Sparring

[Wanderingdragon]

Mixy says "TCMA for the most part sucks donkey balls",
I says, you disrespect your art you disrespect your teacher.
But Mixy is in china matriculating amongst the masters, and he is a teacher, so what do I know

[beegs]

Aggressiveness and violence. Two traits common with people who find themselves doing MMA, and are not that common among those who train TMA. That's about it. People freak out in face of crazy motherfuckers, can't operate as well as they do with normal people in a controlled environment, and shit hits the fan. You work on your aggressiveness and violence and you become an animal very quickly. On the flip side, you lose your human touch as well. The price you pay for trying to be both human and a good fighter is, for most people, slower progress.

this is a very false stereotype of mma guys by people who dont train mma.Their are bad guys or even bad schools, but by and large mma guys are way more humble thatn your cma guys. Proof in what they do leads to confidence, and confidence leads to humbleness. Many people join mm and cma because they are insecure or have had problems, but by far many pople like this in mma gain confidence rather quickly whereas many cma guys talk about teachers, lineage, forms, dantien etc etc and many after many years deep down in their gut do not have confidence and they argue and make excuses. MMA guys by large are very humble nice guys

Renzo sums it up at 3 16,

[Adam S]

The original premise of the thread was incorrect so I didn't really wanna comment on another BTDT topic......

But after that last post I felt I had to tell a little story

My brother works with a guy who trains MMA
He was told MMA is the shit, it's real it works, forget about traditional arts they don't work etc etc etc

So very confidently he got into the ring with a MT guy
Of course most of us know he should have had a lot of respect for this art, but with the crapola he was fed he didn't

And the inevitable happened the MT guy, who only had 6 months more training than him(they spoke after) essentially beat the crap out of him

Of course the MMA guy was rather despondent after and talked to my brother about things

My bro has done MT years ago & recently spent some time at my TCMA school

spent some time explaining that yer MT guy generally can fight a bit lol & asked him how he handled certain things and showed him stuff he learnt from TCMA
& the guy was amazed that No no one had ever shown him anything like that......

Things are different around the world and I can really only comment on what goes on here in Australia

But many new MMA schools have 'opened' up recently but just a few years ago they were called something else
A Wing Chun guy I trained with has his own school, now called MMA.....

Possibly elsewhere the quality of the MMA schools are higher and not just people jumping on a marketing bandwagon............

But is hasn't been my experience that MMA guys are humble at all

[Michael Dasargo]

CMA culture focuses on refining body mechanics for advanced fighting concepts, resulting in negligence in the areas of fundamental fighting skills. Furthermore, the dogmatic culture of keeping things as they were taught to them antiquates the fighting art resulting in ineffectiveness for modern context both in personal defense and sport.

M.

PS
TMA in first world countries became a vehicle for teaching ethics and exercise. All martial arts are violent. If training does not involve violence, then it is a martial inspired art.

[GrahamB]

-nuke-

kurukuru pao!!!


say whatever it is that you have on your mind,
you have the freedom to use that massive organic computer of a brain and your little fingers to express your inner frustration.

Yeah, but where is the passive aggressiveness in that?

[Wanderingdragon]

I think the beauty of the forms have romanticized the reality of the fighting.

[Wanderingdragon]

-nuke-

kurukuru pao!!!


say whatever it is that you have on your mind,
you have the freedom to use that massive organic computer of a brain and your little fingers to express your inner frustration.

Yeah, but where is the passive aggressiveness in that?

The truth is never passive nor aggressive

[Ian C. Kuzushi]

This thread is so full of reoccurring falsehoods perpetuated by TCMA's that I am almost surprised. BTDTx100!

