Hrrrmmmm

[shawnsegler]

Normally I don't put stuff down simply because I don't like it...but I really feel moved to point out how little I like this.

[Bhassler]

What didn't you like?

Andrey is an occasional poster here-- maybe he could comment.

[Chris McKinley]

One or two apps had mild usefulness "as is", but most of it was wushu-y demo-grade horseshit. I hope at least this guy is caveat-ing the hell out of this stuff by disclaiming it as just "possible ideas to work from" or similar. Sadly, there's nothing really remarkable about this clip, either in how bad it is or in how common that badness is.

All we can hope is that, over the many years some of us have been pointing this kind of thing out (and earning the rancor of those who don't want us to stir the pot), perhaps the forum as a whole, or at at least a growing small part of it, is beginning to learn the difference between the horseshit that our arts are most commonly represented as, and real fighting ability. Personally, and with the current thread's exception, the frequency with which folks keep posting bullshit clips as "applications" on this forum, I don't hold much optimism for it. Group rapport is just too strong a motivating factor.

[Methods]

Just apps, and apps it is, I do not remember anyone stating real life fighting or sparring...

Dont like it, super common, but I think its a good way to understand the applications within the form.

[Adam S]

Hopefully Andrey will comment

some of it I didn't like

but there's some good stuff in there if you have the nouse to see it & your not hopped up on steroids

[DeusTrismegistus]

I liked the speed with which it was done. I tend to not like apps in general but I didn't see anything in this that was worse than any other application vid.

[Michael Babin]

I only watched the first minute... still using dial-up

Agree that it has the depressing sameness of "My attacker lunges at me and stops while I do my stuff." but having said that:

- the expert has some obvious timing and distance skills in the context of those particular attacks;

- the applications are plausible within the context of a chinese martial arts framework;

- and, most important of all, the attacker is the same size as the expert and actually aims at his target even if he is not committing his attacks or following-up.

After all, it is a friendly demo of applications in any case... what do you want? Blood and guts or a real fight? Then people would complain that it didn't look like taiji or xingyi or Flying Fish Fingers™ kung fu...

Seriously though, the fact that the "attacker" looks fit and actually attacks with some realism [except for the lack of follow-up] puts this clip head and shoulders above the usual nonsense of a patently incompetent attack, executed by someone who looks as if he or she should be dieting, lifting weights, running a mile or two or just be at home sipping sherry with his elderly aunts instead of pretending to attack someone.

[Steve Rowe]

I was just mesmerised by the music....

[Kurt Robbins]

I am fascinated and frustrated by the dissonance between applications and usage in live fighting. Arm bars, Kimuras and Pi chuans can be shown in technique form and then supplanted into effective usage in live fighting, so why don't forms contain a practical applicational format?

[Dmitri]

why don't forms contain a practical applicational format?

Because (at least in my limited experience) forms are not "collections of techniques". (Not IMA ones, anyway.) Or at least they shouldn't be IMO.

Unfortunately this isn't a very widely-spread view of forms, so there ya have it.

[Kurt Robbins]

Then in your opinion what should forms consist of?

[Chris McKinley]

A few more comments are in order, methinks.

Methods wrote: "Just apps, and apps it is, I do not remember anyone stating real life fighting or sparring...". With the proper caveats, that statement would be fairly reasonable, but there are two problems with the mindset this comment implies. 1) There is implicit in the comment that it is somehow okay to ignore/omit the actual use of the art for its native context. This is, unfortunately, the current state-of-the-art for almost all neijia classes publicly available in the U.S. today. Negligent treatment, if not outright omission, of actual combat usage is by far the norm. While it's okay to occasionally wander off track to show some basic ideas rather than actual application, the problem is almost always that these shown ideas are the closest a given instructor ever comes to showing application or teaching fighting. Such a situation, when true, is completely unacceptable and borders on fraud.

2) Applications cannot be completely divorced from fighting. If that happens, they are no longer applications of the martial art, by definition. Applications are, in and of themselves, examples of how the art is used for actual fighting. If they are not, they are at best merely two-man drills.

For everyone, if, over the course of a reasonable sample of time, little to no application and training of the art occurs with respect to actual fighting/combat, one quickly loses the intellectual honesty to be able to claim that one is practicing a martial art. While that is not completely the case with the gentlemen in this clip, it is certainly mostly true in that the applications shown are, in the main, extremely unrealistic and highly stylized.

Michael Babin,

You gave some complimentary comments about the clip which, in the context of its being criticized, are reasonable enough. However, even those compliments, I think, need to be mitigated somewhat.

RE: "the expert has some obvious timing and distance skills in the context of those particular attacks". Yes, perhaps. But given that those particular attacks are almost all of them completely unrealistic with regard to being both highly stylized, occuring from ridiculous distances and do not include the attacker's own responses and follow-up attacks, that is not a particularly impressive or even useful claim. If---and I do not know or claim this to be true in his particular case---the only timing and distance skills this guy has are in relation to these types of attacks, then he has next to nothing in terms of real fighting skill.

