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
Knock them off balance, take them down, move away or strike them from standing.
Like the "chen style" teacher, good theory and demos.
Heres the problem.
For competitive events none of what is shown in the "chen style clip" has been shown used in the ring by those advocating it. There are very few CMA styles that manage to retain their flavor in sanda, mma or any of the other competitive events.
Excerpts from "Sanda: When Kung Fu created a solution to its problems - then threw it away:"
This thread about competitive events and CMA usage by those who practice CMA entering into the events questions why this is so. The clip posted illustrative of a style "hop gar" modified producing "fighters" who have competed using what was trained.
It would be good to see some of the "chen style" teachers students, in any event using what they've trained or doing as suggested.
Knock them off balance, take them down, move away or strike them from standing
Last edited by windwalker on Mon Oct 12, 2020 9:51 pm, edited 2 times in total.
To find a clip of someone purely using historical marital art in a competition fight will be difficult in that people who practice a historical martial art generally don't like fighting people and stay away from competition. That being said their are some people who are competition fighters and learn from historical martial arts teachers so as to gain certain skills.
above you have a muay thai fighter, Sun Yang, who is training in order to enhance his Muay Thai with chen style takedowns.
here he is teaching his own students these signature take-down skills.
The thing with historical CMA is that it isn't a free fight, you cant do whatever you want, you learn specific postures that you can put your weight power into. In a free fight this means that you might use a historical posture/movement, like an MMA fighter might use a single-leg takedown in order to change the fight dynamic. Historical CMA forms on one level are collections of techniques like "single leg takedown" except instead they are "brush knee" and "parry punch" and so forth. This means that you either can or cant apply the posture successfully in a fight. Now the issue is that people lose faith that historical postures are applicable, because they cant get past using muscle force which destroys the integrity of the posture. In truth, most every take-down in sanda can be expressed with traditional postures. Every time someone uses so called "framing" in a competition fight to gain control or create distance, there are a myriad of postures for that. The list goes on, but what's important is that we dont need to ask "how do we use historical CMA in a fight?" do we ask how to use a single-leg takedown in a fight? The lost of the historical essence is typified to me in that people don't view CMA postures as containing these sort of fight changing moves and think that they should be able to "kung fu free fight". CMA cant get you anyware in a fight without mastering the specific postures and their applications, just like a wrestler cant get anywhere without mastering their single-legs etc. What is chi sau? what is tui shou? They are just like a wrestler pawing at their opponent before the lunge.
Does wrestling work in MMA? does Jiu-Jitsu? Yes, and anyone who thinks that they can kickbox their way through any opponent can be suddenly dismayed by a single takedown. This is a documented reality. CMA should operate on the same premise but the historical essence has largely been lost and people dont understand that they are practicing a collection of take-downs with with some strikes, not the other way around.
rojcewiczj wrote:people who practice a historical martial art generally don't like fighting people and stay away from competition.
How did those historical martial art people who
- don't like fighting people, and - stay away from competition,
be able to develop/test/maintain their MA skill?
maybe some people have or use a different history.
an account of history
Many Lion's Roar enthusiasts add that Hop Gar is Wong's interpretation of the art fused with other tactics gleaned from his extensive combat experience, as well as his legendary association with the other Ten Tigers.
One of Wong's most popular tales is his return to Guangdong. In front of Hai Tung Monastery, Wong set up an elevated stage known as a leitai to accept challenges from any and all comers. Over the course of eighteen days, he defeated over one hundred and fifty challengers. "Either the challenger was maimed or killed," noted Chin. "He never let one challenger leave his school without injury. He was a master of using the technique of cruelty."
There are four principles for Hop Gar: cruelty, evasion, penetration and interception. When asked about cruelty, Chin stoically quotes the Lama White Crane kung fu classics: "When hunting a tiger, destroy it. Otherwise, a wounded tiger will return to harm you. When weeding a garden, pull up the roots. Otherwise, the weeds will grow back. Whether the lion is hunting an elephant or a rabbit, the lion always uses full force."
1. "wong" added things he had learned or experienced finding them useful " 2. In order to "prove" its usefulness, he didn't write a book or talk about it. 3. no mention of using internal or external power...
