What Happens in the First 10 Lessons of Chow Gar Training?
Concise overview of the MyChowGar beginner phase: what students practice in the first ten lessons (stance, footwork, Qigong, bridge methods and the first Chow Gar hand techniques) and why the curriculum delays Saam Bo Gin until structural foundations are established.
What does beginning Chow Gar actually look like? Here is what students encounter in their first ten lessons — from stance and footwork to Qigong, bridge methods and the first characteristic hand techniques.
What happens when you begin learning Chow Gar Southern Praying Mantis?
Many people imagine that the first few lessons of a martial art should immediately give them a collection of techniques.
Punches.
Blocks.
Applications.
Perhaps a form to memorise.
Chow Gar begins differently.
You do learn techniques from the beginning. But the purpose of those techniques is not simply to increase the number of movements you know.
From the first lesson, they are being used to begin building a different way of organising and using the body.
That distinction becomes very clear when we look at the first ten lessons of the MyChowGar curriculum.
Lessons 1–2: building somewhere for the techniques to live
The first lessons establish the basic physical framework.
You begin with stance and the short step.
Then come the basic fists, Closed Mantis Position, the long step and Gar Sao.
None of these movements are particularly complicated.
That is deliberate.
The student already has enough to think about.
Where is the weight?
What happens to the structure when you step?
Does the upper body remain organised?
Does the hand movement belong to the body, or does the arm begin doing something independently?
Can you move without losing what you found while standing still?
These are much more important questions at this stage than how many techniques you can remember.
A beginner does not need complexity.
They need a reliable starting point.
The first training sessions matter as much as the lessons
One characteristic of the MyChowGar curriculum is that instructional material is repeatedly followed by guided training.
You do not simply watch a lesson and immediately move to the next piece of information.
You practise.
The first short training already asks you to work with what you have just learned.
Then new material is added.
Then you train again.
This rhythm continues throughout the curriculum.
Learn something. Train it. Add something. Train again.
It sounds almost embarrassingly obvious.
Online education has nevertheless managed to spend years inventing ways around it.
The purpose is simple: knowledge has to begin turning into physical habit before more information is added.
Lessons 3–4: strengthening, Qigong and the first deeper body work
The next stage introduces Jee Lik, Dil Sao and breathing work, followed by Kim Ma and Chuen San Gup.
This is where a beginner begins to realise that Chow Gar training is not divided neatly into:
“technique”
“strength”
“Qigong”
and
“body development.”
These things belong to the same process.
The strengthening and Qigong exercises begin developing qualities that the techniques will later require.
At the same time, the student starts learning one of the more difficult lessons in Chow Gar:
the body must be strong without simply becoming rigid.
There is tension in the training.
There is also release.
There is effort.
There is also the gradual development of the ability to organise that effort more efficiently.
Nobody solves this in lesson four.
That would make our jobs considerably easier.
The early exercises simply begin the process.
After this section comes the first longer guided training session, where the pieces start being practised together rather than as isolated exercises.
Lessons 5–7: the first real Chow Gar hands
Now the technical vocabulary begins to expand.
Lesson five introduces Gin Choi.
Lesson six develops Double Gin Choi, Bil Jee and combinations.
Lesson seven adds Tung Sat, Dao Sao and further breathing work.
These are recognisable Chow Gar techniques.
But again, learning their external shape is only the first level.
Take Bil Jee.
The hand position is easy to see.
The direction of the movement can be copied.
But can the technique remain connected to the structure?
Does the shoulder take over?
Does the student reach?
Does the elbow lose its relationship with the body?
Can the movement stay short without becoming weak?
The same issue appears with Gin Choi and the other early hands.
The technique gives the student something concrete to practise.
At the same time, it exposes what is happening underneath the technique.
That is why a simple movement can remain useful for years.
Technique and body development begin together
This is an important point about how we teach Chow Gar.
We do not spend months building a body and then suddenly begin teaching techniques.
And we do not teach a large technical vocabulary first and hope that the body method somehow appears later.
The two develop together.
You learn a movement.
The movement creates a structural problem.
Training exposes that problem.
Correction helps you recognise it.
Then repetition begins changing the way the body performs the movement.
The technique becomes both a martial tool and a training device.
This continues throughout the system.
Lessons 8–10: movement becomes more varied
By lessons eight to ten, the student begins adding more of the characteristic hand and stepping methods of Chow Gar.
Lesson eight introduces Shue Bo and Sai Sao.
Lesson nine brings Half Step, Jee Lik Dragon Claw and Narp Sao.
Lesson ten introduces Soc Sao and Yin Kum.
The vocabulary is becoming larger.
But the underlying questions remain remarkably similar.
Can you keep the structure while the footwork changes?
Can a different hand technique still come from the same body?
