All BS aside… what truly differentiates a Kung Fu style?
Now before you go in depth into theories, origins, and mysticism etc., try to define differences in styles.
To me it’s “this style is this body of forms.” Period. If you say you’re X style, you know a collection of forms that are catalogued as X style. Is there really that much of a difference between X and Y styles? NO. Just a different body of forms.
Yeah, you’ll all start to theorize about internal and external and chi and southern and northern and yada yada yada but in truth what stops somebody who learns Xing Yi from learning Bung Bo? nothing, and then you’ll get into Chi Sau or whatever but guess what, all advanced players in any style have some type of sensitivity training in there regimen. Be it Chi Sau, mantis playing hands, eagle claws qin na drills, tai chi’s pushing hands, whatever… it’s all the same. Two people practicing sensitivity. Oh yeah… chi gung… anybody can learn chi gung…
So are there any different styles, or are there just some different ways to collect forms?
It depends on what you mean by different styles. Are you implying that the practitioner has different moves all together, or has a different way of approaching combat?
I think you might be refering to a more wide question. In referance to that, the human body works only in certain ways and all styles have to play by those rules. With that thought in mind all styles arts are more similar than they are different.
Styles have different flavors. One can be very agressive, while another can be primarily defensive. One can focus on hand techniques while another has more leg action. These are the things that define a style.
Some styles have conflicting principles. One style can focus on sticking and being sensitive while another style is all about power and breaking down your opponents defenses.
Some styles have defining moves stances or hand positions. Things that just don’t exist in other styles.
Anyway, I see where you’re going. There are probably many more similarities than differences and an advanced practitioner would eventually see these and interchange them.
You’ve just described differences in a practitioner’s personalities, not style differences.
Case and point… Bill “Super Foot” Wallace was a practitioner of Shorin Ryu… not TKD.
Some people like to punch, some like to kick, some like to play defensive, some focus on internal… it’s really not the style they are learning. It’s their personality. Brendan Lai was aggressive… he defended (counter attacked) faster than the opponent could attack, Chung Ho Yin (at least in his later years) liked to wait for his opponent to overextend his attack before counter attacking. Two different methods but both from the same teacher.
I think there are a lot of branches to the kungfu tree. They all come from the same place(fighting) and then branch out into different specialty’s(ways of fighting). Some arts become about aggression others are defensive. Some win fights with kicking others with hands.
Style differences means the different specialization and emphasis on how to approach a fight. Such as styles that were passed down from practitioners with small body size, they might be fast and likes to fight in close range. Or they might be heavily built, so they like to stalk and hit with power. Others might prefer more grappling approach because they have a more wrestling background, while others are more focus on weapons methods because they were soldiers, etc etc.
Stylistic differences also arise from geographical differences. Regions in China were pretty isolated because of the limits of transportation. With the banning of public teaching of martial arts in early Qing dynasty, less and less exchanges of ideas happened between regions. Hence the more divergent and localized styles we find today.
Choy Lat Fu are 3 family styles combined. It has over several hundreds forms and weapons. It is convergence.
They assimilated similar moves and kept dissimilar or flavored moves. It is the most diverse school of southern style.
Mantis has several principles. Over the years, practitioners added more moves and forms based on priniciples. There are over 400 forms and weapons.
Tai Chi afte Yang, there are Wu, Sun etc. different emphasis is placed. in general, Yang has large movements. Sun Lu Tang emphasized Kai He. Wu style emphasized small movements.
Ba Gua has many styles, too.
My point is that it is a dynamic process that would go either way. Assimilation and diversification. Thus the name is art or personal expression.
You may say all paintings are alike. Some may prefer oil, water color, chinese ink brush, crayon or computer generated images/CGI etc.
You may also say all ice creams are the same. Well vanila, chocolate, pumkin, etc may taste differently. you may also add toppings.
But when it comes right down to it, a style is mainly a collection of forms.
The stylistic differences are because some dead person liked to do it that way and we all are trying are best trying to emulate our assumptions of a long dead person’s preferences. Forget free will or art or expression and good luck trying to fight with whatever it is you’re learning.
Mighty b you look like you posted this simply to troll judging by your last post. I would say that the difference between each style of kung fu is flavour, not forms.
And no collecting forms isnt the point.
Think of it this way whats the difference between out boxing and in fighting, between muhhamed ali and rocky marciano ? Its the same with kung fu.
Forms and classics or priniciples and theories are indeed dead.
