The 1929 Hangzhou Leitai Tournament

[Adam S]

The situation is not dissimilar to modern MA tournaments where so-called "internal" stylists with plenty of flashy taolu routines either collapse into a heap of flailing spastic limbs under pressure or use modern boxing and grappling methods to stay ahead.

Firstly, people seem to under the impression that TCMA & IMA has to look a certain way ........
If a practitioner was to attack his opponent with a elbow strike to the face followed by a quick knee strike to the ribs followed by dropping the guy to the floor
People would seemingly cry "oh he's using kick boxing & modern/western grappling"...........but no it's right there in the 'flashy' taolu routines of chenshi taijiquan

Secondly yes a number of 'high' profile people especially in North America have come up short who practice IMA
But can we truly say they've followed traditional training methods?? Many here would seemingly say yes
I contend they've had watered down modern training & therein lies the problem

Hope I dont derail the thread......& we can go back to discussing the article

[neijia_boxer]

I noticed alot of the competitors that did well were versed in Shaolin. Shaolin is pretty vast, anyone have a clue as to the training the competitors were doing at the time?

I saw the chinese movie on Abbot Hei Deng- who was alive back in 1930's. he was doing hard qigong, yilinjin, the finger handstand thing, and i presume Lohanquan in his old age. i can image they were doing something similar to him.

[Robert Young]

I noticed alot of the competitors that did well were versed in Shaolin. Shaolin is pretty vast, anyone have a clue as to the training the competitors were doing at the time?

Fan Zi-Xiao, one of the master went to Nan Jin Institute, described to his students that they had a small (inside a class) empty hand free fighting tournament every week and a big one (inter-class) every month in the Nan Jin Institute. WIth the experience trained in that institute, the 10 people the institute sent to the 1929 tournament werr able to get in top 15.

I can only speak for my own lineage, LF under GM Han who was the first year student in Nan Jin Institute. My teacher practiced 3 times a day when he studied under GM Han. They trained once in the midnight, one in the morning, one in the afternoon. The midnight one was usually short and light exercise about 1 hour.

One of the training is that they would attack each other 3 times whenever they meet the first time everyday. No matter what others were doing at that time, either the other was stretching or warming up or even taking a break. Under my GM Han, that is the way to train his students with high alertness. I believe this is the training my GM Han had.

[lazyboxer]

I noticed alot of the competitors that did well were versed in Shaolin. Shaolin is pretty vast, anyone have a clue as to the training the competitors were doing at the time?

I saw the chinese movie on Abbot Hei Deng- who was alive back in 1930's. he was doing hard qigong, yilinjin, the finger handstand thing, and i presume Lohanquan in his old age. i can image they were doing something similar to him.

They certainly wouldn't have been doing fingerstands then, since television hadn't yet been invented.

Here's a clue or two, though:


This is a picture of Zhu Guofu (朱国福 1891-1968), from Liuhe Tantui Tushuo, a book he published in 1933 with Lu Guanghua. Tantui is basic leg training for all martial arts - Zhu started to learn Bei Shaolin aged 8 and only later learned xingyiquan from Li Cunyi's disciple Ma Yutang. So Zhu, who with his two brothers had been one of the top competitors in the 1928 Nanjing tournament (which by some accounts he won), was still propagating so-called "external" methods aged 42. His brother, Zhu Guolu 朱国禄, who came second in 1929, did "xingyi and boxing" - just like his teacher Wang Xiangzhai. In fact, "the judges’ committee instituted a new rule... stating that contestants were not allowed to continually attack the head. As a result of this new rule, the third day saw more attacks to the lower half of the body and the overall skill level on display rose substantially."

Now "go figure"...

[Graculus]

Cai Longyun (1928- )(who had a couple of well publicised bouts against foreign boxers in the 40s and 50s... photos exist) had this to say on the subject (after comments on very rigorous basics):

" My martial arts skills have been passed down through my family. We only had a few kicks: heel kick, inside and outside crescent, front kick, side kick, hook and sweep. The punches were straight punches and hooks - that's all. Today, taolu has so many varieties of punches and kicks like palm strikes, spear palms, spring kicks, jump kicks, reverse arch kicks, high front sweep kicks, high back sweep kicks, and so on."

"The training I received from my father was different. We trained more for reactions. For instance, a cue was given like a left hand signal equals a right punch, and the punch had to be there - very fast. It was the same for any punch or kick."

He also trained in mostly "shaolin" - Hua Quan, in fact. His father taught at Jing Wu and a large MA school in Shanghai.

