[QUOTE=RenDaHai;1228735]I don’t think traditional Kung Fu looks like kickboxing in application.
The Goal in fights outside the ring is never the fight itself, it is something else. Not to make the fight more of a fight. It is something a lot of people don’t understand until they actually fight.
If you fight and make the fight solely about fighting, then you should not be surprised that it looks like other fights of the same nature. But if you add a goal, a purpose to your combat, one that is outside the fight, then you will see the value of the traditional technique.
Its not about the rules you play, its about the situation, the scenario, the purpose, the intent.[/QUOTE]
Could you elaborate on this? I don’t feel like I’m catching the meaning.
[QUOTE=David Jamieson;1229077]In a street fight, it’s about so many other things, …[/QUOTE]
In a street fight, the 1st thing that you want to do is to find a brick or rock on the ground. You then pick it up and …
[QUOTE=madhusudan;1229075]Could you elaborate on this? I don’t feel like I’m catching the meaning.[/QUOTE]
When you fight for real, you do not WANT to be fighting.
You have a mission in mind, fighting is just something that gets in the way of your purpose. For example your purpose may be protecting another person, or not getting hurt while conserving vanity by not running, or restraining someone, or punishing someone for a misdeed, or the gain of a property, or getting past someone to escape or 1000 other things, but your purpose, your mission will not be the fight itself.
What is important to note is that in this real situation both fighters have DIFFERENT goals and so are playing DIFFERENT games with DIFFERENT rules. They have their roles set from the beginning of the combat.
However, when you spar it is opposite. Both people WANT to fight. The purpose of the fight is the fight itself, the FAIR COMPETITION. There is no higher purpose. Both parties want the SAME thing. So the two people fight for the SAME goal, by the SAME rules. This is victory within the rules, a test of territorial dominance. Two people bounce back and fourth alternating between attacker and defender.
As you can imagine this leads to a drastically different type of fight.
But we can never know the rules, the scenario before it happens? How then do we train?
The point is various aspects of training are ABSOLUTE, they apply to all types of combat. Some aspects of training are RELATIVE, they apply only within a set of scenarios. It is more important to train the absolute aspects than the relative ones.
[QUOTE=YouKnowWho;1228841]When you think that you have everything, …[/QUOTE]
not to have everything(!), it’s trying to learn as much potential applications as possible. this is the way they’ve actually taught in Shaolin for hundreds of years. as Orion’s master has said him: these schools teach you a few applications, and it’s up to you to discover the other possibilities. this has always been actually successful, since in such systems, every movement, when intended to be used for a specific application, must, indeed, be done in the proper shenfa (bodywork/body movement/body mechanics) of that application. we discussed one basic example about one movement of Xiao Hong quan here in this short thread: Tagou Xiao Hong Quan Question
[QUOTE=Jimbo;1229051]many of the Okinawan-based karate systems are very sophisticated, have many variations of applications of same techniques, etc.[/QUOTE]
thanks, i’ll search about those styles.
Such generalized statements … are just as misinformed as those who state that all CMA is ineffective, flowery dancing.
not to that degree of generality, but they are right to some degree about many Chinese styles. for example, Shaolin lineages have many animal forms, i doubt you see any martial movements in some of which but mere imitation of the animals; this gets worse in some Emei animal styles. also in many southern schools they have many ineffective and/or superfluous movements. add to this the ignorance of many practitioners about kung fu body and stancework, when they, e.g., use transitory stances, which load the body weight on one leg, like xue bu (empty/false stance, aka cat stance) to take a steady guard! and you know what a boxer would think when they see a kung fu guy in guard, but with such a shaky nonsteady transitory stance(!), in front of themselves.
Thanks, Ren, that makes sense now. I remember reading (lurking) on a thread about the difference between real combat and the ring, where you mentioned territorial and predatory fighting. It made good sense to me at the time and squared with my experience. Good stuff.