In general historical martial arts are tested within the boundaries of the training context so that fighting is not violent and doesn't become so through too much competitive spirit. That being said, I find open matts for wrestlers/BJJ people have been good testing environments. Competing can be ok, but you need to feel comfortable with expressing your techniques within the rule set. I find If it isn't enough for your opponent to be thrown down in order to understand they've been beaten, its probably not a good environment for testing your techniques. When Chinese martial arts tries to prove themselves through striking based competition they are going against their own historical value, if you cant throw down a wrestler with your "diagonal flying" then you need more training. If you cant apply "diagonal flying" or some historical posture to take-down someone who tries to strike you, then you need more training. The truth is we always need more training, but we can know what we are training and not go against the historical value of the postures.
As for some people going around injuring people. I think the fantasy of the "Chinese boxer" who can machine punch or eagle claw people to death using their super powerful striking methods, is just that, a fantasy, an image of power that lives in the world of stories. These are the sorts of people who are getting beaten up by MMA fighters, historically they were probably more bullies that masters. Modern combat sports has done the somewhat unintended good of destroying the power fantasy that Chinese Martial arts can punch and kick themselves to victory. The deeper tragedy is that when people wake up to the fact that historical CMA has nothing special to offer for "free fighting", that those disillusioned people are not discovering the remarkable unbalancing, take-down, and controlling skills formalized in historical CMA.
windwalker wrote:maybe some people have or use a different history...
If I don't dodge my opponent's punch for 3 days, my body respond will be slow. There is no way that I can believe anybody who just does solo form will be able to develop any true fighting skill.
Without partner, there will be no
- timing, - opportunity, - angle.
If I have a training partner, my MA skill will no longer be a secret. So a person who can fight but nobody even know him is absolute impossible.
Crow weep in the dark. Tide bellow in the north wind. How lonesome the world.
I'm not saying that the historical way is to only do the solo form, I'm saying that the historical way is that, wither you train form, drills, with targets or partners, you train your postures and you understand the application of those postures, just like a wrestler understands how to apply a single-leg take-down. The essence of any posture in CMA is that if the posture is done correctly then all that's left is to apply your body weight through the posture. Is that controversial? when we look at CMA we see forms, forms are a collection postures or shapes, those shapes can be used to express weight as opposed to muscle force. You can train with as many people as you want, but if you think its only fighting if you kickbox each other for minutes at a time, then you are training something which historical CMA has nothing remarkable to offer to. When you have someone punch at you and practice moving in and taking them down with "brush knee" your are practicing a historical CMA posture, if you try to slip their punch give them a jab cross and circle to the outside, then you are practicing something else. Is that strange to say? a wrestler knows that changing levels and doing a double-leg is something they train and that jab cross combinations art not something they train. Someone who thinks they practice historical CMA should know that "tiger comes down from the mountain" (or some other posture) is something they train and that jab/cross isn't. Do you think a wrestler has to use jab/cross to slam you on your head? no, in yet we think CMA has to use jab/cross because there is a lost of knowledge as to how to effectively apply historical postures in the way they actually work, which is primarily as takedowns/controls not as pure striking.
rojcewiczj wrote:when we look at CMA we see forms, forms are a collection postures or shapes, those shapes can be used to express weight as opposed to muscle force.
Sanda, MMA, etc., shift weight, rotate and use a contraction-relaxation contraction cycle.
rojcewiczj wrote:When you have someone punch at you and practice moving in and taking them down with "brush knee" your are practicing a historical CMA posture, if you try to slip their punch give them a jab cross and circle to the outside, then you are practicing something else.
You can slip and push or rear hand punch, not only jab cross.
rojcewiczj wrote:a wrestler knows that changing levels and doing a double-leg is something they train and that jab cross combinations art not something they train. Someone who thinks they practice historical CMA should know that "tiger comes down from the mountain" (or some other posture) is something they train and that jab/cross isn't.
Do you think a wrestler has to use jab/cross to slam you on your head? no, in yet we think CMA has to use jab/cross because there is a lost of knowledge as to how to effectively apply historical postures in the way they actually work, which is primarily as takedowns/controls not as pure striking.
However in MMA or self defense, a wrestler should know how to defend/attack through punching and kicking ranges.
CMA does train jab/cross, as well as hooks, overhands, uppercuts, spinning back fists, and superman punches:
Mason Zhong on Aug 5, 2020 wrote:Jabs and crosses can be found in both Lian Bu Quan (连步拳) and Gong Li Quan (功力拳) (1:09:41, 1:10:02), as well as Eagle Claw (鹰爪派) (0:15, 0:27, 0:30). ...
