true, I definitely agree with that. sport fighting has adopted that mindset, however, which I think is a definite plus to sport fighting.
“I know there are non competitive types who can hand me my arse, but how likely am I to find them? with competition, I know I am going against people who train as hard as me or harder.”
that’s a good point i havent heard brought up before.
I think anyone who competes in MMA type events is
A. Someone out to raise their ego
B. Doesn’t get laid alot
C. Really has no other life
Awe sh*t my bad that’s my life sorry wrong thread.
LOL but what the hell do i know i can’t even shoot right in san shou
Brad “respect my MMA” Souders lol
yeah, that’s especially true if you are training in a style that is rare in your city. if you only have one kung fu school in your area, for example, who are you going to compare CMA notes with? There are possibly people around who teach closed door, but can you find them? If not, at least you can compete and find all the CMA guys that you want to.
Also, people who train to compete train harder than most who don’t compete, I would guess.
I think it is just a matter of being able to appreciate these guys who are out there testing themselves in the ring. I think more often then not, most martial artist would like to be in that situation, especially if they were good enough to be winning 
"holistic transformative Kungfu training "
hippy crap…
The obsession with competition and such is the difference between doers and wannabees.
It’s obvious who’s actually competed in reality events by the responses in the threads.
Those who criticize have never done it themselves. How do they know anything? They don’t. They feel that fighting one drunk one time when they were in highschool makes them some kind’ve skilled streetfighter. Try the ring and see how it feels to fight a real martial artist. Only those who dare to lose can truly win.
Besides, it comes down to credability. Do you want to learn from some guy who tries to teach you what he thinks it is like to be in a fight, or from somebody who’s actually tasted the pain of the ring-- who actually knows combat.
San Shou and MMA isn’t always about the pride of winning. You guys who think it is don’t know anybody who competes do you? I would rather hang out with San Shou guys any day because there’s a comadre and humility there that you outsiders will never know. We do it to prove to ourselves that we can. My goal, like all those who compete, has always been to make myself into the best martial artist that I can be. I know who I am and what my capabilities are. Do you? How can you claim to be a great martial artist if you don’t even truly know yourself?
“We do it to prove to ourselves that we can.”
Well said MightyB, thats my motivation for training to compete as well.
Red 5
My goal is actually something that my Sifu calls “Mon Gei” (spelling phonetically). It means “No Mind”. It’s the true ability to apply kung fu because a person who has achieved mon gei has no apprehension or fear holding them back. They simply react as necessary. You can’t reach mon gei by wishing on the first star you see at night.
Makes sense to me, and one might look at that as the apex of martial training, to reach the point of “no mind”, no matter what your other goals may be. For instance I can say honestly that I just want to fight. No real spiritual, emotional, mental reasons for doing it other then what I said before, to show myself I can. To be as good as I want to be, I train and train so that at some point my mind forgets and my body takes over…
kung lek,
obssession with competition. what is that all about anyway?
depends. that question has two very different sides. those obsessed with competing and those obsessed with the competitions. while the motivations for each vary a little, those two broad categories are worlds apart.
people obsessed with the competitions, without actually competing themselves, are about the same regardless of the specific sport. the guy that goes bonkers over tito ortiz is about the same as the guy that brings the stats books to the baseball games and spends the whole time recording, mapping, charting, etc. vicariousness, i suppose.
that’s a totally different type of person from the actual competitor. personally, i don’t much buy the money-glory argument in competition. there’s not enough money in martial arts competition to make it worth the hours of training. like merryprankster pointed out, you’ll end up paying far more to compete than you ever get paid on average.
glory? i’m sure there’s an ego boost in it, yeah. but no more so than comes from being a high-ranking member of a traditional school. wearing the black sash. having people call you ‘sir.’ standing at the front of the lineup. etc. all of that is a big ego stroke. without the inherent risk of competition. the ever-present possibility that you’ll lose in front of an audience. people who compete are, at some point, going to lose. and there’s nothing ego stroking about that.
many of the posters here are seemingly obssessed with ufc/pride/nhb/wwe etc etc. and claim on their heroes in these events.
is that really any different from the obsession with lineage and heroes of the past? it’s an appeal to authority. “i know that what i’m doing is good because sifu blahblah used to travel from school to school defeating their best fighters.”
actually, it is a little different (though arguably no better). fewer degrees of separation in the appeal to authority. many people cite the success of martial artists who came hundreds of years before them in the lineage. other people cite the success of a guy that succeeded last month. on pay-per-view. so we could all observe it rather than go based on 100-year-old hearsay. no chance of distortion or exaggeration because anyone so inclined could go and rent the tape. see it for themselves.
what is it that you see in these events that translates as acquiring “kungfu”?
well, let’s turn that question around. what is it about your experience that constitutes kung fu? if we knew that, perhaps we could determine whether those same factors occurred for other people who compete. and what form those factors took in competition.
It’s fighting. ok
it’s competitive fighting for money. ok
cheap debate tactic, kung lek. shame on you. throwing the ‘for money’ jab in there is just an attempt to portray competitors as mercenaries or something. you know as well as i do how little money there is to be made in martial arts competition. anyone doing it solely to make a buck would have to be dumber than a bag of hammers.
it’s got some excellent grapplers and stand up martial artists. ok
it’s got some naturals who do a little of this , a little of that and win. ok
another lame debate tactic. “a little of this and a little of that.” that’s incredibly dismissive, kung lek. and as an authority on kung fu and a moderator, frankly, you need to do more than this. describing MMA in such simplistic terms is an act of intellectual laziness at best. dishonesty at worst.
but ultimately, where does holistic transformative Kungfu training come into this picture?
again, how does it come into the picture in your experience? how have you transformed?
