Forget the History, Forget the Politics

Wai Jia: The Kung Fu Forum Wing Chun
41

[QUOTE=golgo;896120]Has it though? In terms of controlled competitions I would agree with this (such as MMA). In terms of real pressure testing? I would think martial arts was at its peak when it was actually the primary means of killing someone in war, i.e. centuries ago (or less, depending on the civilization). I think modern MA still laggs way behind the true peak of MA. Even with the advances of the past 15 years or so I believe it still pales in comparison.

Now, in terms of the past 50 years it is probably at its peak. I would assume that the martial arts craze over the last half-century or so watered down the arts (as well as its secondary or tertiary role in war-time combat).

Please don’t take this to mean that I think WC is too deadly of an art to pressure test, not meant for competitions, etc. or that competitions aren’t valid forms of pressure testing. I am just saying that the true peak of martial arts was during a time when more people needed to use martial arts to survive.[/QUOTE]

There is a big difference between the skills used by a solider and those used by an individual.

That difference is fighting as part of a unit. Melee style fighting is more the thing of movies and primitive cultures. Societies that had standing armies trained their armies to move and fight as part of a larger unit.

The ability to march long distances, set camp, build fortifications and fight in formation would be valued much higher than individual dueling skills, especially unarmed skills.

So, it is highly unlikely that unarmed fighting skills were developed and showcased during combat.

42

[QUOTE=m1k3;896189]There is a big difference between the skills used by a solider and those used by an individual.

That difference is fighting as part of a unit. Melee style fighting is more the thing of movies and primitive cultures. Societies that had standing armies trained their armies to move and fight as part of a larger unit.

The ability to march long distances, set camp, build fortifications and fight in formation would be valued much higher than individual dueling skills, especially unarmed skills.

So, it is highly unlikely that unarmed fighting skills were developed and showcased during combat.[/QUOTE]

Even nowadays, many battles “degenerate” into CQB, some actually start that way.
Fact is, if you are gonna train a soldier or warrior to fight, you start with one-on-one skills and work from there.
As the old saying goes, if you can’t beat one…

43

[QUOTE=sanjuro_ronin;896196]Even nowadays, many battles “degenerate” into CQB, some actually start that way.
Fact is, if you are gonna train a soldier or warrior to fight, you start with one-on-one skills and work from there.
As the old saying goes, if you can’t beat one…[/QUOTE]

No, they don’t. And for training, at least in the Marines when I was in the most important thing is being able to shoot, and team work, not individual skills. Gung Ho! means work together. Thats why all the close order drill, and group pt and the platoon being punished for the actions of an individual. The very first things they teach you in boot camp is to become part of a team, your platoon. The unit is all. Until you graduate there are no individual awards there are only awards for the platoon. You win or lose as a unit.

There were NO individuals in my beloved Marine Corps. Oohrah!

MCMAP and bayonet fighting and Army Combatives are there as a fail safe not as a primary fighting skill. They are also used to develop toughness and the warrior spirit of attack and aggression.

CQC, especially hand to hand is the exception and an unwanted exception in combat. According to the guy who developed the Army combatives program its primary use is to allow a solider to survive long enough until his buddies with guns get there.

The armies that were most successful were the ones that fought as disciplined units, not as a howling mob.

Very much like sports. A team of disciplined athletes working together can often defeat a group of stars playing as individuals.

44

[QUOTE=m1k3;896189]There is a big difference between the skills used by a solider and those used by an individual.

That difference is fighting as part of a unit. Melee style fighting is more the thing of movies and primitive cultures. Societies that had standing armies trained their armies to move and fight as part of a larger unit.

The ability to march long distances, set camp, build fortifications and fight in formation would be valued much higher than individual dueling skills, especially unarmed skills.

So, it is highly unlikely that unarmed fighting skills were developed and showcased during combat.[/QUOTE]

Martial arts does not equal unarmed. Are there any styles/systems of kung fu that did not originally include weapon training? This is not a rhetorical question - I genuinely do not know. I am assuming the answer is no however.

I still find it hard to believe that individual skill did not play a role in being able to survive on a battlefield. Yes, strategy, tatctics and leadership play a larger role, especially in the overall outcome of the battle, but to say individual skill has a minor role when it comes to individual survival - well, I don’t really agree with this notion.

[QUOTE=m1k3;896225]=
The armies that were most successful were the ones that fought as disciplined units, not as a howling mob.

Very much like sports. A team of disciplined athletes working together can often defeat a group of stars playing as individuals.[/QUOTE]

Yeah, but the Chicago Bulls with the arguably greatest individual player to ever grace the NBA… they built a dynasty… oh, except for the year he went and played baseball.