[beegs]

heres s basic explanation that even qi huggers should understand

some people do not teach their classes this way but this is an accurate sumary of many places

typicall mma class- stretch, do stand up fighting skills, pads, spar, then go over submissions, then roll(spar),
become exhausted, see what you can pull of during resisitence, train hitting and being hit. feel like shit you got tapped and got hit, but gain confidence and humbleness

typical neijia class- warm up, stretch, do line drills, do forms, do push hands, do standing, go over form apps with no resistence, feel great because you could "push somebody" and because you looked good doing your forms and apps.gain arrogance and lack true confidence

again not every school is like this, but i have seen waaaay too many like this

[Adam S]

Like I've stated before the situation here in Australia is generally different IME and someone else chimed in about Europe

We spar basically at every lesson
& I believe Deus who is the States says the same thing

But i'm happy to accept the situation is worse in North America but that aint been my experience here in Oz

[mixjourneyman]

Graham, you misunderstand me, that was not passive aggression, that was aggressive aggression.

Dragon: I have some pretty simple rules about life, if people meet me with respect, I meet them with respect, if they meet me with disrespect, I either leave, or return what they give me.
You have some false ideas about me, the only way that they can change is if we meet in person, which seems unlikely since I have more or less relocated to Asia.
as far as the comments on egos and living in China and mastery and all that,
well, you can and will think whatever you want.
in terms of ego, I am a person, people are cursed and blessed with ego and I am not a saint.
one thing i do to keep myself in check though, is to make sure I check my own interests before throwing barbs at others.
I would suggest that it may be worth your time to do the same. What are your main reasons for making such comments? it often helps to really ask yourself clearly what your goals are before you get angry and try to shut someone else down.
As far as living in China and thinking I am a mastah, I did live in China for a while and plan on going back. It is a cool place, but I am not just there for martial arts. like Chinese culture and Chinese people very much. Chinese people are some of the most genuine people in the world if you know how to communicate with them. Chinese traditional culture is amazing and my lifestyle in Shanghai is also lovely. For martial arts, I did improve both times I lived in China. the stuff I trained with Shen Daoxin really helped my shenfa and the stuff I train with Yu Jiang really helped my structure. As far as mastery, I have no interest in that. I am only interested in improving a little bit every day.this stuff is a road that we are following, not an end result. It is so much fun.
I have donne lots of sparring as you mentioned and lots of other formats of sparring too, including more sport oriented stuff and more combat oriented stuff.
I like the Russian approach to things (which forum member Ian was nice enough to teach me and some friends in Shanghai). Their buildup to being combat effective is better than CMA, hands down.
as far as MMA, it is great, it is a sport, doubtless mma guys will do well defending themselves because they fight all the time, but if you want to learn self defence, do some rbsd training, if you want to learn sport, do a sport, if you want to learn fighting, fight often, and if you want to learn a traditional style that can do any of those things if you modify the training methods (not forms but implementing methods to help other areas of training) you could study ICMA. It is that simple.
I will practice with pretty much anyone as long as I don't think they will intentionally try to hurt me,
I just don't think that sparring in the traditional "I put my hands up, we square off, we punch each other" way really holds much merit in building any kind of skill other than playing tag or being really good at a sport. If you do the sport it well, it has lots of merit in other areas, but most people don't.
So i train traditional stuff, but I put some modern methods in to allow me to understand how modern situations work.
When I said most tcma sucks, I didn't say my teacher's stuff. I know lots of teachers who are good, but they are just a drop of honey in the pool of shit that encompasses most TCMA.
If we are ever in the same hood, and you feel like meeting, we can do that, have a cup of tea, chat, push around a bit, you show me your stuff and I will show you my stuff. at the end of the day I have no idea what you will think, but until then I guess it is kind of hard for you to know based on some words and some old footage.
Note that I have never once made any mention in any of my posts to you talking about what I think your level is in martial arts, aside form your forms videos which I thought were pretty good. I can't make an accurate judgment of you based on some short video of solo movement and some writing on a forum. we are just here to share info, I don't know you till I have met you in person.