Hooks (including check hooks), overhands, uppercuts, spinning back fists, and superman punches are the bread and butter of Cai Li Fo (Choy Li Fut) (蔡李佛). ...
The last example above involves using the free hand to control the opponent's head. Further examples of dirty boxing can be found in Tan Tui, Yang Style Taiji (杨式太极), and Xingyi (形意).
marvin8 wrote:Jabs and crosses can be found in both Lian Bu Quan (连步拳) and ...
The original Lian Bu Quan had jab, but did not have cross. GM Han Ching-Tang add it in toward the end. The "only" cross at 0.30 was the same double palms strike as at 0.29.
Last edited by johnwang on Tue Oct 13, 2020 9:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Crow weep in the dark. Tide bellow in the north wind. How lonesome the world.
I see where your coming from. What I mean to say about the jab/cross is that it does not typically exist as jab/cross in CMA. Front hand punchs, back hand punchs, all sorts of strikes of course do exist in CMA and infact many more than are generally seen in combat sports, but the way those techniques exist are as part of the complete postures. In CMA we have hooking postures and upper cut postures, but they are built on the whole body posture which allows the weight to be used instead of muscle force. Of course this requires a specific training methodology. What's difficult to express in a few words, is how CMA postures become structures for the expression of weight force, and how that weight force can disrupt and send your opponent off balance. You can do this with a hooking shape or an uppercut shape but it is not the same as simply striking your opponent with the force of your arm or waist movement. All the individual movements, putting your arm here, turning your waist, all must be accomplished before the moment of impact. In a contemporary sports punch, you turn your waist and send your fist out, maybe with a small step, and you build a chain of movements that is ultimately interrupted by the target, causing an impact. In a historical CMA punch you turn your waist and extent your fist to the point of contact but you actually dont hit with this motion, but instead the movement of your whole body forward drives your whole weight through your arm and into the target, often causing less surface damage but intensely disrupting your targets balance. In short, yes movements of all sorts of strikes exist in CMA but when they are realized within the larger postural context, they can become tools that apply weight force instead of muscle force which causes balance disruption and helps set up take-downs.
To be clear, I understand that not all CMA's are taught the same way, style to style or teacher to teacher. My intent is to touch on a certain historical essence of CMA which I find under represented.
@ rojcewiczj- Good posts, but unfortunately I think many still won’t understand and won’t be satisfied until TCMA “purists” becomes UFC champs en masse...
Last edited by Trick on Wed Oct 14, 2020 11:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Thank you Trick, this issue of preserving the historical value of CMA is near and dear to my heart. I started learning northern long fist when I was fifteen at a school that taught forms for exercise and kickboxing for fighting. My attraction was towards the forms but I also wanted to be able to fight so I invested for a while in the kickboxing, although I never liked the feeling of hitting people and shielding up from getting hit. After high school I went to China to try and get a more complete picture of CMA but again I landed somewhere that taught all these interesting forms but then told me to give it up when it came to fighting and kickbox instead. At this point I was fairly indoctrinated into the way of thinking that historical postures couldn't be used in combat, although in the back of my mind it never seemed right. The next time I went to China, I trained with Wu Nanfang of Shaolin Wugulun, the style made somewhat youtube famous by the monk Shi de Jian, for the first time I was at a CMA school that believed that the postures had function for combat, Shaolin Wugulun taught me that the stances were used to close the space and swiftly crash onto your opponent with your whole body at once, they taught me that you dont have to hang out in striking range and that the stances were perfect for applying weight while crossing your opponent up when close. My last trip to China was to see Chen Zhonghua on Daqinshan, they opened my eyes to the fact that CMA doesn't have to compare itself through kickboxing, that it can spar within a grappling context and express its essence there. My last trip to China was about seven years ago, it has truly taken me every day between then and now of me rolling over in my mind the idea of peng, of structure, of weight power, while practicing the historical postures regularly, for me to get to the point where I feel confident in applying those postures. Testing myself has been through attending open matts for freestyle wrestlers, BJJ, and Judo people, when I started being able to get in clean throws, sending my opponent down while remaining standing, I felt the postures where at a good level.