The Lakers with Kobe & Shaq - arguably the best 2 players in the game - dynasty.

The Yankees in the 90’s (and their butt-load of talent)- dynasty

And the list could go on…

So its hard to argue that individual skill plays no part in the success of a franchise. It doesn’t guarantee success, mind you (i.e. recent Yankees). This is why you see so few dynasties once salary caps are put into place - it stops teams from being able to keep all of the best individual players.

So either you picked a bad analogy, or you proved the opposite point you were trying to make.

45

[QUOTE=Ultimatewingchun;896074]Attacking me does not negate the premise of this thread.

I don’t attend seminar-after-seminar, class-after-class, meeting-after-meeting, read book-after-book, article-after-article…and yes, get involved in thread-after-thread…

devoted to wing chun history.

Which is what many people can’t seem to get enough of.

And the lineage and politics discussions and debates have grown very old - so I try to avoid them as much as possible at this point.

My primary interest has always been either actually doing, (ie.- as in training), or discussing various fighting methods, training methods, strategies, principles, and techniques THAT WORK under pressure.

And the premise of this thread is that if you call yourself a wing chun man and you’re spending a great deal of your time still doing the history and politics thing as we approach 2009…

seminars, classes, books, articles, discussions, meetings, debates, etc…

you’re helping wing chun become antiquated and irrelevant. There’s really no getting around that fact anymore. For anybody. Regardless of what lineage they come from. Or what is the history (or supposed history) of that lineage…or anything else…the politics of who’s-who, or the alleged unbeatable quality of the wing chun method in question, etc.

Because wing chun is being left behind. The martial arts world has taken a giant leap forward within the last 15 years or so - and wing chun, for the most part, is watching from the sidelines.

Why?

Because instead of spending most of their time pressure testing to find out what wing chun works and what doesn’t - people are engaging in history lessons and trying to figure out (and shuffle) the politics of who’s who.[/QUOTE]

I think being knowledgeable about ones art is time well spent. It does not make you a better fighter per se but M.A. is not all about fighting. There is more to it then that.

46

Ok, lets try this.

Using sword fighting as an example.

The skills that make you an exceptional duelist are not necessarily the skills which will make you a good foot solider.

When fighting as part of a unit you need to depend on the person next to you, and behind you and in front of you doing their jobs or else you might die, no matter how good your skills as a swordsman. If a flight of arrows comes in and everyone raises their shield except the guy in front of you, you could die. If you are expecting the solider to your right to be providing shield coverage for you in the formation and he doesn’t you could die. In this type of situation your skills, no matter how good, are not going to be enough.

The point I am trying to make is that the skill sets required for fighting as an individual and fighting as part of a unit are different. So saying MA skills now are not as good as the battlefield skills of the past is an invalid argument. Individual Kung Fu (CQC0 skills would most likely help you on that type of battlefield but would be far from your primary skill set. Your ability to integrate into a well functioning unit would be much more important. Same as the battlefield of today.

As for the exceptional individual or two carrying the team sure that happens, but none of those teams went undefeated.

A basketball team has 5 players playing, a baseball team has 9 players playing. The odds of a few exceptional individuals carrying the day when there are 200.000 fighting is a lot smaller. It does happen though, that’s why they have medals. They are often given posthumously though.

47

CQC skills are arguably better for police or civilan security, and even in those spheres numbers and coordination of teams are often more important.

One of my BJJ instructors occasionally gets a retired cop who is highly experienced in police restrain and arrest procedures in for a seminar. He’s over 80, but I wouldn’t even consider trying to resist his arrest. He’s got some simple but diabolically effective and painful tactics and techniques. Fascinating stuff.

I’m not even sure that most of the popular MA’s has extensive use on the battlefield, despite the uterrings of some self proclaimed historians. No one ever fought a war with karate or chi sao, that’s for sure. Still more a self-defense, surprise attack or assassination situation, and not in battlefield-size numbers.

I personally regard the current environment with its emphasis on sportfighting and results to be better than many of the alternatives, e.g. issuing challenges and performing ambushes at seminars, talking a good fight and about how your techniques are too deadly to pressure test and how crap those of your business rivals are, adherence to unscientific and physically unsound training methods, adherence to outmoded and arguably primitive cultural traditions, attitudes ,etc., acting like some sort of demigod and treating your students like slaves or retards, and so on.

Evolution isn’t about “advancement”, it’s about adaptation to prevailing conditions. Man is not the “pinnacle” of evolution, and arguably bacteria are far more successful than we will ever be. Stephen Jay Gould wrote about this- I can’t remeber the name of the book, though it’s the one where he also discussess ate great length the reasons why baseball batting averages aren’t as high as they used to be, even though technilogy and training methods have vastly improved.

