What Modern Students Will Never Experience

I need to tell you about something that most people romanticize but would never actually want to experience. When people ask me about "authentic traditional training," they picture themselves in flowing robes, learning secret techniques from a wizened master on a misty mountain. They don't picture what it actually meant. They don't picture standing in horse stance until their legs gave out. Not for five minutes. Not for an hour. For three hours. Every single day. For years.

The Reality Nobody Talks About

Let me be clear: I'm not advocating for these methods. I'm documenting them. Because when students tell me they want "real traditional training," they need to understand what that phrase historically meant.

At Shaolin Temple, students drove 108 nails into a wooden plank. Then they practiced pulling them out with three fingers - thumb, index, and middle. When that became easy, they switched to using thumb, ring finger, and pinky. Then the nails were left to rust. Advanced students would pull out 1,000 rusted nails as their final test.
This wasn't just about finger strength. This was about testing who would quit.
Another exercise: Stand on two pillars, one foot on each, in a squatting position. Place a sharp bamboo stick underneath you. Hold bowls filled with water in each hand and one atop your head. Don't spill a drop. Masters could hold this position for two hours without moving.
This wasn't about the bowls or the bamboo. This was about separating those who wanted to learn from those who needed to learn.

Years of Nothing

Here's what people don't understand about the traditional system: you could train for a decade before learning anything you'd recognize as "martial arts."

In the old bai shi system - the formal discipleship ceremony - becoming a disciple wasn't the beginning of your real training. It was permission to start the real training. And you might wait years before even being considered for bai shi.
First, you cleaned. You carried water. You swept floors. You did menial tasks that had nothing to do with fighting. Some students spent twelve years just maintaining the school before their master taught them a single technique.
This wasn't cruelty. This was selection.
Masters wanted to see: Would you keep showing up when there was no reward? Would you maintain your respect when nobody was watching? Could you handle boredom without losing focus?
The Kung Fu saying goes: "We'll not teach the practical use of Kung Fu to those who learn only 2 or 3 years." Not because you physically couldn't learn it. Because your character hadn't been tested long enough.

The Cage and the Cave

Some Daoist masters used an even harsher method: confinement.

A student might be locked in a cage for three days. No food. Minimal water. Just meditation. The purpose? To see if their mind could find quiet when their body was suffering.
Others went to mountain caves. Bodhidharma, the legendary founder of Zen Buddhism and Shaolin martial arts, meditated in a cave for nine years. Nine years. His shadow supposedly burned into the cave wall.
Modern hermit monks still practice this. There's a Daoist named Jia Yong Xiang living in a Wudang cave right now. No heating. No electricity. He's been there for over twenty years. People estimate he's more than 100 years old.

The Daoist Path of Suffering

The Daoist approach to traditional training went beyond physical conditioning. They called it "severe asceticism" - practices that deliberately rejected basic human needs.