Can you move from one action to another without rebuilding yourself from zero each time?
Can the bridge remain connected when the direction changes?
This is where progression begins to become interesting.
The exercises look different.
The body principles should increasingly be the same.
What you do NOT learn in the first ten lessons
There is something equally important about the first ten lessons:
you have not learned Saam Bo Gin yet.
That may surprise people familiar with Chow Gar, because Saam Bo Gin is the foundation form of the system and one of the most important practices we have.
But that is exactly why we do not rush toward it.
Before the student begins learning the core form, they have already spent considerable time working with:
stance,
footwork,
basic fists,
Gar Sao,
strengthening exercises,
Qigong,
breathing,
Gin Choi,
Bil Jee,
Tung Sat,
Dao Sao,
Sai Sao,
Narp Sao,
Soc Sao,
Yin Kum,
and repeated guided training sessions.
More material follows before Saam Bo Gin is introduced.
By the time the student reaches the form, many of its ingredients are no longer completely unfamiliar.
There is already some body awareness.
Some vocabulary.
Some structural experience.
Some understanding of the bridge.
The form now has something to organise.
Why we introduce Saam Bo Gin later
Saam Bo Gin is simple enough that someone can copy its choreography very quickly.
That does not mean they can train Saam Bo Gin.
This is an important distinction.
The value of the form is not primarily in remembering the sequence.
It is in what the sequence asks the body to do.
Structure has to survive movement.
The stance has to remain present.
The hands must remain connected to the torso.
Loading and release begin to appear inside the movement.
The bridge must belong to the whole body rather than becoming an isolated arm.
If someone learns the choreography before having any reference for these qualities, they can easily spend months becoming very good at reproducing the external form while missing much of what the form is actually designed to develop.
So we prepare the student first.
Not because Saam Bo Gin is too advanced to remember.
Because it is too important to reduce to choreography.
What should change after ten lessons?
After ten lessons, you are not a Chow Gar fighter.
You have not developed advanced internal power.
You have not mastered the foundation.
And anyone promising those things after ten online lessons has discovered a business model rather than a martial arts method.
What should have happened is more modest.
And much more useful.
You should have begun developing a reference for the system.
You know how the basic stance and stepping work.
You have encountered both strengthening and Qigong methods.
You have begun learning characteristic Chow Gar hands.
You have practised those elements inside guided training rather than only as separate tutorials.
And, most importantly, you should already be starting to notice that the quality of a technique depends on more than whether its external shape is correct.
That realisation is the beginning of the deeper work.
Progress is not the number of techniques you know
Modern learning makes it very easy to confuse accumulation with progress.
Ten lessons.
Ten techniques.
Twenty techniques.
Three forms.
Another certificate.
Everything is measurable.
Body development is less cooperative.
You can practise the same movement for six months and make an enormous improvement that is almost invisible to an untrained observer.
You can also learn twenty new movements and improve almost nothing.
This is why we do not measure progression in Chow Gar primarily by the amount of content someone has consumed.
The better question is:
What can your body do now that it could not do before?
Can you hold the structure longer?
Can you step without losing it?
Can you use the hands with less unnecessary compensation?
Can you recognise when the shoulder takes over?
Can you create more pressure through less obvious movement?
Can you maintain the same body method as the techniques become more varied?
Those changes are harder to count.
They are also much closer to what Kung Fu actually means.
The first ten lessons are only the beginning
The first phase of MyChowGar continues far beyond these ten lessons.
More San Sao methods are added.
More guided training follows.
The student develops turning, release, conditioning and increasingly demanding combinations.
Baat Sik prepares the way for the core form.
Only later does Saam Bo Gin itself enter the curriculum.
By then, the student is not simply being shown another sequence.
They are being asked to bring together much of what the earlier training has begun to build.
This is why the curriculum is progressive.
Not because later videos are more valuable than earlier ones.
Because the student watching them should no longer be the same student who started lesson one.
What the Awakening Cohort changes
The material itself is only one part of learning.
The Awakening Cohort takes this first phase and places it inside a guided training process.
Instead of receiving the curriculum and deciding entirely for yourself how quickly to move through it, you train through the foundation with structure around you.
Progression.
Feedback.
Live instruction.
Personal correction.
A group of practitioners working through the same stage.
The purpose is not to make the material faster.
Quite the opposite.
It is to make the time spent on the material more useful.
Because the beginning of Chow Gar is not something to get through.
It is something to build.
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The Awakening Cohort begins September 21, 2026
If you are new to Chow Gar, or you want to rebuild your foundation through a structured path, the Awakening Cohort is our guided 10-month journey through the first phase of the system.
You will not begin by chasing advanced power.
You will begin where that power actually starts:
with the body.
Explore The Awakening Cohort →
By Zoltán Bereczki, Siheng