Practitioners bring lives to them.
in the end, whatever works the best for you is your style. everyone has different limits or physical attributes.
for example, Tai Chi is stressing expanding or Peng.
Ba Gua is stressing sprialing or coiling and uncoiling.
They both have spining outward moves. And yet there are also differences.
In Ba Gua, they call them Ning Guo Fan Zhuan. Ning is like twisting a rope. It is present from your arms, waist and down to the steps. Guo is like packing up or wraping up a parcel. It is an inward rotation and close the body shape. Tai Chi call it He. And yet they are different. Fan is to flip. the palm wrist, arm, body and steps may all flip in a continous rotation or circle. Tai Chi call it Zhuan Hua. And yet there are differences. Zhuan is drilling like a drill. Tai Chi prefer a whole body “drill”.
The main difference is that Ba Gua focuses on palms more and the rest of the body follows. Tai Chi is centering on the waist energy and arms and steps follow.
They may look the same and sound the same. And yet they are different.
If you really think that, kung fu is worthless, why are you on this forum? A shout out to all of you non-Kung-Fu forum members. If kung fu is so worthless, why do you get on this web page and spout your ignorance?
Training as a fighter is easy. You pick a few moves that work well and train them, a lot. Then you become an amazing fighter. If that is what you want, why do you have to get upset that others learn a complete martial art? Go back to your drills and practice your 5 moves. Martial artists generally are less proficient at a particular move, but what makes a martial artist good is their ability to do lots of different moves.
that’s like saying all paintings aren’t really different in any style, they are just a collection of colors or just a collections of strokes.
But we know there are differnet styles, impressionism, expressionism, on and on.
To say that a ‘style’ is just a collection of forms and that there really are no ‘styles’ is akin to saying all animals that have two feet, two arms, two legs, and two eyes are just a collection of those things and that there really are no different ‘animals’. A human is not a monkey, or even better yet, a gorilla is not a chimpanzee.
A kick is just a kick and a punch is just a punch. But what if the punch is thrown one way with the elbow flared out, and the other way with the elbow always pointed down? Is that just a preference? but what if it is dictated or mandated by the teachings, is it not then a sytlistic difference? Do the same with kicks, blocks, and stepping, etc. Are those then not stylistic differences then also? Would the culmination of all those tenets not then be a style?
There are, indeed, differences in “styles”.. Mantis hooking grabs.. Choy Le Fut hurricane fists.. Wing Chung triangles.. Monkey style, well that’s just wierd.. particular techniques with the same goal, win/don’t die.. just as there are differences in “styles” of clothes, sure, it’s all clothes, but.. there are simply some styles i reject out of common sense.. Goth, etc… differences in styles of autos, Porsche vs. Pinto.. on and on…
I’ve been reading a lot of Liang Shou Yu’s works lately. One of his books is called Kung Fu Fundamentals. I would have to say that I agree with a lot of what he says in the forward.
I’ll paraphrase on what I’ve personally taken from that book which is that you can work on the attributes… the core attributes… and then it really doesn’t matter which forms you do. Do the one’s you like based on you. If you like internal practice internal. If you like kicking, practice forms that emphasize kicking etc. As long as you take a balanced approach, it doesn’t matter what forms from what styles you do. In my opinion that’s how you really become a martial artist.
It also doesn’t shock me to learn that he was a Shuai Chou stylist. When you do a martial art that emphasizes truly utilizing your skills in a competitive manner such as Shuai Chou or San Shou, you really start to notice things that don’t make sense or aren’t really based on fact— Such as that there’s big differences in the martial arts styles. It’s actually quite liberating to have that approach. It’s a heck of a lot more fun than basing your training on unproven dogma that really doesn’t fit you (how’s that for trolling)
And yes, I think chi kung, especially hard chi kung, is waayyy cool.
He does have a point though. In application, most arts share more similarities than have differences. Different arts may specialize in one area over another or emphasize one strategy over another, but in practice, they are similar.
I agree. When you get right down to it a punch is a punch and a kick is a kick. But still I think different styles focus on different attributes and have different flavors or emphasis.
In the end, there are way more similarities than differences.
It’s all about flavour and the way in which techniques are applied and performed. There’s no reason why a Xingyi guy shouldn’t learn Bung Bo, but it would look like Xingyi. Indeed, you can see this in various styles which have absorbed sets from other systems.
You will need them all in a battle field. If you have learned all the above styles then what style are you going to use in combat?
When the fire have reached to the highest temperature, the fire will have no color. When you have mastered all styles, style no longer make sense to you.
