Who killed kung fu

[Hung gar]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZL6t_Yf-RuI
It was Randy :eek:

[street_fighter]

whoever thought forms were a good way of organizing techniques.

[sanjuro_ronin]

I don't think it is dead, only sleeping.

It feel asleep when the "too deadly" became an excuse not to fight.
When hard contact fell out in favour of forms.
When commercial and "inner door" become common place.
When "real" fighters started to believe they didn't have to fight or a couple of fights VS untrained people was good enough.
When Fear of losing money and prestige became greater than fear of being beaten.

[banditshaw]

I don't think it is dead, only sleeping.

It feel asleep when the "too deadly" became an excuse not to fight.
When hard contact fell out in favour of forms.
When commercial and "inner door" become common place.
When "real" fighters started to believe they didn't have to fight or a couple of fights VS untrained people was good enough.
When Fear of losing money and prestige became greater than fear of being beaten.


Well said.
There are very few schools out there that do the real. If anything this dormant phase should be a wake up call for the next generation.

[SevenStar]

ironically, kung fu guys killed kung fu...

[sanjuro_ronin]

ironically, kung fu guys killed kung fu...

That's what the ninjas want you to think...* looks around *

[street_fighter]

Well said.
There are very few schools out there that do the real. If anything this dormant phase should be a wake up call for the next generation.

People say this all the time here, but the fact is, most kf guys can't, or refuse to recognize "the real" when it comes along. Thats why we continue to hear "hes just a kickboxer", and "he had no bussiness representing KF". There are a few schools out there that train well, but TCMAsts only respect pretty forms. guys like david ross teach "real" CMA, but don't get as much acknowledgment in the CMA community as 60 year old chinese men who know 10 styles but haven't fought a day in there life.

[Hung gar]

Kung fu is not dead as long as I'm practicing it:cool:

[Vajramusti]

Really? What survey and good sampling is that broad geberlization based on?

There are lots of different styles of varying qualities--- with bad, good,, indifferent, casual and a some good and excellent people in them. Why generalize
wildly about kung fu on a mma forum? Surely there are enough mma topics to carry on a mma discussion.

Cheers and good wishes in your pusrsuit of mma.

joy chaudhuri

[Hung gar]

I am not pusrsuing mma ;)

[Iron_Eagle_76]

I agree to an extent Kung Fu killed Kung Fu. There are many Kung Fu practioners who do not train in a modern sense, with the correct equipment, training partners, and other such methods. They continue to do forms and not resistant training. At my last San Shou competition the guy I fought (and who beat me :mad:) was a Hung Gar guy but talked about cross training in Muay Thai for their training methods. I myself have done this with boxing for the training methods. The sad part is that the most styles of Kung Fu I have been around have these techniques, but they are not trained properly. But when you add a training regiment or do something differently it is not real Kung Fu:rolleyes: I hope for the sake of CMA that people move past this and utilize all aspects of training to better themselves and their art. I guess only time will tell.

[SevenStar]

Really? What survey and good sampling is that broad geberlization based on?

There are lots of different styles of varying qualities--- with bad, good,, indifferent, casual and a some good and excellent people in them. Why generalize
wildly about kung fu on a mma forum? Surely there are enough mma topics to carry on a mma discussion.

Cheers and good wishes in your pusrsuit of mma.

joy chaudhuri

once again, ironically, it's based partially on the posts found on a kung fu forum...

sure there is good stuff out there, that's not in question. However, From my own experiences and from what I've heard from others I know and from these forums is that most of what you find is sub par.

That said, I made the generalization here because the particular thread was posted in this forum...

[MasterKiller]

I am not pusrsuing mma ;)

Careful, it might pursue you.

[banditshaw]

People say this all the time here, but the fact is, most kf guys can't, or refuse to recognize "the real" when it comes along. Thats why we continue to hear "hes just a kickboxer", and "he had no bussiness representing KF". There are a few schools out there that train well, but TCMAsts only respect pretty forms. guys like david ross teach "real" CMA, but don't get as much acknowledgment in the CMA community as 60 year old chinese men who know 10 styles but haven't fought a day in there life.


