Well MightyB, I may not be one to talk 'cause of how young i am but there are styles that would be just back and forth fighting (similar to boxing) or more of useing thier momentum and strength there is also those who go to the ground and do a submission lock or choke hold, yeah the personality of the user will alter some aspecs but there are fundimentals that cant be changed without destroying the essance of the style.
In the begining, they may be different but at the end they are all the same. Different starting points but the same ending.
One will need to have strength on fingers, palm, and also wrist.
Well said.
Let me try something else.
Badminton and table tennis/Ping Pong require more strength from the wrist.
Golf–
Tennis–
Baseball–
Softball–
Are they the same?
Do you use your body the same way in all these ball playing?
The goal of CMA is to defeat your enemy. Those games don’t share the same goal.
Yes. You are correct.
My posts are focusing on techniques and using the body.
They are in response to posts that said there is only one human body and we can only use it the same way or one way and that there are no differences.
Obviously, you will not play table tennis in the same way with tennis, will you?
Finally, someone who understands what I’ve been saying!
Let’s take two guys: one does sensitivity drills all day, the other guy does locking flow drills all day. There are ‘different starting points.’ But when the first guy does sensitivity drills long enough, he will also become good at locking! And when the second guy does only locking, he will also get just as good as the first get at sensitivity! This is ‘same ending’! This is just common sense, people.
Mighty b, i would hate to agree with you , esp after calling you a pseudo troll on one of my earlier posts in this thread, but i understand what your statement is fully.
What you are saying is why when you train eagle and tiger it looks so different but when they fight it looks like bad kickboxing.
My 2 cents is this.
In general in china there are 1.3 billion people when these styles were developed there were probably a billion people.
These styles (southern northern internal external) were practised and applied by about 100 famous masters.
Thus these 100 that could do it were elite, no matter if you taught them the crippled pen1s technique of kung fu, they would still make it work.
The average oriental person is very light and small in frame, probably 50-55 kilos ? Also dont forget they didnt have the greatest diets.
So we have 100 elite guys who trained so hard were strong tough etc and we have the population of ppl who are normal.
This is like pro bodybuilding , ronnie coleman, vs the rest of us on this board.
So basically it doesnt matter what the technique looks like , these guys would pull it off and haul a$$.
SINCE they could do this they wanted one move fight stoppers, so they developed their one move fight stoppers around a set of leg techniques which are very much the same throughout kung fu, and with a variety of arm techniques, depending on each style Wether its for breaking parts of the body or striking vital points.
So when they would be attacked it would be a one move fight stopper.
Now if you , were to take any kung fu form you like, * any thing * take one move from it, and have a 12 year old with no m.a experience attack you, then apply that one move, if you dont kill him or cripple him, he will probably be in hospital for the next few days.
now fast forward to this modern era, absolutely every pro has the same access to training methods, be they state of the art gyms or steroids . Everyone can sign up at the school they chose to bar the problem of distance. Everyone has the ability to toughen up their body, and give or take genetics, depending on how much time you want to invest everyone can get to a weight they desire.
So everone is equal , this means one move finishers dont work through competition circuits.
So everyone condenses what they learn to be shoter faster smaller stances faster footwork, quicker bunches , not so direct blocks but more glancing counter blocks etc.
So it all looks the same !
Styles or no styles.
It is only an issue when you learn more than one style.
Now let us ask the Wimbleton Tennis player to play Ping Pong with Bei Jing Ping Pong team player.
Or ask the Ping Pong player to play tennis in Wimbleton.
Let us bet.
Where would you put your money and not your mouth?
Who would win?
The styles have become so big now that each person who learns them basically picks and chooses what works best from the style they learn, and inadvertantly creates their OWN substyle based in the gross principals of thier main style.
