Dr. Mark Cheng is one of the most challenging folks to talk about because of the breadth of his background. Born in the US to Chinese immigrant parents, his life would continually reflect the struggle to integrate the East & West into a fluid, coherent, productive, and harmonious way of life. Unimaginably fortunate in his attempts to train and study under the some of the world’s greatest in their particular fields of expertise across a wide domain of endeavors, Cheng would continuously search for the common threads of logic in these fields and their masters. As a medical, movement, & martial professional, Dr. Cheng’s life work revolves around distilling that knowledge down in ways that help everyone from the professional athlete to the injured or elderly move, live, and perform better. 

As a traditionally trained martial artist, Cheng received his earliest introduction to Tai Chi from his father. As the years went on and he relocated to the Los Angeles area for college, Cheng went on to study different arts from a variety of masters, some of whom also pushed the impressionable young man to study the healing arts. The areas of Cheng’s investigation ranged from close quarter counter-terrorism methods to esoteric energetic practices, acupuncture, and intensive meditations. Eventually, he would formalize his studies with Masters and Doctorate degrees in Chinese medicine and Acupuncture as well as California state licensure. 

Having the opportunity to practice and serve many martial artists allowed Cheng the chance to quickly become familiar with what worked and what didn’t in both mainstream and “alternative” sports medicine. Legendary Bruce Lee disciple, Dan Inosanto, became one of his regular patients. It was through Inosanto that Cheng met his strength and conditioning mentor, Pavel Tsatsouline, a former Spetznaz (Soviet special operations) instructor. Tsatsouline almost singlehandedly is responsible for the popularity of the kettlebell, having brought the Russian weightlifting tool out of obscurity and into gyms and living rooms across the world through a worldwide network of instructors that he personally trained and certified. Cheng had the good fortune to train intensively with Tsatsouline on a private and semi-private basis until being awarded Senior Instructor status under the Russian icon. 

Tsatsouline, who founded the Russian Kettlebell Challenge (RKC) and later StrongFirst (SF) organizations, introduced Cheng to world-class physical therapist and movement savant, Gray Cook. Cook took everything Cheng learned and turned it on its ear. Giving him a diagnostic lens through which to better guide his clinical efforts and a guidance system that would give Cheng a dramatic edge over his colleagues in the strength and conditioning field. Because of his work with Tsatsouline and Cook, Cheng would spend years touring the world as an instructor for both of their organizations.

During those years, Dr. Cheng would be actively producing instructional media. Through DragonDoor Publications, he was featured as the main instructor in its Kettlebell Warrior DVD. He went on to produce a corrective exercise DVD called Prehab-Rehab 101 through On Target Publications, which came about as a result of questions about what he felt were the most effective corrective exercises with the athletes and patients he’d worked with. With Beachbody, the producers of P90X, he produced a collaboration based on Tai Chi, which was called “Tai Cheng”. That marked the first program in Beachbody’s catalogue that was appropriate for people coming back into fitness after periods of long inactivity or injury.

Over the past few years, Cheng collaborated with best friend and colleague, Dr. Jimmy Yuan, to create a new curriculum that was a distillation of the best of his experiences in the fields of martial arts, strength and conditioning, and rehabilitative movement. He reasoned that the best warrior cultures throughout history were successful because of the physical, mental, and emotional development practices that improved longevity and athleticism. Rather than using the martial training methods in the exact format that they’d been passed down to him, Cheng extracted the essence of the combatives drills and reorganized it into training drills and exercises that were low risk, high reward. Thus, even individuals who were averse to violence or physical contact or people who were unable to risk participation in contact sports could benefit enormously from his training methods. 

Cheng christened the new curriculum, K3 Combat Movement Systems. The 3 Ks make reference to kettlebells (or strength training outside of the directly tactical), kick-punch arts (such as Kung-fu, karate, etc.), and implement based arts such as Kali (Filipino martial arts) and Krabi-Krabong (Thai weaponry). Cheng is passionate about seeing K3 spread across the world is humbled by the level of interest and support that the K3 certification course has been receiving right out of the gate. With a background that gives him unique perspectives on restoring and developing the human body and a die-hard passion for helping trainers, coaches, and clinicians become even more effective in their craft, Cheng has something special to share with every listener.

Instagram: @DrMarkCheng

Twitter: @DrMarkCheng

www.drmarkcheng.com

K3 Combat

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