dedicated to the discussion of the chinese internal martial arts of xingyiquan, baguazhang, taijiquan, related arts, and anything else best discussed over a bottle of rum http://rumsoakedfist.org/
What was the true "traditional" CMA training? Here are some examples.
If you want to learn
- sword, you need to go into the woods and swing your sword to chop down 1,000 tree branches. - staff, you need to hit your staff along a tree surface 10,000 times. This way, the moment that your stick can contact on your opponent's stick, you can slide your stick along his stick, hit his fingers, and drop his stick. - spear, you need to drill clockwise parry, counter-clockwise parry, stab for 3 years. - joint locking, you need to go into the woods, use one hand to hold on a tree branch, spin and drop your body, use the other upper arm to break that tree branch. You will need to break 1,000 tree branches this way. - chain punches, you will need to train "1 step 3 punches" for 3 years. - ...
In other words, the true "traditional" CMA training did not start from the "form" but started from much more basic.
What's your opinion on this?
Re: What was the true traditional CMA training?
Posted: Mon Jul 24, 2017 1:42 pm
by Wanderingdragon
Pretty sure it's fake, but functional none the less, though for sure, I would not dull my blade abusing trees for sword practice.
Re: What was the true traditional CMA training?
Posted: Mon Jul 24, 2017 2:08 pm
by bartekb
What's your opinion on this?
I think TCMA people really hated trees if you want to drill something - why not drill with your partner? What I find silly is when there is CMA demo and they have more than 1 person - and instead of doing 2 person demonstration they do solo form.
Re: What was the true traditional CMA training?
Posted: Mon Jul 24, 2017 2:16 pm
by Peacedog
I beg to differ.
Afghans by far are the most effective tree hating bunch I've ever seen.
Outside of a very small area of eastern Afghanistan, they've straight up murdered the s2$t out of every tree in the country.
The Chinese are pure amateurs in comparison.
Re: What was the true traditional CMA training?
Posted: Mon Jul 24, 2017 3:41 pm
by johnwang
bartekb wrote:I think TCMA people really hated trees.
If you Google "The most hated tree in Texas", you will find this, the cedar.
My house is adjacent to the 227 acres Wide Basin Wildness Preserve. People in Austin don't mind me to chop some cedar tree branches but I have to leave live oak and Spanish oak along.
Re: What was the true traditional CMA training?
Posted: Mon Jul 24, 2017 7:27 pm
by MaartenSFS
Most people don't want to sweat, John..
My master told me that when he learned Yang Shi Taijiquan he was taught some techniques like Yunshou, Yema Fenzong etc. and had to do them over and over again in line drills with weights on his wrists. He also learned applications, of course. Then, after a year, he learned part of a form from a top disciple and had to train that with weights as well. After he took the weights off this was the true "Fangsong".
Re: What was the true traditional CMA training?
Posted: Mon Jul 24, 2017 9:43 pm
by wayne hansen
Training tai chi with weights from the beginning seems a little silly
Re: What was the true traditional CMA training?
Posted: Mon Jul 24, 2017 9:48 pm
by yeniseri
The training that we do today is not the training of yesteryear! As my teachers reminded me, CMA was done by peddlers, non exam taking miscreants, etc who happened to bounce up with known teachers of the day and continue the fighting tradition since the robed one did not want to mess up their pretty clothers or dirty their hands with street peoples of all kinds.
The new exercise, new orientation formula of the 1900's created what we see today and is not reflective of the pre 1900's era
Re: What was the true traditional CMA training?
Posted: Mon Jul 24, 2017 9:59 pm
by Strange
yeah... and also sickly children like Huo YuanJia and Chen FaKe
Re: What was the true traditional CMA training?
Posted: Tue Jul 25, 2017 11:20 am
by johnwang
2 students wanted to learn the spear technique from a spear master. The spear master asked them to do the following drill for a year:
1 year later, both came back to the master. After the master had examined their spear drill, the master asked them to go home and repeat the same drill for another year. After both students had spent 3 years in this simple drill, the master asked both to go home and never came back. The students said, "But you have not taught us any spear form yet." The spear master said, "If you are good in this spear drill, you don't need to learn any spear form."
Re: What was the true traditional CMA training?
Posted: Tue Jul 25, 2017 3:40 pm
by dspyrido
I see a chained form of moves as the gift that should be given at the end when the student has graduated. It's not required but is a way of saying "You have done the real work so I am gifting you this handbook. You can analyse it further to see if you can get any further insights or write your own".
Training should be done by learning then drilling specific moves (that might be contained in the form) like learning chapters in a book. Learning one "chapter" should involve theory (how it works), application (where it works), drilling (getting better at it doing repetitions, timing and applying more pressure), experimentation (think about where it might be applied) & testing (make sure it works under duress like sparring, random pressure & extreme pressure).
Re: What was the true traditional CMA training?
Posted: Tue Jul 25, 2017 4:30 pm
by johnwang
dspyrido wrote: "You have done the real work so I am gifting you this handbook. You can analyse it further to see if you can get any further insights or write your own".
I like this way of thinking. I have students who have been with me for more than 15 years and I still have not taught them any forms yet. I told then that one day they get old and have nothing better to do, they can come back to me and I will teach as many forms as they want to learn. When they are still young, they should test their skill against as many styles as they can.
Re: What was the true traditional CMA training?
Posted: Tue Jul 25, 2017 8:20 pm
by everything
Usually we might say to get good at X, you should do X. Obviously that's not all you do. It might be more interesting to attempt to learn from outside MA from much more popular sporting activities.
We can assume the most elite athletes in the world don't actually do MMA. One argument would be based purely on economics. The best athletes in childhood who are highly successful in multiple sports tend to go into the most popular sports, etc., etc.
Even if we try to reject this assumption we can observe that other sports (non MA sports) are more popular and have more competitive data to learn from.
In any case, it should be interesting to find what % of the time they actually DO their SPORT vs. train many other attributes and prerequisites to be ABLE to do their sport better. Larry Byrd said something like he had taken every single shot from every single possible position on the court 1000s and 1000s of times (under no pressure) in training, for example.
Posted: Mon Jul 24, 2017 1:13 pm