Last week I went to the open workout at the school I started at when I was fifteen. Even though we haven't talked in years, I have a friendly relationship with the man who was my main coach when I started, and is now the head instructor of the school. I talked to him about what I had been training and we ended up doing some standup wrestling/tui shou. I showed him how I could throw with "diagonal flying" and "brush knee" and how I could neutralize his grips and shoot him away from me. It was all friendly as grappling can be but I could tell he was getting frustrated with himself. Towards the end he broke away and started trying to kickbox me, so I closed the gap and tried to show him the close range strikes, but I didn't want to use weight with the strikes. He took that opportunity to land some tag like punchs and kicks and then afterwards he used those touch strikes to make the argument that in a real fight he doesn't need the grappling and that I should learn western boxing again. This situation is truly heart wrenching to me, as here we have a kung fu school and a man who has been practicing forms religiously for twenty years, reverting to kickboxing because he doesnt believe that there application in the historical postures he spends so much time on. It is a bizarre and tragic condition, and the fact that it is so entrenched that even after being controlled on contact and thrown to the ground, people can still say "if I punched you it would be different" shows how unconvertable people can be.
rojcewiczj wrote:people who practice a historical martial art generally don't like fighting people and stay away from competition.
When GM Chang was young, he went to Mongolia to test his skill against Mongolian wrestlers. He also went to Dong Jiao Min Xiang (East Foreign Residents Alley) in Beijing to test his skill against Japanese Judo master. Without those testing, how could he know that his Bao Ding SC could deal with Mongolian wrestling and Judo? The Mongolian wrestler used leather wrestling jacket which is hard to grab. The Judo guy used long sleeve Judo Gi, but SC guys are used to short sleeve jacket.
In military training, you will send your new 1,000 soldiers to battle field. After several small battles, you may have only 700 soldiers left. Those 700 soldiers are no longer new soldiers. They become experienced soldiers. You can than use them in much challenged battle fields. You prefer to have 700 experienced soldiers than to have 1,000 new soldiers.
Again, how did those historical martial art people who
- don't like fighting people, and - stay away from competition,
be able to develop/test/maintain their MA skill?
Also If a person has training partner, his MA skill will no longer be a secret. So a person who can fight but nobody even know him is absolute impossible.
Crow weep in the dark. Tide bellow in the north wind. How lonesome the world.
John Wang, I think you answered your own question with your description of how GM Chang tested his ability, you go and grapple with people. When I say that historical martial artists don't generally want to fight people, I mean they don't want to hurt others to prove their point, as doing such shows your martial ethic as lacking. The benefit of grappling style competition is that you can use power without causing damage, which is keeping with traditional ethics.
rojcewiczj wrote: My last trip to China was to see Chen Zhonghua on Daqinshan, they opened my eyes to the fact that CMA doesn't have to compare itself through kickboxing, that it can spar within a grappling context and express its essence there.
Not demonstrated in any competitive format using signature movements, strategies, inherent of the style even from those claiming to demo the style.
A method should confer some advantage that can be explicitly used by those practicing it, seen by those observing it. In boxing, BJJ, and other arts this is quite clear. Even by those who chose to mix techniques its very clear.
you've mentioned the history concerning competitive events.
Another great master who also taught at Shen Ji Ying was Liu Shijun (劉士俊). That was where he had the famous encounter with Yang Banhou: one day Yang Ban Hou came home, he was happy because he threw Xiong Xian Li (Li’s nickname, he came from Xiong County). When Bauhou related the account to his father, Yang Luchan remarked, “don’t be too happy, it doesn’t look like a clean victory.”
Banhou was puzzled. Yang Luchan said “Look under your armpits.” Sure enough, there were holes under the armpits on Banhou’s robe. Liu Shijun, well-known master of eagle claw gongfu, could have caused him serious injury but obvious chose not to.
Later that evening, Yang Luchan felt uneasy thinking about this, and quickly made his way to Liu Shijun’s place. Liu was already packing his belongings to leave the city, as per tradition. Yang persuaded him to stay, saying this encounter was but a casual crossing of hands, all the while praising Liu’s skill and character.
There are many historical accounts of competitive encounters by past masters demonstrating the efficiency of their style or method. Lacking in todays time are the same clear examples of CMA used in a competitive setting.
Just find the claim of what was done in the past a little confusing considering historical accounts do not seem reflect it..
Sanda, in some aspects has come to be a type of hybrid CMA style of its own.
Last edited by windwalker on Wed Oct 14, 2020 2:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.
