The inventor of Vo Dao Vietnam and record breaking grand master, Chu Tan Cuong shares his secrets…

The inventor of Vo Dao Vietnam and record breaking grand master, Chu Tan Cuong shares his secrets…

By chance on a recent trip to Frankfurt, I ended up sitting by Chu Tan Cuong, the record breaking inventor of the martial art, known as Vo Dao Vietnam. If you don’t know who he is, you can check out some of his extraordinary feats on youtube.com – he has pushed train carriages with a spear pointed towards his throat, he can drive nails into a hard wooden board with his hand – 116 in under 11 minutes – or break baseball bats with his bare arms – 22 in under a minute. He once played the flute with a 3.5 tonne car on his chest. In short, this is one dude you wouldn’t mess with.

“The most difficult record I broke was pushing the train compartment with the spear,” said Cuong. I’m certainly glad to know that it was difficult. I just wonder how he does it. The answer is instant. And as I suspected, discipline and hard work are part of the equation.

“To have such powerful internal force, you must train for six hours per day, of which breathing practice is the most important,” said Cuong. “A deep breath can help your muscles develop comprehensively, harden your body and purify your soul.”

“I will never stop attempting to set new records. For sure, my collection of Guinness World Records will grow in the future,” Cuong says.

A weak boy grows strong

Born in 1962 in Hanoi, Cuong claims he was a weak child. At the tender age of four, he was sent to the local sports club by his father, who was a doctor. First, he was trained to box by Canh Thinh, a famous boxer in the 1960s.

“I was scared of seeing boxers fighting in the ring. So I asked my father to send me to martial art classes instead,” says Cuong, who is now the father of five. He selected Nam Hong Son (Nanhongshan), a mixture between Chinese and Vietnamese traditional martial arts, and studied under the guidance of grandmaster Nguyen To and later his son Nguyen Ty.

Ty was also an excellent musician and a multi-instrumentalist so he also taught Cuong how to play a number of stringed instruments. After graduating from high school in Hanoi, Cuong travelled to Germany to study economic law at the Martin Luther University in Halle before securing a job at a law firm.

You might think his parents would have been delighted, but Cuong’s father wanted him to be a guitar teacher, so dutifully, Cuong decided to do guitar-teacher training course at a university in Weimar. And while working as a lawyer and a guitar teacher, he also taught martial arts, which was obviously his own passion.

Developing his own martial art

In 1990, the two German states were reunified, Cuong decided to quit law and guitar teaching, and focus on developing his own style of martial arts.

“I wanted to create a style that was suitable to European people’s anatomy and stature,” says Cuong. “In 1993, I named my sect Vo Dao Vietnam, meaning that learners, who mostly are foreigners, have to learn both the Vietnamese traditional martial art and the Vietnamese moralities and cultural traits. They learn Vo Dao Vietnam for self-defense, not for fighting.”

Students learn weaponless techniques, but also learn how to use tapered long sticks made of metal, hard wood or bamboo. The sect places an emphasis on acrobatics and breathing techniques. Hardening the body makes it resistant against aggression from the outside.

Firm but flexible

The Vo Dao Vietnam logo shows the Ying-Yang-symbol as well as a bamboo pole, an important symbol to Vietnamese. Bamboo is a source of cooking and a building material that can be used to make a fence and protect people’s home. A bamboo is firm but flexible.

“My students have grown and now we are tens of thousands from all over the world. I have established more than 20 schools in Germany and another 10 in Czech Republic,” he says proudly.

His fame has spread far and wide. He has appeared on television in Germany, Italy, Belgium, the US and Spain.

“Although I will never settle down in Vietnam, I am fully proud of having introduced the country’s martial arts and cultural traits to the world. I also want to open Vo Dao Vietnam training courses in Vietnam, but the travel costs between Germany and Vietnam are too high,” Cuong says.

Now touching 50, he is pleased that some of his children will maintain the legacy. Three of his five children are also very good at the martial arts and gifted musicians, and two young – aged 19 and 22 years old – have already broken Guinness World Records of their own. His 11 year old daughter is also an incredible gymnastic and tipped to win gold medals for Germany in future.

Perhaps, there’s more to it than hard work and discipline. I get the feeling good genes might also be a help.

Source: Time-out