The majority of schools out there don't train the''real'' as in drills, conditioning, non compliant partner sparring.
Forms were usually taught last as way to catalog the system.
Also a lot of instructors in modern KF have never fought for real and couldn't apply what they have learnt in the form in the first place. That's why you see so many ludicrous applications that would never work in a reality based scenario.

[sunfist]

sure there is good stuff out there, that's not in question. However, From my own experiences and from what I've heard from others I know and from these forums is that most of what you find is sub par.

Its also just a case of it fulfilling a different place in todays society. People sit in an office from 9 to 5, and after they get out they want a light workout that makes them feel like jet li, so thats what they get.

[Royal Dragon]

That is part of it. It takes a unique individual to go in and get bruised up 4 times a week+

Much of Kung Fu got demilitarised when it went comercial 3-4 generations ago for that reason.

Now the "Modern" forms heavy curiculem is seen as the traditional way to teach, and it's just not so.

[Shaolin Wookie]

The way I see it, focusing on the prettiness of forms, the angular placement of the hands during some fluttering movement that isn't related to the application, the perfect erectness of the body, the exquisite balance of consecutive tornado kicks---

When that became stressed, kung fu started to die. I figure some student who didn't want to fight, or didn't understand what he was learning decided to neglect that part and focus on the wrong part of the form. Sure, structure is important. When you get in a fight, your structure is going to falter, so if you have practiced really good structure, it hopefully won't falter too much. But then.....I haven't learned a good punching combo in kung-fu yet, with the exception of one instructor who just has us throw down on bags, whatever combos we can manage. Good kicking combos can be learned from forms, just not for punching. I see it like this: if your forms aren't a little bit ugly, as in "powerful", then they're pretty much just dancing.

Anyways....I've heard BS about internal organ damage from improper breathing techniques waaay too much. I mean come on....there are myriad martial arts, all of which focus on breathing (conditioning is important in MA, but so is managing breath---but that goes for all sports....take distance running for instance), but none of which purport anything so outlandish and downright ridiculous. I again chalk it up to some self-righteous student/teacher that became threatened by the fact his students caught up to his skill level, then made up some BS (perhaps even believed it) about how they were good, but were breathing wrong and doing irreperable harm to their gall bladders. hahaha......

[Vajramusti]

""The way I see it, focusing on the prettiness of forms, the angular placement of the hands during some fluttering movement that isn't related to the application, the perfect erectness of the body, the exquisite balance of consecutive tornado kicks---

When that became stressed, kung fu started to die.""
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Major confusion between good kung fu and modern wushu. Consecutive tornado kicks more common in wushu.

Why not discuss mma?

joy chaudhuri

[Shaolin Wookie]

Plenty of traditional forms include things that are unrealistic and downright stupid, IMO. But tornado kicks are fun, and good for teaching balance. But a crescent kick or a high roundhouse trains it more realistically.

[ammocase]

Why do people care about MMA-UFC? Its not like your going to get into a self defense confrontation in the street an are going to have a mat an a referee to regulate the rules for you. Kung fu is about open hand strikes an hitting to vital areas as the throat an eyes, that ( within good reason ) is outlawed in the ufc cause its a "sport" that doesnt want their fighters crippled or maimed, but unfortunatelty that seriously throws away many years of training ( fists an finger bone conditioning for finger jabs an claw strikes etc.) while other sports orientated styles have all their "weapons" at their disposal cause their training to a larger extent then kung fu, is geared for this envoirnment.

Early ufc matches were retarded, some fighters were taken down an most didnt realise that that was a bad thing. No one realised how vunerable they were when their base was taken down an they were dominated easily.

If you want to be good at the ufc... then you want to be good at a sport, so take sport martial arts like boxing an wrestling.

If you take kung fu or karate or whatever an want to be good at ufc .. then change your training to being more sports like an mix in some grappling, cause them nice clean matts an outlawed rules of certain strikes... invites many takedowns.

[sunfist]

You Fool! Do Your Realise What Youve Done?!