[Wanderingdragon]

Fair enough Mix, but the amount of words you use in explaining your exploits, is very ego serving, the names you drop in describing your accomplishments, suggests an elite sense of self, and the thoughtless way you write off some tradition, contradicts your respect for the culture you purport to love. I think you're probably a good dude with much to learn about himself, and it is annoying when you sound like you believe you've learned it already, I just happen to believe that you are squandering the lessons and opportunity offered by some very good people with an overinflated sense of your own insight and understanding. Maybe you just come off like that in print.
And I believe G's passive aggressive comment was pointed at me, but you probably recognized your own motives by the comment.

[mixjourneyman]

I tend to follow the thought that post modern academics use about the idea of lenses as ways to perceive the world around us.
My lenses tend to be based around interpreting things as being open ended and not needing exact definition all the time.
It is a very Chinese mentality which I partially learned from my teacher.
In terms of when I speak about what I do, who I meet, or what I happen to believe, I just don't lie about things in either direction.
When writing the thread about hengshui and meeting those chaps, I waited a month to write it because i didn't want it to be taken the wrong way. I went there as a guest, not as an invitee.My teacher very nicely asked me to accompany him. It was cool that I got to meet them and establish relations with some of them, but it is nothing more. I hope I get the chance to study with Li dashi in the future, that would be neat.
In terms of my achievements, they are nothing compared to my teacher,
I have always said that and will continue saying it.He is the most remarkable person I have ever known.
some of the things I do are not so bad though.
All things considered, I went from a tubby 240 lbs kid with no self esteem and awkward, almost sea otter like movements to an adult male with a sense of pride, freedom, a healthy body, the ability to move with some grace, the ability to fight my way out of a wet paper bag (or the average TCMA guy, but lets remember that people who practice for more than an hour or so a week are not the average), and a real sense that my life is worth something.
I am not afraid to admit that I have made a great deal of progress and I won't hide it in an attempt to keep a false sense of humility.
To me, real humility is giving respect to the people that no one else respects. choosing to be the person that is willing to sit down with a drug addicted prostitute and talk to her/him like a human being is humility, there are many other things that are humble. Pretending to play down one's achievements is just pretence for the sake of appearance.
aint no thang but a chicken wing as my uncle lois would say.
As for squandering tradition, not at all. The best thing I ever read about tradition was Chozen Shiai's quote "do not seek to emulate the wisdom of the ancients, instead take the dregs of their teachings and learn to extract clear fluid". Chinese culture is really, really not what most people in the west mistake it as. Actually, I would go so far as saying that if someone asked me if I liked chinese culture, it would be the same as asking if I like culture in general.chinese culture is huge and not uniform. Our ideas of what it is will remain just ideas unless some real research is done, and Chinese culture is much bigger than martial arts.

I see the world as a very free place, so maybe I seem off the cuff, but i don't have so much time to keep up appearances. I don't need too much power in life, I just need to be happy doing what it is that I am doing, preferably with a lovely asian lady by my side and some tasty food on my plate ^_^

As I said, I am always up for meeting and hanging, talking shop, playing, or what have you. If by any chance you end up in Asia, swing by the place I am at. I happen to be in Toronto sometimes too.If I end up near you, I'll let you know.
I'm a really nice guy, don't like to have haters, but I'm also pretty plain spoken.

Take care.

Rob

[GrahamB]

heres s basic explanation that even qi huggers should understand

some people do not teach their classes this way but this is an accurate sumary of many places

typicall mma class- stretch, do stand up fighting skills, pads, spar, then go over submissions, then roll(spar),
become exhausted, see what you can pull of during resisitence, train hitting and being hit. feel like shit you got tapped and got hit, but gain confidence and humbleness

typical neijia class- warm up, stretch, do line drills, do forms, do push hands, do standing, go over form apps with no resistence, feel great because you could "push somebody" and because you looked good doing your forms and apps.gain arrogance and lack true confidence

again not every school is like this, but i have seen waaaay too many like this

+1 ZILLION

But the good news is that we can change this.

[GrahamB]

Graham, you misunderstand me, that was not passive aggression, that was aggressive aggression.

I wasn't talking to you Mix. I like you more now you've got out there and, er, mixed it up