1 more fighting Clip

Wai Jia: The Kung Fu Forum Northern Praying Mantis
1

Chou San,

like Mantis108/Robert said in the other thread: let´s share insights and let us not drag us down fron negativity.

So here is another fighting Clip:

Clip

It shows a blackbelt Student (Paul Vorotnjak) of mine fighting with me without gloves but with Groinguard and feetsafeties.

Let me know what you think about!

For my intentions:
My student was told to fight at his own intention, with his own goals. Only rule: not to cause any serious harm! I was not talking about my intentions with him before the fight!

In the first part my goal was to apply some Bong Sau (pushing arms) and not to get punshed while applying.
Also I was trying to finish some sweeps, throws and maybe takedowns. But Paul was looking out for that. So no takedowns, sorry! :wink:

Next I was applying the aim high - hit low stuff. Which was working fine with taler ones!

After that, I was trying to do some of the “deadly” stuff ;). Maybe you want to figure out by yourself, what that was … :slight_smile: Some did work, some not.

Last part i was trying to do some pressure on Paul, just to see what he was doing then. He handled this very good I think. Only missing point: he was not aware of some sudden kicks!

Okay, let´s see what you all was thinking! And please: no polite hold back of critism!

2

GBL,
Thanks for the honest posting.
And more important, thanks for using a format that my computer can read.

OK. Impressions:
I watch this and all I can think is that I want to take my fist and smash it on both you guy’s faces.
I don’t mean push my hand on your head.
I mean slam my fist through your head like I am spiking a volley ball for the game point.

Then I start looking at the decor and I think,
“look at those pretty walls and clean floors”
“I want to ram your heads through those immaculate walls”

At first i see a few kicks then more and more.
I want to grab those legs and swing them around like a hula hoop.
Then fling them across the room through those mirrors(or were they portals?).

Especially the push kicks.
Grab that baby and turn and run like you just robbed the bank.

Continuing with my honesty…
This kind of fighting gives me nightmares. Or I should say, I have nightmares about fighting my opponent this way.
Why?
I see techniques hitting and nice movement, you guys have skill, but no one ever gets hurt or shocked.
I understand that you don’t want to do any damage to your student.

Am I the only guy who has those dreams where you fight the guy and can’t seem to finish him off(Am I mentally disturbed)?

Since you have the groin guard just pound that hole like he is the palace eunach.

No gloves:
My policy, take it or leave it, is drills for when no gloves. And only sparring with grabs throws, like Taiji.

Punching in sparring; always wear gloves.
Why? And this is my personal reason from being beat up too many times.
The goal of fighting is to win. With a punch style like PM that means win by punch or knockout.
When you spar it is to hone that skill. But when you spar with no gloves you are often, or at least for me, I find myself in the confusing and contradictory position of using knockout punches while being careful not to brain my partner.
It is like driving the getaway car while stomping the brakes.

And in Taiwan, people actually drive while applying gas and break at the same time, it ain’t pretty.

Some good points.
Both guys have skill and yet it is clear who the teacher is.
I am with you on the difficulty of throwing your students.
Those guys that trained with me for a while are almost impossible for me to throw.
They get good at controlling the distance.

Paul has somewhat longish hair.
Grab that stuff like a horses mane and then you can slam him for sure.
I always grab students hair if it is long and yank it.

BTW, feel free to return the favor, my buddy just put up a too short clip of me sparring on my clips section.

3

Man, I’m getting the feeling that nothing less than a real street fight is going to impress some of you guys.

It used to be you could go down to Firestone in Orlando on a Sat night and get into scraps in the parking lot (not me, too old, my son told me). Nobody ever got arrested, I guess as long as the injuries stayed at a minimum.

There used to be a guy in NY that would take his Black Belt students into the subway at night to test their skills. Just walk a little while and sooner or later you get jumped.

I think the guys that want the hard core banging need to go to an similar area near them where they can test their skills in a real fight and tape it for the rest of us to watch.

So just get a video camera and take a walk into the bad part of town. That way we can sit home and critique your street survival skills while eating popcorn.

Where’s the cime section of Shanghai, or Taiwan? Get us a clip.

Oh, and Tainan, you’re not the only one with those dreams. I think it’s fairly common but I have them too. Just can’t ever seem to hit hard enough.

4

Baker’s Man

Very nice pat-a-cake.

Whenever you decide you want to give up baby games and play some real kung fu…come over to Shanghai and join Master Pel’s Luo Guang Yu 7 Star Praying Mantis class.

Hope to see you.

All the best,

Mr. HouZi PiGu

5

Thank you!

6

Tainan

Hi Kevin,

quick answer, maybe later a longer one: that fighting is not to improve strength in hitting! For that we are training fullcontact with gloves! And believe me: Paul and me too know how to hit hard enough!
But that was the wrong type of fighting …

For all: please no discussion about intensity like on the thread about mantis108 clip!

7

Very nice.

