Originally posted by t_niehoff
[B]Marty,
Marty, please . . . “WCK-based tumbling”? TN
Yes, anotherwords if you find yourself being taken down by someone how to apply WC conepts and principles to take control and recover the situation. MG
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First, I think it more useful to train to not be taken down
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I covered that at the last seminar I did down there. This one is a continuation now covering the other side of the coin.
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(if we do go down it means our skills have failed, and if that’s the case do you expect them to now work on the ground?).
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Skills fail all the time, including standing. Hence the need to know how to regain the centerline if you’ve lost it, and how to break into an opponent’s centerline from the outside gates
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This explains, IMO, why WCK historically has not involved groundfighting.
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Wing Chun has not involved gun fighting historically, yet one of your seniors has applied the art to guns as well. As Rene said, the art doesn’t exist in a vacuum. One of the great strenghts of this art is the ability is it’s adaptibility. For it’s concepts and principles to allow application in any sort of situation, depending entirely on your relationship with your opponent rather than static positionings and interactions.
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Second, “tumbling” like the breakfalls of judo and aikido (which is not a part of WCK) only work because these arts adopted throwing techniques that permit safe falling; most falls that a person takes, including those from takedowns of a number of arts, including WCK, will not allow those types of breakfalls. In fact, WCK “throws” involve taking an opponent dows to that he lands in a way that injures him.
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Ok, so in the oft chance I happen to fall (I’ll try to make sure I’m never on a slippery surface when I get attacked, or there’s never anything around me to impede my movement and fall over so I can keep this in your perfect world), I’ll just lay there in my misery and pain going “Ohhhhh, Terence was riiigghttt. I neeeed to just lie here and let the guy dooooo whatever he wannntttsss. Ohhhhh, the paaaainnnn.”
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Third, to become really competant in breakfalls requires a great deal of practice; when I studied judo, the beginners did nothing but practice and take falls for 6 months, and then we reinforced those skills at every practice. TN
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Therein lies the problem, as you seem to be comparing this material to other art’s “breakfalls” when you have no idea of the dynamics of what I’m teaching. Aptitude and skill can vary on the method being taught and the approach used to teach them. With my approach students get fairly proficient within several lessons (2 hours each) of learning and practicing. Then it goes on to be incoprated in to the other material - how to regain the center and stand or how to stay there and control until you can stand again. So they get more practice in a variable situation with that as well.
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I’ll tell you what Marty. Before you give your seminar, hand out red magic markers to each of your seminars participants and then face each individual: show them how it can work. Tell them that the marker is a knife and that you want them to try their best – resist you the best they can – to slash/poke/cut you with it. (And why not film this and put it on the net afterward? I think we’d all like to see such a demo of high level skill). If you can’t do that successfully, then what are you teaching? It would seem to me that if you can’t do it, then you are teaching pure nonsense and fantasy. TN
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What a fantastic argument if it wasn’t based on a shallow attempt to undermine by trying to establish a measuring stick of credibility to try and turn the argument around. One of the first things anybody involved in knife fighting will tell you is that you will get cut. To expect it, and to try and minimize it by showing where the best areas on the arms are to take a cut if you have to. In fact one of the first drills I do is something very similar to what you described above to show how easy it is to get cut and get over the fear of it.
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The material will cover applying Robert’s methods on the ground as well. You tried to say on the WCML they don’t work there, and as I said before I’ve had plenty of private discussions on this with our Sifu about them working there.
The methods work anywhere - standing, leaning, sitting on a chair, lying on the ground, etc. Although the aptitude needed to see to that depth of his material doesn’t seem to be available to everyone. MG
Marty, stop trying to bring our sifu into the discussion. TN
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Terence, quit whining as usual. He was relevant enough for you to bring him in to it in the original discussion back on the WCML.
But being the type of person you are, you like to try and re-interpret things to suit your argument. Wonder where that comes from. 
We’re not talking about people’s skills here, I’m quite comfortable with mine. We’re talking about methods and methodology and more specifically to a certain person’s. You argued once before that our method specifically doesn’t work there and is not meant to be applied there. I mentioned two people who both say it can. Pretty simple.
Here I thought you were taking time off the WCML because you got tired of the constant bickering and wanted to train more and focus on important things. Then I hear you stop returning people’s calls and don’t keep in contact. Then I see you’ve got plenty of time to whine and ***** with a capital B across threads on this message board.
If you think you can make your “WCK groundfighting” work (you obviously have “the aptitude” ), then come visit me and I’ll take you to the BJJ studio here and let you roll with them. We can film it, and put it up on the net so that everyone can see how it’s done. I’m willing to make a cash sidebet that will cover all your expenses and more; if you win, I give you the $; if you lose, you pay nothing. Please come. TN
Only if you prove your WCK skills are superior enough not to be taken down. After all, if as you say you only go down because your skills fail then that must never happen to you being the highly skilled person you are. In Terence’s World[tm] all is perfect and his views reign supreme.