If your teacher wants you to enter one of these things don’t you think you would start by watching a few videos, breaking out the moves of the winners and training to counter against those?
The guys who really do well in these competitions are professionals. THey don’t have day jobs, (for the most part). THey have the time to give 6 a day every day to the fight training.
If you are one of these guys, great! but if you are a typical 6 a week Kung fu/karate/tkd/mt etc etc person that doesn’t train at home and against resisting opponents of different backgrounds, then it’s a tv fantasy.
regardless of how often you train, if you actually get into a ring, that experience (whether you win or get horribly mauled) is a whole lot less fantastical than confining your experience to the closed system of your school. even open sparring is going to leave more room for fantasy than competition. the drive to win, the distractions, the psychological pressure, all are heightened in a competition.
Anyway, I just hope that I don’t ever become an armchair martial artist. at least not until I’m really old and can hardly move.
i’m confused. is this a different point entirely? or are you suggesting that competitors are armchair martial artists?
if you’re suggesting that spectators are armchair martial artists, then i’d agree wholeheartedly. but those people exist in all camps.
food for thought
yep. but the bottom line, in my opinion, is that things don’t fall along the lines that we seem to want to paint for them. traditional. modern. internal. external. competitive. noncompetitive. all bullsh-t. in every sector of this community, you’re going to have people who are posing, people who are riding on the coattails of others. and people who, day in and day out, are working to make their martial arts practice a ‘transformative experience.’ that transformation takes different forms. but i doubt anyone who’s serious about what they do, whether they love or hate this sort of mystical terminology, can argue that their lives would be precisely the same if they didn’t practice their arts.
to ascribe that sort of experience to your way of doing things without giving serious thought to how it might manifest itself in other ways of doing things is a disservice.
stuart b.
I’m all choked up Ap, if I could fight half as good as you can argue I would be king of the world!
well, if i could fight half as good as i can argue, i’d probably be half as good at arguing.
…
is that right?
…
my head hurts.
stuart b.
even open sparring is going to leave more room for fantasy than competition.
Aint that the truth, and I will hold onto those fantasies as long as I can!
Hmmm, so far nobody has used the I’m competing against myself ploy. I used to compete against myself until I found out myself always cheated.
I used to compete against myself until I found out myself always cheated.
LOL!
“but ultimately, where does holistic transformative Kungfu training come into this picture?”
This comment sort of irks me. It’s ok with me if you have other reasons for learning the martial arts then fighting. However, what is really starting to **** me off is this holier then thou attitude that if you are not seeking spiritual enlightenment, to better oneself, or to grow as an individual but I think I have to go with Merrypranksters tirades here, martial arts isn’t some sort of personal improvement plan. It isn’t designed to build character or to allow one to reach some sort of mystical transcendance. It’s there frankly so that one may kick a$$ when recquired, for sport or for defense/attack. If you choose to turn it into a journey into personal improvement plan or feel it’s going to give you some sort of psiritual growth, thats fine, but don’t disparage those who want to learn it and uise it for what it is, fighting.
I don’t feel that just because I want to fight in competition or that I like to watch martial competitions, it makes me some sort of underdeveloped neanderthal, genetics did that. I have met some real honorable and highly thought of men who take the martial arts for nothing more then what it is at its most basic level.
great post.
red5.
Cry havoc and let loose the dogs of war!
Oh great, someone has irked red5angel. When he uses the phrase “my panties are in a wad” everybody better duck and cover!:eek:
When he uses the phrase “my panties are in a wad” everybody better duck and cover!
when red5angel mentions his panties at all, a therapist gets his wings… er, fees.
Thanks ST00, sorry about the rant guys but seriously, I consider myself a kungfu guy at heart and I just get tired of hearing this bs.
I never once decided that my training was going to do anything for me except teach me how to fight. I trained next to guys and gals who felt differently about it, and the only real difference that I saw was that those who were learning to fight, seemed to fight better then those who sought other things. Could be coincidence, but I am not so sure. At some point it’s like, why don’t you just take up something like meditation or yoga of some sort to get your spiritual needs fulfilled?
And please please do yourself a favor and don’t go teaching the crap if fighting isn’t ultimately your goal. What I mean by fighting is that you are learning because you either want to fight better, or want to get yourself out of a fight better when your verbal skills have failed you. I say this because some poor kid is going to come along and want to learn to defend himself or fight and he is going ot get seriously hurt or killed because while he thought he was learning to defend himself effectively he was actually just being indoctrinated into someons personal religion.
'Rogue and Ap - to be fair I was under the influence when those pictures were taken, I was young, and didn’t know what I was getting into…
Rogue,
The only time I train 6 hours a day is Saturday. And that’s usually more like 4.5 to 5 hours.
I train twice a day. But I don’t train 3 hours each session. I probably train 3-4 hours per day, total.
What matters is your intensity. What’s your focus like? I hate to be on the mat and not do anything. And I know other schools where it’s social hour. Hate that.