Hi Jochen,

Two thumbs way up for this. First off, I love the format (can’t you tell by now? :wink: lol…) It is a good way to showcase techniques with a great energy flow and with fluidity. Although I can see Kevin’s points, but really I think he is more itching to get down with you guys then really giving you a hard time about this. lol…
In a sense, it is pretty and a little too pretty. :smiley: There are people who can’t stand things (sparring in this case) being too pretty. But no matter, I think it is brillant going in allowing your student to think for himself. BTW, some standup grappling is more efficient if you corner the opponent to the wall. But I don’t think trashing the mirror is going to help your insurance premiums. :wink: :rolleyes:

For this reason, I watched him closely. I think you did a good job in bringing the student’s hands to level of being able to " talk" with you. It is not an easy task to guide them to response intelligently with their hands. I do see in the display of skill that you are no doubt in control of the fight (a word that is again can’t stand by some). I think a good teacher is one who can training students to best his/her teacher.

I see some of your personal “habits”. You tend to have your head down at an angle quite a bit. This could be because of the height and reach of the student posing a problem for you. The other reason could be that you are not wearing glasses or contact lens. So you are compensating with the “drop” of the head. I do that too when I sparr without glasses. This somewhat gives your student certain advantage but your aggressiveness make up for that. There were couple times that you seemed to be turning and giving your student a chance to hit your back. I think it’s okay to turn as long as you stick close to him instead of pulling away from him while you turn.

The Bang is nice. I have seen you done it in the same manner before. This time you are more committed so I can see the " form" much better. Being shorter than your opponent, this technique is relatively risky to use on him. Good thing that he didn’t go to clinch and knee you. You pull it off though.

I like the kicks and what a nice exchange of them. Absorbing some of those with the arm/elbow, that’s pretty sweet (ouch!) I would agreed with Kevin about grabbing one or two of those and go for the takedown. That’s why I seldom do high kicks or kicks for that matter.

The throat grab (01:XX) was great! If your student capitalized on that you would have a Chin Na thing going. That would be spectacular IMHO. BTW, I think that were some attempts of standing armbar control early on. I was waiting for something like it to happen. But may be next time. BTW, I would love to see more elbows and knees next time.

Thank you for sharing a wonderful and fun session. I like your fighting style. It has a certain class. I am with you on this type of train session although some would argue that this is soft but I don’t believe mantis is just about heavy handed punching skill. We need time to explore the entry method from free movement phase to clinch/tie up phase and the ground phase as well.

Warm regards

Robert

PS I think the line between self defense and a friendly match is blurred in some people’s mind so it would be hard to convince everyone that this is actually beneficial to Mantis training.

8

Ok, since the name of the clip is technicalfight I would guess that it’s an attempt to portray technical ability, not how hard they can hit. I believe the clip expressed that well. You guys need to take it for what it is, not what you want it to be.

shanghai_kid
I know you guys never claimed you participated in streetfighting. It just seems to me that lately a lot of comments are about going hard core and a few people have commented that the recently posted clips are a little ‘wimpy’, or lacking in intensity. Posts from the Shanghai group are coming across, as least to me, like your the only guys that train to fight and everyone else (especially in Germany) is just playing pat-a-cake.

And that’s what prompted the new thread. I’ll continue there …

BTW, I like Shanghai. I like it when you don’t see cops around. I feel much safer when I don’t see any.

9

Hi all,

it would be great, to have this thread just to talk about the clip and techniques! And no spam …

And yes: I asked for comments and no polite hold backs! So it´s ok when Tainan Mantis said what he means.

To some comments:
It´s always my greatest fear to cause some injuries to my students. I myself get injured several times (broken leg, lig. rupture etc) in sparring and it´s a **** thing to pause the training because of this.
So I avoid holding legs and sweep at the same time because in my mind I see broken elbows (up to 4 Month no training). But you are right Kevin: there was plenty of situations to do so!
Grabing his hair… yes, thats a thing I don´t think of. I try it next time.

Robert: thanks for seeing the clip so as it was thought to be.
The armbars I just interrupted cause of the fear to hurt or to brake the arm. It´s enough to see that one´s saw the opportunity and show how to apply …
The head down is not because I don´t wear lenses (I do! :wink: ) but because I like to safe my face against talerones. Most of people hit to the face, not to the back of the head. So I can go more easily into the infight.
Turning: yes a very bad habbit from the fighting with beginners. I do it there to give them a chance to take the opportunity and to train that situation for competitions.
The Bong sau/Bang was applied for me to see if it works and to see what Paul will do with it. And you are right: he handle this one not very smart. He should have forced me into infight …

Thanks all for your comments. I hope that more will coming …

10

GBL, NICE !

only 2 minor comments:

a couple of times you turned your back, imo, unnecesarily.

on a couple of the kicks, you seemed to lose root.

thanks for the clip good looking stuff.

hopefully us US Pong Lai folks will get together for a sparring session soon and will have something to offer up…

HINT

HINT

11

Jochen

I appreciate you putting up this clip, I enjoy this openess to share with all of us.

Saw alot of good, one of the better clips I`ve seen recently.

