Huo Yuanjia (1868-1910), a native of Jinghai, Tianjin, was born into a family of martial artists. Because he was frail and frequently ill as a child, his father refused to teach him martial arts. He secretly trained and mastered them on his own, later refining his family's techniques and founding Mizongyi, or the Lost Track Style. In 1909, he defeated British strongman Hercules O'Brien in Shanghai, though some accounts say O'Brien refused to fight. The following year, he founded the Jingwu Physical Culture Society and advocated "saving the nation through martial arts." He broke with the old custom of keeping martial arts secret, accepted students from different schools, and even admitted female students. He was a pioneer in making modern martial arts accessible to the public and standardizing its practice.
