“Seems to me that you are very good at disecting and criticising other peoples point of view without offering much of a view yourself,”
If my view on this is not apparent to you from my posts I think you need some sort of comprehension coaching.
“Another thought for everyone…Martial arts isn’t so much about the fighting… It was developed as a way to perfect the body and mind, to discipline them both by performing intricate specified movements which assist your path to enlightenment.”
This is such a load of crap I can’t believe it. Martial arts are the skills of war. Shooting is a martial art, punching somebodys lights out is. Meditating and thinking about how cool Buddha is has nothing to do with martial arts. Martial arts should teach you how to fight. If eastern philosophy is your thing take courses on that, or take yoga or whatever.
Martial Arts certainly didn’t start with the purpose of achieving enlightenment. (and they didn’t start in asia either bucko - at least that’s not any more likely than other places)
“It was done via a fighting style because at the time it was necessary to defend yourself from barbarian attacks etc.”
You don’t think perhaps that threat was a little higher on the list than enlightenment? Most of the philosophical addage martial arts have today is there because people stopped needing to be able to kick people’s ass.
If I wan’t enlightenment, I’m not going to hit people to achieve it.
MookJong:
“No I haven’t seen that fight - mainly because it never happened. The fight was between Emin and William Cheung.”
Sorry about that, I was going by memory, and memory can be flawed. However the point still stands.
They may be frauds, as you say. I certainly regard them as such. What I find curious is that EVERY single WC’er I have ever been in contact with will readily admit that 90% of WC sucks, and isn’t true to the original, but luckily their school is different.
Further the fights I have seen that included a WC’er certainly didn’t look much like WC and the WC’er doesn’t tend to win either. (except in the Boztepe - Cheung “fight” where one of them had to win)
Quite frankly I don’t think Wing Chun works. That is not to say that NO WC’ers can fight, just that other arts might have prepared them better.
“What I find curious is that EVERY single WC’er I have ever been in contact with will readily admit that 90% of WC sucks, and isn’t true to the original, but luckily their school is different”
Yeah I know exactly what you mean and right from the start of my training I’ve asked myself that question - is this school genuine?
One thing I have noticed which convinces me that my school really is “luckily different” is that when I’ve touched hands with people of other schools who have been training as long (or in some cases a little longer than I) I’ve been amazed at how bad their chi sau is. They’ve got a poor stance, little or no structure, no forward force & telegraph so badly I could post them my response and still get there in time. Some of the fundamentals seem to have been completely misunderstood.
In short I’ve looked long and hard at my school as skeptically as I can and am satisfied by both the instruction I have received and the ability of our seniors that wing chun works IF you learn it properly and put in the hours.
I’ll be honest though, Wing Chun works - but it takes longer as it’s a very internal art. Also explains why so much of it is bad - screw up the internal aspects and you’ll be lucky if what you’re left with will be enough to punch your way out of a wet paper bag.
As I said - wing chun takes time - If someone wants to be a damn good fighter fast, then I won’t be suggesting wing chun - something like muay thai would be a better option.
But if you’re in it for the long haul, then wing chun has a hell of a lot to offer.
to say u can determine a mans aerobic capacity by how fast he runs, is the most stupid thing ive ever heard of. most boxers or martial artists don’t run nearly as fast as they can, cause its not about how fast they can run, its just about building up endurance. thats all.
Kungfudude wrote: “Let’s just say that one should not discount the credibility nor the street effectiveness of a school that does forms and no sparring of any sort (trust me I know about this one). … Also, they say that sparring actually programs one to not strike with the power one can generate.”
This makes no sense. If sparring programs you to not strike with power, what does never hitting someone or getting the feel for a real altercation program you to do? Hopefully run away.
If you never spar, you walk around with a false sense of security: “My art is too deadly to spar,” (that’s a great one) OR “I would just do a crane kick so it would never go to the ground.”
Do you do a lot of “non-sparring” on your back by yourself? What does that teach you to do when someone is in the mount pounding your face in?
thanks for pointing out the obvious jacked hulk. Man, for a second there I took everything verbatim and as the definitive word. You really changed my mind on that topic.
Anyways…
I scheduled a free submission grappling session for this Thursday night. It’s just the first session I get to do for free, so don’t think that I’m necessarily choosing that over anything else. Next week, I’m going to try the free muay thai session and see how that goes. Between those 2, I’m going to check out some other places to train.
Thanks a lot everyone, you’ve been very helpful.
