GrahamB wrote:Jon Dyer used to post here back in the day (or one of the days - there have been many eras of The Fist).
It’s a pretty no holds barred discussion.
Some points I picked up:
He’s spent years doing hours of hard training in obscure Xin Yi styles that require hours of gruelling training a day, and he’s never actually met anyone who could really throw down with it. (This is a major flaw with Chinese styles, I think - the huge amount of solo training required).
He’s met a lot of unscrupulous Chinese teacher more interested in money than anything else. This seems very common.
Also he mentions that CMA seems to attract weirdos. It’s full of weirdos. Again, no arguments there
Eventually he quits it all for BJJ, Muay Thai and MMA He finds that it attracts more genuine people. Of course, the inherant irony here is that he's one of the CMA people himself. My experience is that there's a lot of crossover between BJJ and CMA. You also get plenty of weirdos in BJJ too, but there's somethign about the reality-based training that changes them quickly, or they quit quickly. (Just my opinion)
My thoughts were that he’s been really unlucky in who he’s met, in one sense, but lucky to have trained these really rare styles in detail and in China. Although, he doesn't sound like the victim of circumstance - he makes his own fate. Personally I can't imagine spending hours a day training something when I had no real sense that it 'worked' as a combat method. You live and you learn I guess.
It makes me wonder how much you should be training a day. An answer that would change at different ages and points in your life. I guess for me the answer is ‘as much as you want to’. I’ve always thought that it’s more about striking a balance and consistency of how regular your training is rather than how long in each session.
Anyway, it's a very interesting podcast.
Thanks for taking the time to listen to the podcast, it wasn't really with any rehearsal and was totally off the cuff, which to be honest I think gives for a more honest listening.
Out of all the internal masters I met, the one, which I knew practised, CIMA, which could actually fight and had many times and obviously successfully (otherwise I wouldn't of met him) was, Li Zun Si, who's XYLHQ line comes from, Mai Jinkui (I think he also had training from, Lu Song Gao, but dont know what relationship they had).
Li Zun Si, was a master of several types of Kung Fu, such as Cha Quan, had studied at Shaolin Si, back in the day for a period of time etc, but like I mentioned I am not really qualified to talk about him as I was not his student, best to ask, Jarek.
I have travelled to many, many places in China, but to be honest, wasn't that impressed with the overall skill level.
One of the reasons this is due to is, they just don't have the luxury to have spend time training, they are in the fields and in factories, working all day long and when they come home, they still need to tend to family matters like everyone else.
One master, which totally blew my mind was, Zhao Zhan Jun the "China meteor King", who specialised in rope dart and other projectiles, he has a mass array of weapons at his place and I am pretty sure he knew how to use all of them.
Foreigners have a romantic view of Chinese Kung Fu masters and that dream is usually shattered when you meet them, most of them chain smoke, eat piles of greasy food and drink alcohol with every meal, lol, and they only get up once and a while to bust a few moves and then sit back down.
As for DXYQ and other interal arts being viable methods of unarmed combat, I am sure at one point in time, when they were actually practised by people with actual experience they worked fine (maybe some of the movements are now archaic and outdated).
I mean if you grew up in a Chinese "gracie family" environment, where your dad was a mad mofo, you had 6 brothers and all you did was train all day, practice "yong fa", "shuai chiao" (most if not all old school serious schools trained a form of resistant grappling) and beat on each other, I am sure it would work fine, but that is not the case now. Arts like these due to their "secret squirrel" aspect have deteriorated, the element of "face" is a huge deterrent in progressing as a martial artist, I mean they would rather not fight than lose.
Japanese martial arts on the other hand has gone from strength to strength, through constant pressure testing in competitive environments, arts such as Kyokusin , Judo etc.