[QUOTE=JPinAZ;768978]What I find is REALLY ‘silly’ is when people view chi sau as ONLY a training drill… as if it’s similar to hitting heavy bags, skipping rope, training the focus mitts, etc..
That’s a very narrow and limited view in my opinion, and probably stems from lack of experience/knowledge in WC and/or chi sau.
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Just the opposite.
Plain and simple - WC is for fighting.
Agreed.
It’s bridging platform called Chis Sau is for fighting, as is any other part of a fighting art.
There is an easy way to prove your assertion: show us. Show us anyone who can do what they do in chi sao in actual fighting against anyone outside of WCK with decent-level fighting skills. In other words, evidence to back up your opinion.
Of course, no evidence will be forthcoming as there is no evidence to support your opinion. Just theoretical “teachings”.
I think it can be used in a competition event, similar to how sparring is used in boxing.
No. When you spar you are boxing. You move, behave, act, do the same things in sparring as you do in fighting (or in a match). In other words, sparring is fighting. Chi sao is not fighting. Chi sao is a nonrealistic exercise. How well someone can play an unrealistic exercise is ultimately meaningless.
But to compare ‘chi sau’ to boxing is quite silly in itself. One of the big differences with Chi Sau (in a competition scenario), the inital starting position, facing and ranges are fixed (but they don’t remain there once the ‘fight starts’, to do this would be silly). And, with Chi Sau (in a competition scenario) you’re starting with contact and focusing on bridging strategies. Boxing doesn’t focus on bridging much, and does not really focus on touch sensitivity nor sticking. Yeah, but these are really just ‘silly things’…:rolleyes:
Might as well just give up WC alltogether and just focus on MMA…
You miss the point: in boxing and WCK (or any martial art) we have drills and their purpose is not in developing great “skill” in performing the drill, but using the drill to develop fighting skill. The value of the drill can only be determined in how well it devlops fighting skill. Any drill, no matter how well you can do it, is not useful unless it develops fighting skills. So, for example, a person could be “great” at chi sao, but if they had poor fighting skills, it would mean the drill wasn’t really serving them. Same as in boxing: a person could look great on the focus mitts but if they couldn’t “box” (spar), it would mean that the drill, or how they did it, didn’t give them good results. How meaningful is it, then, that they had great focus mitt skills?
The only way to tell if one’s chi sao is “good” – that they are getting good results from how they perform the drill – is to actually look at the results that exercise or drill is “meant” to develop – those particular fighting skills. And you can’t evaluate fighting skills outside of the context of fighting itself.
