[QUOTE=Matthew;1144081]I’ve seen some Xing Yi, all looked like pretty direct striking. It really seemed to also rely on hands/wrists as close as possible.
I practiced southern style for around 4 years, the hand movements required forearms to be nearly rubbing against each other for many reasons- counter grappling against forearm or arm grabs, economy of motion in movements, directness in attacking to prevent opponent from having adequate reaction time, etc.
At the school, I did light sparring frequently and medium/contact sparring with the 8 or 10 ounce gloves about once a week. This for me included people of varying styles and training methods. kickboxing/ ‘MMA’, Karate, among others
I once put on the larger boxing style gloves to box around with a close friend who did boxing so that he didn’t feel akward in case he knocked me out and to prevent damage to me that he was worried about. I agreed I would use no kicking or leg techniques to prevent injury to him (due to my small-medium frame, kicking and leg technique is my strongest suit in sparring). The first thing I noticed was how badly the larger boxing gloves impeded my ability to spar (or fight as boxers take it). I would continually brush one against the other and slow myself down for a half-second long enough to miss opportunity. Also the fact that they have greater weight distracted my relaxation.
Of course relaxation can be trained off, and I’m sure if I used them regularly in sparring I could adapt… But the adaptation I already made to use the smaller 8-10 oz gloves was as much as I would ever want to do before my techniques would have lost practicality in street defense. The balance in skill gained in sparring Vs. adaptation is too high toward adaptation. There is a clear point where you are changing methods too drastically to benefit. I might have well become a boxer if that were my interest.
That being said, In the way that 8-10 oz gloves are my limit of adaptation for sparring , xing-yi people would likely be the same if not less able to adapt with gloves at all.
This also borders on the topic that the MMA guys on this forum love to talk about- that UFC and America’s MMA outlets are the standard for measuring combat ability. From all the Chinese Martial Artists I’ve met- I’ve only seen that sparring methods, grappling, chi sau, push hands, etc have highly defined differentiation from actual combat (whereas MMA, Kickboxers, Muay Thai, Japanese Arts, and others usually do not differentiate). MMA Fans more and more are equating MMA with combat ability (street fight/self defense/survival skill/ whatever you want to call it). In fact, I had one teacher who studied various southern styles and qigongs for around 30 years who stopped contact sparring after about 6 or 8 years because the habits he was developing were not conducive to street self defense skills. (where fighting more than one person is often the norm, fighting vs. weapons or mock-weapons, fighting to maim or subdue vs. to tap out/exchange blows)
Also certain techniques cannot be performed in full contact MMA rules such as pulling the head at the neck joint (controlling head to control body) with risk of accidentally hitting eyes, striking throat, vitals, etc. I can elaborate further on the ‘bad’ habits that MMA Full contact fighting can develop if one is to use it for street fighting. I would also be interested in starting a post about the “bad” habits full contact fighting venues like MMA and treating full contact-sparring-like-combat can form in the eyes of self defense.
Interestingly enough- I feel Japanese arts such as judo, jiu jitsu, and (some) karate schools treat their sparring as if it were fighting (street) which can also develop bad street-defense habits. This is likely why Jiu Jitsu/Judo are more readily adaptable and compatible with the MMA Format in the west. (Aside from the fact that UFC was started by jiujitsu lovers.)[/QUOTE]
This argument is outdated. Even Kung fu people would agree with me that no style is too deadly to spar. If you do not spar using hsing I you will not be able to fight with it. Just doing pi Chuan in the air will not give you the spontaneity needed to do all those deadly illegal techniques.