In the Eagle claw example, what is the gross, underlying principals behind eagle claw? Well, ultimately it’s Long Fist, so those who learn eagle claw are ultimately learning Long Fist, and thier own personal BRAND of longfist is what naturally develops. Only those who spend the time becomming absolute masters of the Eagle Claw brand of Long Fist will look like Eagle claw fighters in the end. What, that’s about the top 1 or 2 % of eagle claw players? Lilly Lau and her sister maybe? The rest are just Long Fist players who like to joint lock a bit more than the rest.
Raiders of the Lost Ark
In a sense, true Kung Fu is like the Ark that contained the Covenant but it has been long lost since. The existance of the relic and its content are definitely very important to Christian faith but their existance (and their adsence thereof) does not stop Christianity to “evolve”. Human are very opportunistic and are natural born “reinventing the wheel” know how. This is why we have “style” such as JKD and even the GD modern Wushu. BTW, I am not saying the JKD is not a good thing. When true knowledge that is developed through history being exploited and disregarded, there are always those “smart” people who will seize the oppotunity and capitalize it for personal gain (not saying Bruce Lee did).
Once upon a time Kung Fu is martial studies (Wu Xue) parallel to if not surpassing civil or academic studies (Wen Xue) in China. However, martial status eventually became subordinate to civil status. This greatly limited the further development of the martial studies which included the study of Classics such as Classic of Change (Yijing), Internal Classic of Yellow Emperor (Huang Di Nei Jing), 18 weaponry (Shi Ba Ban Wu Yi), etc. We now have martial arts (Wu Yi) at best. But as a whole most seek martial skills (Wu Shu) these days. It is a sad downward spiral that is still gathering more and more momentum. There will be as many styles as the days in a year on planet Mars as long as we continue to chase after martial skills instead of going to take serious look at martial studies.
Mantis108
Off topic
I just saw the movie “the weather man”. He could not focus his mind to remember tartar sauce. He could have written a note for it. If he could remember to read the note.
He intended strongly to care for her daughter and his family. He paid an Archery lesson for her daughter for 175$. Her daughter gave up even before the first try. It was even a huge hurdle just to draw the bow.
Instead of losing the tuition, he went back to take the lesson himself. He started to focus more in Archery. He became a very good fletcher in the end. and a more focused person.
“focus”, will or intent etc.
The daughter was interested in the bow hunting and not interested in learning how to shoot an immovable target. She was interested in shooting a moving target. The question is that if you could not hit the immovable one, how could you do it with a moving one.
My point is this.
the same physical activity. Some use it as a sport or focusing mind and body coordination. The hunting intent is not there.
Some may use the skill to hunt or hurt.
The intent and focus are totally different.
Wu Xue=Wu Yi+ Wu Shu and a lot more.
back to regular styles vs styleless debate.
Actually, I have just such a clip on VHS. I’ll see if I can convert it to digital and post it. This CLF guy pulled a spinning gwa chui and the other guy got KTFO. It was a lei tai san shou match from Germany. I also have another clip of my classmate knocking out a Tae Kwon Do kid using CLF. Make no mistake, CLF is about knockout punches…its just that most pracitioners don’t know how to set them up correctly.
TTT - This is a fun thread to continue with you new KFM Forumers.
[QUOTE=MightyB;640397]All BS aside… what truly differentiates a Kung Fu style? [/quote]LOL!! funny stuff, this way of the tao…
Wow. revisiting a thread from 2005.
talking about deja vu.
:eek:
[QUOTE=SPJ;957100]Wow. revisiting a thread from 2005.
talking about deja vu.
:eek::D[/QUOTE]
Ahhh… But it is a fun topic that has to do with kung fu.
I basically beg borrow and steal techniques and training methods from pretty much anywhere that catches my interest nowadays… although I wouldn’t advocate that to someone just beginning in MA (been at it darn near 20 years now - most of it within one style and with one master). I’d tell them to give whatever style at least 3 years before cross training. Although I’d tell beginner beginners to wrestle or do jiu jitsu before doing other MA unless the more traditional started to adopt hard wrestling drills into their curriculum. You just can’t match that experience of pure physical exhaustion that you get from hard wrestling or jiu jitsu. Especially when you line up your partners in succession so that even when you’re exhausted, you have to go again. Talk about preparing and getting you used to a worst case scenario physical confrontation.
