internal connection?

When does power development become appropriate?

A traditional system is not simply a collection of everything the teacher knows.

It is also an order of development.

This is one of the reasons the MyChowGar curriculum is divided into progressive phases.

The first phase develops the foundation.

The next teaches the student to feel and understand the relationships inside that foundation.

Later phases increasingly develop power, release and more advanced expression.

The material is connected because the body being built in one phase is needed by the next.

Preserving that progression is as important as preserving the techniques themselves.

Lineage does not mean refusing to explain

There is another misconception worth addressing.

Respecting traditional transmission does not mean everything must remain mysterious.

We do not believe that unclear teaching becomes more authentic simply because the student has to struggle longer to understand it.

Some things genuinely require time and physical experience.

But when a principle can be explained clearly, it should be.

When common mistakes can be identified early, they should be.

When modern tools such as slow-motion video, multiple camera angles or detailed feedback can help a student recognise something faster, there is no reason not to use them.

Tradition and good teaching are not opposites.

The goal is not to reproduce the limitations of the past.

The goal is to preserve the method while improving how clearly it can be transmitted.

That principle is central to MyChowGar.

Can transmission happen online?

Not completely.

And pretending otherwise would be dishonest.

There are qualities in Chow Gar that are best understood through physical contact with someone who already has them.

Partner training matters.

Hands-on correction matters.

Feeling a developed bridge matters.

But this does not mean meaningful transmission cannot begin online.

A large part of the foundation can be taught, practised, observed and corrected remotely when the curriculum is designed for it.

Students can build structure.

They can learn the forms.

They can develop their stance, stepping, bridges and fundamental body relationships.

They can receive video correction.

They can develop enough understanding that when physical training becomes available, they arrive prepared rather than starting from zero.

We have seen this repeatedly with MyChowGar students.

Online training and direct physical transmission do not need to compete with each other.

Used correctly, one prepares the student for the other.

What lineage means to us

For MyChowGar, lineage is not primarily a claim of exclusivity.

It is a responsibility.

We received something from our teacher.

Our job is to understand it as deeply as we can, continue practising it, and pass it forward without casually replacing the underlying method with something more convenient or fashionable.

At the same time, we have a responsibility as teachers to make that material understandable.

Preservation does not mean putting an art in a glass case.

A living martial art survives because people can actually learn it.

The lineage gives us the reference.

Teaching gives that reference to the next person.

Training turns it into something real.

And eventually, if the process works, the student no longer needs to believe what the teacher is saying.

They can feel it for themselves.

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Begin at the right stage

On September 21, 2026, two guided MyChowGar training groups begin.

The Awakening Cohort

For new practitioners and those who want to rebuild their Chow Gar from the foundation.

The 10-month journey develops the first phase of the system through structured training, direct feedback, live instruction and personal correction.

The Transformation Cohort

For practitioners who already have the basic foundation and are ready to move deeper into body connectivity, bridge quality and the internal relationships that prepare the way for later power development.

Two different starting points.

The same training lineage.

Explore the MyChowGar Cohorts → https://mychowgar.com/cohort

By Zoltán Bereczki, Siheng