In general, science is about continuous experimentation, change, and improvement. Any practice that remains unchanged after 200 years, whether developed on a Chinese battlefield or anywhere else, is unlikely to have ever been treated to scentific examination, and even less likely to be as fit for purpose in current times as it would be otherwise.

I think studying history is a respectable endeavour. Misusing your “research” to claim some sort of extra respectablity, purity, efficacy and gain a related marketing advantage for what you do in an arena when performance is the major criterion, IS an enormous waste of time that could certainly be better spent.

48

“I personally regard the current environment with its emphasis on sportfighting and results to be better than many of the alternatives”

Very good last post.

Suki

49

[QUOTE=m1k3;896243]Ok, lets try this.

Using sword fighting as an example.

The skills that make you an exceptional duelist are not necessarily the skills which will make you a good foot solider.
[/QUOTE]

No, but if your means of fighting requires you to wield a sword to kill/defend yourself in battle, and you train every day to use a sword - well, I would surmise that you are going to have better technique at wielding said sword than someone in modern times who trains it as a part of their art, but never has any application to use it in a real life situation.

[QUOTE=m1k3;896243]
When fighting as part of a unit you need to depend on the person next to you, and behind you and in front of you doing their jobs or else you might die, no matter how good your skills as a swordsman. If a flight of arrows comes in and everyone raises their shield except the guy in front of you, you could die. If you are expecting the solider to your right to be providing shield coverage for you in the formation and he doesn’t you could die. In this type of situation your skills, no matter how good, are not going to be enough.
[/QUOTE]

Take it to a futuristic/hypothetical example - Lets assume in the future no one uses firearms in war anymore - sexy female robots fight our battles for us. People still train marksmanship for hobby/self defense purposes. As you said before, even today tactics, teamwork, etc. are more important that individual skill. Would you still argue that people in the future would have a higher degree of marksmanship/ranged combat skills?

I just don’t believe this would be true.

[QUOTE=m1k3;896243]
As for the exceptional individual or two carrying the team sure that happens, but none of those teams went undefeated.

A basketball team has 5 players playing, a baseball team has 9 players playing. The odds of a few exceptional individuals carrying the day when there are 200.000 fighting is a lot smaller. It does happen though, that’s why they have medals. They are often given posthumously though.[/QUOTE]

And the Roman, Spartan, Mongol, United States, German, Carthaginian, and Alexandrian armies didn’t win every single battle either.

I think we can agree that comparing sports to war is a just bad analogy. Just ask Kellan Winslow Jr..

50

No, but if your means of fighting requires you to wield a sword to kill/defend yourself in battle, and you train every day to use a sword - well, I would surmise that you are going to have better technique at wielding said sword than someone in modern times who trains it as a part of their art,

Assuming that you live long enough to develop said skill.

This isn’t borne out by history in any case. Miyamoto Musashi, not exactly a slouch at fencing in a time when it WAS life or death, lamented the state of martial art instruction in his time, talking about “indoor schools”, the practice of tachniques which would never stand up under real pressure, etc. It’s in the Book of Five Rings IIRC.

It sounds like some things have never changed.

51

[QUOTE=anerlich;896289]Assuming that you live long enough to develop said skill.
[/QUOTE]

That’s the ultimate in combat evolution, baby! Survival of the fittest!:stuck_out_tongue:

[QUOTE=anerlich;896289]
This isn’t borne out by history in any case. Miyamoto Musashi, not exactly a slouch at fencing in a time when it WAS life or death, lamented the state of martial art instruction in his time, talking about “indoor schools”, the practice of tachniques which would never stand up under real pressure, etc. It’s in the Book of Five Rings IIRC.

It sounds like some things have never changed.[/QUOTE]

Well, I read in the Three Kingdoms that Lu Bu destroyed thousands of men with his incredible martial skills. :wink:

52

[QUOTE=anerlich;896289]Miyamoto Musashi, not exactly a slouch at fencing in a time when it WAS life or death, lamented the state of martial art instruction in his time, talking about “indoor schools”, the practice of tachniques which would never stand up under real pressure, etc. It’s in the Book of Five Rings IIRC.

It sounds like some things have never changed.[/QUOTE]

Please dont blast me for using Wikipedia as a source, but I am not writing a research paper. From the Wikipedia page on The Book of Five Rings:

“He also continually makes the point that the understandings expressed in the book are important for combat on any scale, whether a one-on-one duel or a massive battle.”

I have not read the book. Is this not true?