The southern stylist who supposedly did well was Leung Tin Chiu of Fut Gar - unfortunately I cannot find any corroboration of the his school's point of view, but another source mentions that he taught mainly san shou and two man exercises.


As lazyboxer said, go figure!

[neijia_boxer]

Cai Longyun (1928- )(who had a couple of well publicised bouts against foreign boxers in the 40s and 50s... photos exist) had this to say on the subject (after comments on very rigorous basics):

" My martial arts skills have been passed down through my family. We only had a few kicks: heel kick, inside and outside crescent, front kick, side kick, hook and sweep. The punches were straight punches and hooks - that's all. Today, taolu has so many varieties of punches and kicks like palm strikes, spear palms, spring kicks, jump kicks, reverse arch kicks, high front sweep kicks, high back sweep kicks, and so on."

"The training I received from my father was different. We trained more for reactions. For instance, a cue was given like a left hand signal equals a right punch, and the punch had to be there - very fast. It was the same for any punch or kick."

He also trained in mostly "shaolin" - Hua Quan, in fact. His father taught at Jing Wu and a large MA school in Shanghai.

The southern stylist who supposedly did well was Leung Tin Chiu of Fut Gar - unfortunately I cannot find any corroboration of the his school's point of view, but another source mentions that he taught mainly san shou and two man exercises.


As lazyboxer said, go figure!

thanks for posting that graculus- i know very well who Cai longyun is. My teacher Zhou was one of two people to ever receive a masters degree from him at shanghai physical education university in Shanghai. Zhou way of training for a fight with focus mitts is to whack the hell out of ya so you get used to anticipating the punches. Zhou is hard core and lucky to have Cai as his teacher.

[RobP2]

Firstly, people seem to under the impression that TCMA & IMA has to look a certain way ........
If a practitioner was to attack his opponent with a elbow strike to the face followed by a quick knee strike to the ribs followed by dropping the guy to the floor
People would seemingly cry "oh he's using kick boxing & modern/western grappling"...........but no it's right there in the 'flashy' taolu routines of chenshi taijiquan

Secondly yes a number of 'high' profile people especially in North America have come up short who practice IMA
But can we truly say they've followed traditional training methods?? Many here would seemingly say yes
I contend they've had watered down modern training & therein lies the problem

Surely it should. If you spend so much time practicing your postures with a certain feel to your movement surely it's not unreasonable to expect you to fight like that?

I don't think the problem is totally due watered down modern training, I think it's that modern training often surpasses the old methods which remain hidebound in cultural trappings. Simply put, some things don't translate so well into another environment. People wouldn't expect a man trained as a Roman legionary to be as effective in a modern day infantry situation - though there would be some cross-over attributes perhaps. So why would you expect a 19th century Chinese village boxer to do well in UFC?

Or maybe it all looks like boxing because in a one-on-one that's the most efficient way to do things?

[TaichiMantis]

Grand Rapids own Stan Ketchel had quite a fight in the early 1900's that was rife with myth until footage showed what really happened. You can read about it here http://www.eastsideboxing.com/news/bearden2006.php

...sorry, just using a local legend to comment on other's points about reality vs myth. Carry on

[alexsuffolk]

When you stop using tournament fighting of any kind as the gold standard of judging a martial artist, there will be a different understanding about why we practice.

[Daniel]

+1


D.

Sarcasm. Oh yeah, like that´ll work.

[RobP2]

When you stop using tournament fighting of any kind as the gold standard of judging a martial artist, there will be a different understanding about why we practice.

Hi Alex

Personally I don't use tournament fighting as the gold standard, in fact I'm not even a particularly big fan of sports fighting.

But you have to say it is one method - particularly in modern times when few people use their art "professionally" (or even socially!), perhaps the biggest method - that people will judge a style by.

When approached correctly it can be a good testing ground for certain attributes and I see no reason why the particular flavour of a style should disappear completely. Certainly ruleset will have some bearhing on that, but overall if a guy can't "tai chi" punch in the relative security of a ring, why would we suppose he could do so in a much less secure situation?

cheers
Rob

[alexsuffolk]

Hi Rob

it was not directed against your good self or any one , just a critical point in my understanding of why i practice.

Alex

[alexsuffolk]

And i agree that if you do a specific art something of it's flavour and shen fa should be with you under pressure.

Alex

[Areios]

I wanted to write many things about sport fighting and TCMA traning but, I don't want to get this thred to go btdt.

[Adam S]

Yer Ditto Arieos