Catherine and Jason Thorn were recently awarded the Spirit of Shaolin award from Grandmaster Steven DeMasco.   The award recognizes a great amount of kindness, compassion, and selflessness to others.  The Thorns have shown these traits everyday in their commitment to the Portsmouth studio.  Both have given of their time and energies to help teach, as well as maintain and clean the studio.  Kudos to them both!

One of the most exciting aspects of kung fu training is that it’s an experience the whole family can enjoy together.  While other activities may offer this type of opportunity, kung fu training lasts a lifetime! Martial arts is a wonderful and positive activity for the young and the young at heart. Your entire family can go through the process of earning belts and learning something together.  There’s no better way to optimize the family bonding experience.

Not into team sports?  Don’t like the “win at all costs” approach?  Then martial arts is for you!  Martial arts provides the physical work-out that team sports provides, but, while the team camaraderie is there,  the competition is only with yourself. Shaolin Studios Portsmouth has classes for individuals ages 4 and up.  Become part of a supportive community of students focused on improving physical skills with both external and internal (self-defined) benchmarks.  Challenge yourself to more!  Come join a class and see how our kung fu training can meet your fitness needs, yet provide practical self-defense skills.  Call us or Come in Today!

Kung Fu – In Chinese, kung fu can be used in contexts completely unrelated to martial arts, and refers colloquially to any individual accomplishment or skill cultivated through long and hard work. Also seen and used as gung fu, the definition as noted in The Shaolin Grandmaster’s Text, (published in 2004  by the Order of Shaolin Ch’an, Beaverton, Oregon), means “something like excellence, skilled activity, or maybe even time/energy.” The confusion of the “k” and “g” resulted from the western linguists translations between Eastern & Western speakers. When Bruce Lee introduced American audiences to his martial art, he both spoke and wrote the American “g”, hence “gung fu”.  More recently, the Chinese Pinyin system revised the transliteration of most words, so you will now frequently see the spellings “gonfu” and “gongfu”. In contrast, wushu is a more precise term for general martial art activities. The term wushu has also become the name for a modern sport similar to gymnastics, involving the performance of adapted Chinese bare-handed and weapons forms judged to a set of contemporary aesthetic criteria for points.  Wushu is a fun and healthful activity, but is not a martial art in the sense of emphasizing self-defense applications and combat effectiveness.