RE: "the applications are plausible within the context of a chinese martial arts framework". That is essentially a non-statement. There is no such thing as a fighting application that exists within the context of a particular martial art's framework since, in reality, attacks do not occur within any particular framework, nevermind one limited strictly to Chinese stylistic movement. There is only the ability to deal with real attacks or there is the lack of that ability.

RE: "and, most important of all, the attacker is the same size as the expert and actually aims at his target even if he is not committing his attacks or following-up". Yes, they are similar in size, and that is a better demonstration than if the attacker were smaller. More importantly to me, though, is not the relative size of the attacker, but how realistically he is attacking. The attacks shown do not exist in nature and can only be seen in CMA applications demonstrations or in chop sockey flicks. IOW, it would not be particularly impressive to me if the attacker in this clip were larger than the demonstrator if he were still attacking and responding in the unrealistic manner demonstrated.

RE: "After all, it is a friendly demo of applications in any case... what do you want? Blood and guts or a real fight? Then people would complain that it didn't look like taiji or xingyi or Flying Fish Fingers™ kung fu...". Yeah, Michael...I kinda do. Or at least something even roughly approximating that level, at least occasionally. A) If these arts are only as effective as they are shown to be on clips like this when you leave out the blood, guts and real fighting, so to speak, then the demonstrations are entirely pointless. B) If these arts are effective for real blood and guts fighting, then that's what they need to show, rendering the illustration of a lesser, watered-down prancy dancy version completely unnecessary.

Heck, if they simply wanted to show a lesser-intensity version, they could show realistic attacks executed singly and perhaps a bit slower than they really would be, but still thrown from a realistic distance and with at least somewhat realistic, if less intense, responses to the defender's actions. What we have depicted in this and most other clips isn't even really on the spectrum of realism/intensity. No matter the level of intensity, the attacks, counters, and responses to those counters are grossly unrealistic, not just less intense than the real versions.

Unless of course you're attacked by a rogue member of the Peking Opera or a disgruntled stuntman from a Jet Li movie.

[Dmitri]

Then in your opinion what should forms consist of?

[Note: I'm only speaking from Yang TJQ perspective so other IMA of course may differ, although from my very limited experience and exposure to several of them over the years, they don't/shouldn't.]
Forms are a tool to make your body move differently, to eventually turn in into a coherent unit that is mobile and powerful while maintaining looseness (what some call "staying relaxed") inside and remaining sensitive and responsive to outside changes, learn how breath helps connect things inside, how directing your intent changes some things (dramatically), stretching of muscles and "fascia" (or whatever that is that I feel stretched -- I'm not a physician or biologist), find the correct way to maintain balance (specifically on one leg, as you step), move your root, find and explore the places between the postures and eliminate "energy leaks" and breaks and spaces there, etc., etc., etc. These are all just words of course; they won't mean anything unless one has practiced a certain way and felt them and can feel the aforementioned results and reproduce and apply the aforementioned effects when they are needed.

The "applications" IME are there only for two reasons, 1) to help guide your intent throughout the form, and 2) give you some general ideas of how certain "energies" might be expressed martially. Form contains "martial ideas", not exact "techniques" IMO. I believe that if one practices it with the fixed idea in mind that "this move is application #27 and the next move is application #28", they might miss out on application #27.1, 27.138, 27.209, 27.42, etc. that might be there, in-between, in the "transition". There are no "transitions" and "postures"; it is ALL ONE MOVEMENT.
But, more importantly, they will miss out on development of their body in a certain way, as any proper IMA practice should promote.

HTH, and hope I didn't confuse things further.

[Chris McKinley]

I think there is a point that can be dovetailed from both Kurt and Dmitri. If the forms in IMA are for developing shen fa, instead of for depicting combative application, as Dmitri claims, then that makes the practice of demonstrating "applications" from the form rather a silly proposition, and a behavior that ought to be ceased. However, even with that understanding, Kurt's question would still stand: "why don't forms contain a practical applicational format?"

IOW, whether or not forms are intended to produce a certain specific shen fa training or whether they are intended as a method of cataloging techniques in the system.....either way, we still don't see realistic applications of the art, whether those applications be drawn from a form or from another source. In fact, if what is shown generally and collectively, as "applications" of IMA were in any way a realistic depiction of these arts, it would be appropriate to permanently discard and forget these arts wholesale as utterly useless and combatively nonfunctional collections of stylized movement.

[Fubo]

Dmitri,

Coming from a Yang background myself I agree with many of the things you mention about forms developing certain attributes, directing energy in different directions etc... I also agree that forms contain "martial ideas", but I disagree that the don't contain "exact techniques". The Yeung Sau Zhong line (at least the branch I was taught) teaches a variety specific techniques with specific technical requirements for each move or transitional movement. They also teach not to be limited to those techniques, as situations call for change, but IME there exists a core collection of techniques that relate specifically to the form (I'm not saying that the art is reduced to a collection of techniques).