Bigu fasting was common. "Avoiding grains" meant eliminating all wheat, rice, barley, and millet from your diet. You survived on foraged herbs, raw plants, and minerals. Some Daoist texts document over 100 different bigu methods. Masters would practice this for months or years, believing it purified the body and extended life.
But bigu wasn't the harshest practice.
Complete sexual abstinence. Not just celibacy - complete elimination of sexual energy. Forever.
Sleep deprivation. Staying awake for days during meditation retreats. Training your body to function on minimal rest.
Wilderness seclusion. Living alone on mountains with no human contact. Some Daoists spent entire lifetimes in isolation, speaking to no one, seeing no one, existing purely for cultivation.
Self-imposed poverty. Owning nothing. Not even clothes in some cases. Living on what you could forage each day.
The most extreme practices? Some historical texts document Daoists who practiced public self-drowning or self-cremation as the ultimate test of transcendence. They believed if you could maintain meditation while your body died, you achieved immortality.
Xinzhai - "heart-mind fasting" - was a meditation practice where you learned to forget you had a body. First you'd fast for five days. No thoughts of right or wrong. Then seven days. Your mind becomes so still you forget you have limbs, forget you have form. The ruler doesn't exist. The court doesn't exist. Only the Dao remains.
The Daoist text describes it: "When I have fasted for seven days, I am so still that I forget I have four limbs and a form and body."
Zuowang - "sitting in oblivion" or "sitting in forgetfulness" - went even further. A state of complete ego death during meditation. You don't just forget your body. You forget yourself. Your identity dissolves. Only the underlying cosmic current of the Dao feels real.
The Quanzhen school, still active today, made wilderness isolation and these meditation practices their foundation. Students would retreat to mountain hermitages for years. Their entire practice focused on "cultivating clarity and stillness" through endless hours of seated meditation in caves.
This wasn't about martial skill. This was about spiritual transformation so complete that your old self literally ceased to exist.
In Japan, some Buddhist monks took it even further - the sokushinbutsu practice of self-mummification. They'd eat only nuts and seeds for 1,000 days, then only bark and roots for another 1,000 days, slowly removing all body fat. Finally, they'd be sealed in an underground chamber with just a breathing tube. After three years, if they achieved the right meditation state, their body would be preserved and they'd be enshrined as a "living Buddha."
That's not training. That's martyrdom. But it shows you the extreme end of what "traditional dedication" once meant.

The Tests That Broke People

The bai shi ceremony itself was grueling.

Before you could even request to become a disciple, your master had to see something in you. Character. Dedication. Years of proof. Many students trained for a decade and were never invited to bai shi. They remained "outside the door" forever.
If you were accepted, you'd kneel before your master's master's portrait. You'd kowtow - literally knock your head on the ground - three times. You'd serve tea while on your knees. You'd present gifts, including a red envelope with money to support your master's livelihood, because he was now dedicating his life to teaching you instead of working.
Then you'd write your bai shi tie - a formal declaration of why you deserved to learn and a vow to never break the tradition's rules. This was a binding contract. Break it, and you were expelled. Forever.
And after all that? Your real training hadn't even started yet.

What Modern Training Actually Looks Like

Now let me tell you about modern training at Wudang School. Students wake at 5:00 AM. They do morning qigong from 5:15-5:30. Morning kung fu practice from 5:35-6:30. Daoist lessons. Meals. School affairs. Afternoon practice. Evening lessons. Lights out around 9 PM. It's structured. It's organized. There's a clear curriculum. You can learn the basics in 1-3 months. You'll know actual forms. You'll have techniques you can practice.Is it hard work? Absolutely. Students train 6-8 hours daily. But compare that to standing in horse stance alone for three hours. Compare that to twelve years of sweeping floors before learning your first form.The modern system is designed to teach you martial arts. The traditional system was designed to break you so that only the unbreakable remained.

The Difference War Makes

I trained Pencak Silat in Vietnam. In Hanoi, with a former military instructor named Thang Phong.

The difference hit me immediately. These weren't hobbyists. These were people who had seen war. Who understood that martial arts wasn't about self-improvement or fitness or looking cool. It was about staying alive.
They took training seriously in a way I'd never experienced before. No complaints. No excuses. No asking "why do we have to do this exercise?" They just trained. Hard. Every single session.
I see the same thing in old school masters today. The ones who actually lived through the Cultural Revolution. Who trained when Wudang Mountain temples were destroyed. Who practiced in secret when martial arts were banned. Who watched their masters beaten or killed for teaching.
They have something modern students will never have: they know what it means when everything is taken from you. They understand training isn't optional when survival is at stake.
That's why traditional training was so harsh. Not because the masters enjoyed cruelty. But because they came from times when weakness meant death. When you couldn't tap out. When there was no "I'll try again next week."

Why the Old Way Died

People ask me: "If the traditional method produced such incredible masters, why did it change?"