53

[QUOTE=golgo;896276]
I think we can agree that comparing sports to war is a just bad analogy. Just ask Kellan Winslow Jr..[/QUOTE]

This is exactly the point I was trying to make. Justifying your kung fu skills because your art may or may not have been used on some ancient battlefield is bogus.

54

[QUOTE=m1k3;896398]This is exactly the point I was trying to make. Justifying your kung fu skills because your art may or may not have been used on some ancient battlefield is bogus.[/QUOTE]

Well, that has nothing to do with the point I was trying to make. My point was that ancient martial artists were better because it was trained and tested on the battlefield, where mistakes meant the difference between life or death - and not a tap out or a bloody nose. Thats not to say people don’t use their martial arts to defend themselves in life or death situations these days, but it is just on a much smaller scale. I am also not trying to say that current pro martial artists are unskilled.

I have no misconceptions that the deeds of ancient martial artists on the battlefield justify my art or my skills (or lackthereof :D). Or even, that those skills are necessarily applicable in today’s world.

55

[QUOTE=m1k3;896225]No, they don’t. And for training, at least in the Marines when I was in the most important thing is being able to shoot, and team work, not individual skills. Gung Ho! means work together. Thats why all the close order drill, and group pt and the platoon being punished for the actions of an individual. The very first things they teach you in boot camp is to become part of a team, your platoon. The unit is all. Until you graduate there are no individual awards there are only awards for the platoon. You win or lose as a unit.

There were NO individuals in my beloved Marine Corps. Oohrah!

MCMAP and bayonet fighting and Army Combatives are there as a fail safe not as a primary fighting skill. They are also used to develop toughness and the warrior spirit of attack and aggression.

CQC, especially hand to hand is the exception and an unwanted exception in combat. According to the guy who developed the Army combatives program its primary use is to allow a solider to survive long enough until his buddies with guns get there.

The armies that were most successful were the ones that fought as disciplined units, not as a howling mob.

Very much like sports. A team of disciplined athletes working together can often defeat a group of stars playing as individuals.[/QUOTE]

My mileage, and that of others that have also served, varies from yours.
To each their own.
Semper Fi.

56

[QUOTE=anerlich;896289]Assuming that you live long enough to develop said skill.

This isn’t borne out by history in any case. Miyamoto Musashi, not exactly a slouch at fencing in a time when it WAS life or death, lamented the state of martial art instruction in his time, talking about “indoor schools”, the practice of tachniques which would never stand up under real pressure, etc. It’s in the Book of Five Rings IIRC.

It sounds like some things have never changed.[/QUOTE]

The more things change the more they stay the same.

57

Please dont blast me for using Wikipedia as a source, but I am not writing a research paper. From the Wikipedia page on The Book of Five Rings:

“He also continually makes the point that the understandings expressed in the book are important for combat on any scale, whether a one-on-one duel or a massive battle.”

I have not read the book. Is this not true?

Yeah, but WTF does that have to do with the point I was discussing (martial arts instruction having zip to do with reality even in feudal Japan) and the reference I made to the book?

I won’t blast you for using Wikipedia, but you lose major points for using irrelevant material from a book you haven’t read in support of whatever point you are trying to make.

It is a major work in MA and more, and you probably should read it and the Art of War before posting on martial strategy.

58

[QUOTE=anerlich;896537]Yeah, but WTF does that have to do with the point I was discussing (martial arts instruction having zip to do with reality even in feudal Japan) and the reference I made to the book?

I won’t blast you for using Wikipedia, but you lose major points for using irrelevant material from a book you haven’t read in support of whatever point you are trying to make.

It is a major work in MA and more, and you probably should read it and the Art of War before posting on martial strategy.[/QUOTE]

Now you are just being disrespectful.

A) I am not posting on martial strategy. I am posting on martial skill
B) No, I have not read the Book of Five Rings, but I have read the Art of War about a dozen times and it has been a fixture on my bookshelf for close to 20 years. You brought up the book, not me. Get off your high horse.
C) Obviously you dont undestand the point I was trying to make. I am not going to waste my time repeating it (or engaging in this thread any longer).
D) Someone was making the point that the skills for individual combat were completely different from the skills of battlefield combat. Hence the quote…

59

[QUOTE=sanjuro_ronin;896441]My mileage, and that of others that have also served, varies from yours.
To each their own.
Semper Fi.[/QUOTE]

Training is tailored to meet the mission. Given that you two had vastly different mission parameters (infantry vs sniper) your training emphasis is going to be different to meet that need.

My training is different than both of you due to being a medic. My training is also different from most medics due to being operational and tagged as a “high risk of capture” personnel.

60

I am not going to waste my time repeating it (or engaging in this thread any longer).

Sounds good.