Interview With Philip Sahagun – A True Martial Artist

Philip Sahagun is an American Martial artist who has featured on a number of TV shows, choreographed martial arts routines for stars such as Tina Turner, and coached various Cirque Du Soleil athletes from the ground up. Philip is not just a performer and teacher. He is trained in various martial arts such as American Kenpo, Wushu and also has some experience in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.

He has had numerous amateur kickboxing bouts as well as intense training in the Shaolin martial arts in mainland China. His American Kenpo lineage can be traced to Ed Parker the creator of the art, as Mr. Sahagun’s Black Belt was certified by Senior Kenpo Master Bob White.

Sahagun was introduced to martial arts from a very early age with his parents owning a martial arts training center together in California. Fighting runs through the blood of his family as he also showed me his Grandad was a professional boxer in Mexico during the 1940s. He mentions that he began training at age 5 and hasn’t stopped since.

However, by the time he had turned 17, Sahagun was not doing too well in school and was mainly focused on martial arts. He was not quite sure what he wanted to do, whether competing in the growing sport of MMA or starting teaching martial arts on a full-time basis. During this time, his father suggested that he should consider going and training in China. His father insisted that if he did go over to China to train, he must pay for his flight tickets by himself and could not rely on him for money.

Not being deterred by this, that is what Sahagun did and made the journey to the other side of the world. The young Californian was shocked by how cold the Chinese winter was since he had lived on the west coast of America for his entire life. He searched through numerous schools before he decided that he would train Kung Fu in Zhengzhou under the notable folk master Zhu Tian Xi. During this period he became sick from the cold winter as he was not accustomed to it. However, he stuck it out and benefited greatly, both mentally and physically from the Shaolin lifestyle.

When training within the Shaolin style, Sahagun says [alongside normal training] “When training with the temple you must do a special performance [alongside normal training]. There are 72 special skills, a 2 finger zen stand is one of them, no-handed push ups are another”. Not only are you training your body in terms of conditioning and strength. You must also train a special skill in which you excel at, this is outlined in the training schedule.

The training of the Shaolin is quite incredible, Sahagun outlined the schedule as follows:

Typical training day at the Shaolin Temple:

6 days training with 1 day of rest.

5AM – Wake up

5:30-7:30AM – Conditioning training. This would typically include bodyweight training and conditioning. He would be expected to do stretches, runs, squats, push-ups, duck walks and other various exercises such as 500-1000 kicks. On 3 of the days the runs would be long distance, on the other 3 days it would be lots of small sprints.

Breakfast

Rest (In this time a lot of the native Chinese Shaolin students will study their academic work)

10-12AM – Technique training. For example, if you wanted to learn Wushu, you would go and train Wushu. If you wanted to train Shuai Jiao, you would go and wrestle with others for a couple of hours.

Lunch

Nap

3-5PM – Technique training. This would typically not be the martial arts technique you were learning earlier in the day, but would be something different.

7-8:30PM – Technique training. Once again, this would be some more technique that was different to the earlier training you did.

So a typical day of training in the shaolin temple would be 6-8 hours!

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On Strength & Conditioning Training

Sahagun states the importance of conditioning in martial arts and explains why some traditional arts may contain exercises that a western point of view may consider weird or even completely useless. As explained previously, the Shaolin took great care to stretch, condition, and strengthen their students believing it to be extremely important.

“Shaolin Kung Fu stances are for health (conditioning), they are similar to yoga postures”. He adds that poses we may think are useless such as the crane kick will develop flexibility and muscle tone. He maintains that a lot of these poses and techniques are not for martial arts in particular. They are for athleticism and conditioning. Once these things are obtained, you can learn how to be a better martial artist. You are learning movements and balance, as well as giving your limbs more power to strike with.

The Evolution Of Martial Arts

When speaking about traditional martial arts, Sahagun believes that they must evolve to stay relevant in the modern era. By this, he means that they must offer at least something to their prospective students so they become interested and want to take part.

He adds “as long as there is a labeled purpose [for traditional martial arts], they will exist.”

Sahagun mentions that techniques such as the “iron hand” are not really relevant to modern-day martial arts, since nobody wants to deform their fingers just so they can have tougher skin and muscles.

On The Misconceptions Of Kung Fu

Philip explained that “Kung Fu is a method to train a human being” and goes on to add “Kung fu is a misunderstood concept [mostly in the west].” He adds that Kung fu is basically an umbrella in which people train. Gong Fa are the conditioning of the mind and body, whereas it is Wu Gong, which is the actual application of martial arts. When combined, this is the philosophy behind Shaolin martial arts and makes it what it is.

He adds, “To summarise, Kung Fu is simply training a human to become better at a skill. When trained in martial arts, as an example, you will see the transformation and maturity of a students kicks over time. They will go from being a complete beginner to mastery through time and effort”.

Sahagun’s Teaching Philosophy

A warm and charismatic coach, you can tell Sahagun genuinely cares about his student’s well-being and progression. Despite training several Cirque du Soleil athletes from the ground up. He says “the quality of the students should be judged by the quality of the teachers” and that he should not be judged by his best-performing students, but by the ones with the least ability.

Sahagun was the martial arts coach of Zumanity and as briefly mentioned – has taken individuals from childhood and trained them into performing athletes where they now display their skills on the biggest stage.

Outside of Cirque du Soleil he sticks to his own personal training roots and has taken over 60 students to China to train with the Shaolin, as well as holding 5-day Shaolin-style training camps in America for those who do not wish to travel that far.

When training martial arts Sahagun says “You should always be open-minded and absorb other skillsets”.

You can find Philip’s gym here, which offers both local and online classes.

He can also be followed on Instagram here