[QUOTE=SPJ;957100]Wow. revisiting a thread from 2005.
talking about deja vu.
:eek::D[/QUOTE]
no. more like Deja Moo-the feeling that you’ve heard this bullsh*t before..(yawn)
In my opinion there are no styles. You’ll all notice that Kung fu styles look very different during form demonstration but during sparring they all look similar. So called internal martial artists will tell you that the feeling is different while they push you back one step. The “feeling” they are talking about is the rootedness they hav developed which anyone can develop.
The differences are really just superficial. A mantis guy will hold his arms out in fook sau positin when starting out. This is the basic, “I’m ready for you stance” for many systems? Some styles point out that their posture is what differentiates them. They’ll tend to have a variation of the senile(old person who is hunched, not healthy) posture. In terms of power there is only one kind of power: Hurt the other person power. I’ve seen a million different names for hitting power in Chnese martial arts and the one thing they all have in common? Most can only be pulled off during technique demonstration where the person being demonsrtated on just stands there like a limp noodle. Short power, shock power, inch power, swinging power. The Chinese made up all these metaphors for hitting to hurt others but I think too many non-chinese take the names too literally. That could be he fault of the English language not being able to translate Chinese ideas. It doesn’t matter what you call it as long as you destroy the other person.
It’s too bad there were no video cameras around during the ancient death fights. We probably would have seen very messy fights with very little of their supposed style showing. Likely it was conditioning and tricks that saved many of these fighters. They then categorized these tricks into forms. Fast forward to the present and we have all of us trying to learn bow to fight from a few strung together tricks.
Ikdmc put up an I tersting thread up once asking if Chinese martial arts was really the glorified kickboxing. We always call crappy kung Fu glorified kickboxing. I wish i’d been around to witness some of my teacher’s fights to see if there’s such a thing as really using moves derived from forms or if he was just kickboxing with many little Kung Fu tricks thrown in the mix. Likely I’ll never know.
Ba gua only looks like ba gua when they’re walking around in circles. If you sparred or did push hands with him you’d notice some weird stuff but it would be the same as with a kickboxer. If you’ve never seen hsing I and someone used pi chuan you’d think it was jUst a punch or that it looked like wing chun. I used to believe that if you did a form millions of times you’d look like that when sparring or fighting. The reality sets in quickly
You’re kidding, right?
Different styles favour different types strikes, which require different power generation, body structure,and therefore different strategies, to implement them.
Anyone who has truly studied and trained in a style deeply and correctly, will use his strikes the way they were designed.
Only if you learn on a superficial level, will the differences be superficial.
I know people who have devoted their lives to their style, and when they are put under the gun, guess what? They don’t revert back to anything but what they have trained-because there is nothing else to revert back to. Their Gung-Fu is ingrained in them and is part of them. Not through forms, but through hard training.
If you dabble, collect forms, or jump from one style to another, a little bak mei, a little wing chun, a little this a little that, how much do you really ever know anything?
Going through sixth grade in five elementary schools doesn’t equal a college degree.
[QUOTE=SavvySavage;957400] I used to believe that if you did a form millions of times you’d look like that when sparring or fighting. The reality sets in quickly[/QUOTE]
the reality is that you have not been training correctly, so of course that is your result. Forms will not get you there, drilling, hands-on, sparring, etc will. Forms are in most cases not even taught, except AFTER, sometimes even only for lineage bearors-unles those forms are very specific developmental sets, designed to establish very specific foundational things, such as breath, sttructure, movement, etc.
Too many people want to be forms collectors, and too many schools cater to that delusion.