instructor - 'Shifu Meikle'
Cheng Style Bagua Master Dave Meikle began his martial arts career at the age of 8, where he began learning boxing. At the age of 12 Shifu Meikle began freestyle wrestling, where by age 15 he was Provincially ranked in his weight class. Over the years, Shifu Meikle has studied Shaolin Gong Fu (aka kung fu), Xing Yi Quan, Taiji Quan, Qin Na, Bagua Zhang and Qi Gong. Shifu Meikle was a top student of the famed Grandmaster, Dr. Yuan Shaoliang, previous Head of the Beijing Hospital of Chinese Medicine where he learned Shaolin, Taiji, Qin Na and Qi Gong. Later, Shifu Meikle was personally recommended to Bagua Master, Mr. Yang Guotai, where he became a formal disciple of Bagua Zhang and the first student of Master Yang's in North America to be given formal permission to teach Cheng Style Bagua Zhang.
Combat Bagua Zhang
As a disciple (rather than regular student) Shifu Meikle was taught classical Cheng Style Bagua Zhang (pre-revolutionary bagua) combat training, with classes taught purely in chinese language – this gave Shifu Meikle the opportunity to learn spoken Mandarin during class, and later became the translator for all students and would accompany Master Yang on his various trips to the USA to be his translator for Bagua workshops.
Shifu Meikle has worked alongside various security and law inforcement industry personnel and has taught private workshops to sheriffs and police officers, primarily in Qin Na (joint lock and apprehending techniques) which Shifu Meikle feels is his greatest skill set, and enjoys blending it into his Bagua repetoire – a perfect compliment to the close quarters, grappling and throw based cheng style bagua zhang.
At the request of Yang Guotai, Shifu Meikle began teaching Cheng style Bagua Zhang in early 2000. In 2003 Shifu Meikle closed his school and moved to China for 3 years in the manufacturing industry where in his spare time he taught self defense to foreign nationals that were working in factories and english schools. This also provided him a spring board to increase his chinese language skills in complete language submersion. Shifu Meikle resumed teaching again in Spring of 2009.