Simple answer: it couldn't survive in the modern world.
In old China, martial arts meant survival. Villages needed protectors. Families needed security. Students would devote their entire lives to training because their lives literally depended on it.
Today? Students have jobs. Families. Modern responsibilities. They can't spend twelve years sweeping floors. They can't lock themselves in caves for years of meditation. They need practical skills in a reasonable timeframe.
Also - and nobody wants to admit this - the old selection method wasted incredible talent. How many potentially great martial artists quit after year six of hauling water? How many gave up because they couldn't endure the pointless suffering?
The traditional system wasn't designed to maximize learning. It was designed to minimize teaching. Masters had limited time and resources. They could only fully train one or two students in their lifetime. So they made the barrier to entry so impossibly high that only the most obsessed would persist.

What We Actually Lost

But here's what troubles me: we lost something real in the transition.

Modern students learn techniques quickly. They can execute forms beautifully. But when they face real difficulty - a plateau in training, a loss in competition, a crisis of confidence - many quit.
Because they never learned to sit with discomfort. They never developed the psychological steel that comes from enduring something pointless for years. They never proved to themselves: "I can persist when there is no reward."
The old masters weren't necessarily better fighters. But they were unshakable. You couldn't break their spirit because their spirit had already been tested far beyond what any opponent could offer.
When I completed my three years at Wudang Academy - one of the only foreigners to finish the actual traditional program rather than the modified version - I understand what that testing reveals about yourself. Not that you're special. That you can endure what feels impossible if you just keep showing up.

The Balance We Need

I don't think we should return to the old methods. Locking students in cages doesn't make them better fighters. Standing in horse stance for three hours doesn't teach practical self-defense faster than modern training methods. But I think we've swung too far the other way. We've made martial arts too comfortable. Too accessible. Too quick.Students want results in months. They want techniques without fundamentals. They want the destination without the journey. Traditional training took decades and broke most students. Modern training produces skilled practitioners quickly but doesn't forge character the same way. What we need is somewhere in between: Training that's effective but demanding. Accessible but not easy. Fast enough to keep modern students engaged but slow enough to build real depth. Because the greatest lesson from traditional training wasn't the techniques. It was learning that you're capable of far more than you think when you're willing to persist through discomfort.

What This Means for You

If you're training now, understand this: You have access to knowledge that students in the past would have killed for. You can learn in months what once took years.

But you've also been robbed of something. You'll never be tested the way they were tested. You'll never know if you have that unbreakable core because your training will never push you that far.
I know because I experienced both worlds.
At Wudang Academy, I trained in the actual traditional class - not the modified version for Westerners. I trained with Chinese children where the rules were simple: finish the exercise or get hit.
Not metaphorically. Actually beaten.
Couldn't hold horse stance long enough? Stick across your legs. Form wasn't perfect? Hit. Quit before the master said stop? Hit harder.
This wasn't abuse. This was tradition. This was how every master in that lineage had been taught. This was the price of transmission.
Most foreigners lasted a few weeks. I completed three years. Not because I enjoyed pain. Because I understood something: this was a test of whether I genuinely wanted what they had to teach.
The modern schools on Wudang Mountain today? Tourist attractions. Clean facilities. Structured curriculum. No one gets hit. Students pay, train comfortably, get their certificate, go home happy.
They learn forms. They don't learn what it means to persist when every part of you wants to quit.
So create your own trials. Find your own edge. Don't make it pointless suffering - standing in horse stance until you collapse proves nothing except poor training design.
But find something that scares you. Something that takes years to achieve. Something that makes you want to quit every single day but you keep showing up anyway.
That's the only piece of traditional training worth preserving: proof that you can outlast your own desire to stop.
Everything else? We've found better ways.

My three years at Wudang Academy weren't in the comfortable tourist classes. I trained in the traditional program where Chinese children were beaten if they failed exercises. I was the only foreigner in over 12 years to complete it. Not because the old methods are better - they're not. But because experiencing both worlds taught me this: suffering doesn't build character. But commitment reveals it. And that lesson? That's timeless.