I still would like to hear about more martial arts or some websites that you can direct me to. I’m always open to new ideas. Thanks again!!
chi sau is hard to explain but its basically using the opponents energy against them while in contact. eg. just say someone throws a right hook and you block it with your left forearm. While they are in contact you will feel his arm either keep pushing forward or retract. Either way this move in energy can be used against him by allowing him to move that way and then using that momentum to perform a move on him. I suppose you could say it is a form of arm grappling of sorts. Hope that helped.
Stucross:
“One thing I have noticed which convinces me that my school really is “luckily different” is that when I’ve touched hands with people of other schools who have been training as long (or in some cases a little longer than I) I’ve been amazed at how bad their chi sau is. They’ve got a poor stance, little or no structure, no forward force & telegraph so badly I could post them my response and still get there in time.”
I can see that you have at least given this some thought which is good. However, a WC hand-slapping competition and your perceived superiority in that venue is largely irrelevant if the question I wan’t answered is “Can WC’ers fight?”. I don’t care how well you do at drilling Chi sao, I want to know if you can beat somebody with the same amount of time in another art (preferably something MMA oriented, as far as I’m concerned that is the de facto standard of ass-kicking ability). You admit that Wing Chun is not effective very fast (although it claims to be just that) but surely at some point it should surpass other arts assuming the same training time. If not what’s the point? Why train for ten years to achieve a level of proficiency you could have in 8 months at a MMA school?
And JWright, I suggest that you go check out the newsgroup rec.martial-arts. If you can deal with the rather bad signal to noise ratio there is a lot of good information to be found there. There are some good webboards as well, but most are more specific than rec.martial-arts.
JWright.
You can read most (if not all) newsgroups from http://groups.google.com, I think you can post from there as well.
I don’t like to do that though.
I assume that you are a windows user, and that you use outlook express for e-mail (or at least have it installed)
Start up OE and go to (I’m translating from the Danish version here, so the menu names may be slightly off.) Functions → accounts → add → news
Now you’ll need an nntp-server. Your ISP probably provides one, if you don’t know what it is then you should be able to use free.teranews.com (port 119).
Avoid rec.martial-arts.moderated. It sucks.
(if the explanation was inadequate I think there is some info on www.teranews.com)
It depends on your goals? Self defence or sport (K-1, submission grappling, MMA) or traditional? If you choose a martial art for self defense choice something along the lines of Krav Maga or other military style. If for sport it first depends on your chosen sport, if you want to kickbox choose Muay Thai or Savate. If you choose submission grappling as your sport go with BJJ, Sambo, judo, wrestling or even a mixture of all four. Or you could do what I do and learn certain parts of each grappling style, BJJ for its locks/chokes, Sambo for its leg locks, Judo for its throws and Wrestling for its submissions. If you want to compete in say the UFC combine Muay Thai and a submission art like Sambo then add Boxing for a semi complete game. Now if you want to do martial arts for fun and don?t care to compete choose a traditional style like kung fu or kenpo ext. If you need more help just ask!
I don’t care to compete in MMA events. I’m a PhD student, and I don’t care to go get into the octagon over the weekend to come into the lab and not be able to do anything because I can’t see out of my left eye or my arm is broken. I’m not doing it for style, but rather just personal experience and enrichment, plus a workout while I’m at it. Yeah, it would be nice to have a “beautiful” form style of MA, such as Wing chun, but it would also be nice to have a “kick the shit out of you” style, such as Krav Maga, so in case I needed it, I’ll be ok.
Thanks for mentioning Krav Maga though. I couldn’t think of the name of it, and I’ve seen people fight with that style in the street, and it’s pretty fuckin brutal. I would never fuck with a person who knows Krav Maga.
I posted this before but I guess it didn’t go through. I have my first submission grappling class this Thursday night. It’s a free class, and I don’t know what it encompasses in terms of style, i.e. BJJ et. al. It’s only first because it was the first one to fit in my schedule, that’s all. Next week, I’m going to try muay thai. Between then, I’m going to watch soe other styles at different dojos and decide from there.
ko - in regards to you training as a martial artists, how do you incorporate weights into that? If you don’t mind, can you post your split and exercises you do please? Thank you.
I lift 3-4 days a week, one day being strongman training, which I feel has great carry over to the martial arts.
I do not have a specific routine/split. I do alternate between max effort, and dynamic days, but it essentially comes down to “what does not hurt”, or what I did not work at strongman training. In the gym, I cycle through the big lifts (squat, bench, and dead) as well as O-lifts. Its kinda crazy, but you have to find what works for you. You really have to know your body.
Krav Maga is largely a catch phrase these days. It’s popularity has lead to alot of bad places teaching it so it’s hit and miss.
What it boils down to though is this. Do they spar with few rules and at a high level of contact regularly (most classes)? If not, assume it’s a McDojo…