I like to finish things off by taking things to the ground. Saw alot of opportunities for deng ta and hook sweep/kicks, I really like to attack the legs. I kind of think this would not work so well on men like Oso… thick legged. More later, gotta get to the training hall.

Oso, can you pm 18-Elders about “putting up clips”, he needs some technical support.

Thanks again GBL!

12

yes it is one of the better clips i’ve seen on kfm. i wouldn’t kick that high, though. i like to hit high and low at once. that’s yu shan rubbing off on me. pong lai has a lot of drills with hook kicks and sweeps. and deng ta-you could have done that more.

thanks for posting this.

13

Family Feud

Personally, I’d prefer to limit my posts to the silly and facetious. But such contributions have already proven to have a short shelf life. Although I value the venue of this forum to exchange information, above all, I like a good laugh.

It seems the only way I can keep HouZiPigu’s pretty name up on the board is to be even sillier than posting a silly post and actually post a serious one.

And as far as the selective inter-club squabbling goes…I think there’s quite a tradition in that and I, for one, wouldn’t have it any other way.

14

For Kevin

Hi,

so I searched a little bit on my computer and find some short clip with hopefully enough Intensity. :wink:

You can see there Paul training Sanda with Jens.

Have fun: Clip

15

That second clip was much better, minus the brawling. However, that sort of thing is sometimes hard to avoid. I like the intensity and its neat to notice how much of your style comes out when you aren’t doing things in the “pat a cake” method. I to spar with no gloves but we go at a high intensity more training for openings and technique. We also train with gloves and an all out intensity. I think this is like focusing on a form where you train it slowly or at a moderate speed to ingrain the technique and form, but then you have to blast through a form at full speed and try to do the techniques properly. A fight is not pat a cake, a fight is to set up and then use what comes to hand.
I don’t train in mantis, I train in Black Tiger, whenever I get a clip of sparring, if my Sifu feels it represents what he is teaching, I will post it for you guys to view.

16

GBL,
Thanks for going to the trouble of finding another clip.
I have thought about what I wrote and your response.

Some may disagree, but I think it was a good exchange, at least for me.
It has helped me crystalize my thoughts on how I feel about intensity.
I feel it is everything.

I went back to my Musashi’s BOOK OF FIVE RINGS book to see what he wrote on the subject.

Here are a few excerpts.

“the reason true warriors are fierce is because their training is fierce”

“You must practice with the intensity of real life situations or it becomes a game and you can easily be beaten.”

“Even in practice sessions you must have the attitude of going in for the kill”

This from a famous Japanese swordsman circa late Ming dynasty who was well known as a man never beaten in one on on matches with the sword.

As for the clip, I liked this one much better.
Especially the second takedown.

Like Winter said, there is some brawling, but hey, that is what happens when someone is trying to knock your block off.

17

wooohaaaaa…and props for sparring (and falling) on the hard floor.

18

Tainan,

First off, I agree with what you say 100%.

What about the commercial US school? Right now I have a tues/thurs class as a newbie class and a wednesday night class as ‘advanced’. On tues/thur I don’t force the contact or intensity and make sure my wed night folks play nice. Still trying to build this thing.

My usual route is to make references to wed night and wait for someone to ask about it. Then I tell them that basically it’s the same stuff but with a lot higher intensity…they can count on hurting by the end of the night.

Do you feel there is a difference between US schools and Asian schools as far as what the ‘average’ student will put up with?

I’ll readily grant that most US people who even consider martial arts are driven by fantasy and that it is a very small percentage that will actually do what it takes (eat bitter) to become a good fighter.

Do we drive away the 99.9% who don’t want to eat bitter?

As a teacher I have a long standing credo that I would rather take a bumbling oaf w/ two left feet and make even a mediocre fighter out of he/she than a student who walks in off the street ready to rumble and make a good fighter out of them. It takes far more effort to do the former.

Would we rather take a top percentage of people and make them only a small percentage better or do we want to try and make something accesible to everyone?

To borrow terminology from the restaurant industry I feel that you need ‘front of the house’ students and ‘back of the house’ students.

I think that there is a parallel for the ‘inner door’ students vs. the regular student here.

anyway, don’t know why the long post, just kinda rolled off the fingers…

Musashi says “Go In”

19

Oso,
A deep question likely deserving of its own thread.

I have to think a bit.
One point to ponder.

Sportsman in the US today are 100% full on intensity.
Their goal is easy to define; winning.

Think highschool football practice for a start.
Other team sports too.

20

Thinking of …

Hi Kevin,

yeah, that´s why we are here: to have some good exchanges and think about our way of PM!

I also was thinking about what you said. And I see your position and why you want to say that in the way you did!

Intensity is probably the most important thing in training of the MAs. I always told the students to work on that, when performing forms, doing drills etc.

But the Beginner always starts with the lack of intensity and it makes no sense to let him train that, before he is not able to perform correct in low speed and to see through the techniques.

But I agree with you: at some point there MUST be only training with high intensity in fighting.

So, I am always willing to learn…