siufeifei

"less than steller fellow"? Been watching a few too many Brit films have we?

Maybe they had it tatooed onto their foreheads.

Hate to bring up an old-ish thread but I just want to add that a lot of the very subtle humour is going to be missed unless you know a lot about chinese kung fu cinema/televion history and the stories, novels and legends from which they came from. Personally, it was better than I thought it would've been and a far better piece of film-making than his earlier films. Is this also a good time to mention that Stephen Chow once studied Wing Chun?

Tai-Chi does not mean and has never meant "Supreme Ultimate Fist". That is a case of literal translation of a language that can not always be translated so.

I'm still a little hazy on the situation. You're 14 and in the adults class yet you say you're twice the age of the other students? I'd still like to hear what kind of orders are being issued outside of the class? How much contact outsdide of the class do you have? When I was in a Preying Mantis school, I had a list of school rules to "obey". A lot of them was about respecting my elders, being polite, always being careful and the such because outside of the class, I was still a representative of that class. When gossip spreads back to the Sifu, he was never happy about it and we would know about it. Problems of small private run school in a small, close community.

Hung Gar uses classical five elements in their forms, not just metal. also, in Hung Gar the metal element is normally refered to as it is traditionally, which is "Gum" as in gold.

I would argue that most people d know that Hung Gar is martial art seeing as most Chinese people know of the Wong Fei Hung and Hung Hei Gung stories. It is known as one of the five Big Families which is why simply calling it Hung Gar is a perfectly valid way of refering to the style. Hung isn't a very common Chinese surname. Is this where I point out that I'm Chinese?

You can pay to learn at the supposed Shaolin Temple in China. What you learn is questionable but well, different strokes for different folks.

In the Chinese culture, to say you know Hung Gar means the same as to say you know Hung Kuen. It makes no difference what you use.

Those who claim too much know too little.

That is exactly why I mentioned the thing about this being the kids class. Right now, to me and from my reading between the lines, this doesn't sound like anything beyond kids squabbling. Add to this the whole boy/girl thing at that age and you'll begin to see the picture that I have in my head. Of course, i could be very wrong.

It's the best way i can describe it. In the Second form, from a Wing Arm, you turn stance and screw the wing arm into an upwards snap type punch. It comes from under the bridge and looks like an uppercut. It's about outside line recovery to the centre, or stealing the inside line and comes from under the bridge. It isn't really an uppercut but I can't think of how else to describe the Japanese punch I was talking about. I can't think of anything else from any other style that does something similar.

It doesn't really matter about the ages. The point here is the whole ordering thing that is going on. It doesn't matter if the person is older or younger, the point is they feel like they are able to give orders because of superiority, real or not. Admittedly, if the person is of higher rank then with things to do with the class, you should listen, especially if they are leading the session but this is only applies with things to do with training. What exactly do you mean by orders? "get my shoes" "sweep the floor" "get my bottle of water" "get me a chair" or "do ten press ups" "run five laps" "be quiet" "listen" Did you say that this was in the kids class?

I used to have to do some not pleasant forearm drills and exercises to work "Iron Bridge" concepts and for "shock" power. Essentially, it was or is the same type of training involved in working the short range bridge power which the one inch punch is a demonstration of. I've also seen a Japanese style's version of it that adds a rotation of the wrist from an open palm. The end result of the punch looks very much like a chinese pheonix punch crossed with a Wing Chun style uppercut. Also, the usual wrist movement is done in the up/down plane. In the Japanese version i saw, the wrist motion was done in the left/right plane.

Why do people take things so personally? The things I type are based on what you type. It isn't about you or me. I read something that I don't agree with and I made my point. You made yours too and it is a very valid point too but it was in my view, a rather biased and simplistic view based on very loose assumptions regarding high kicking people, tkd people and the effectiveness of both. I saw it as being too contrived, as it were, to be a truely objective point of view. In an earier post, I gave the round type head kick to be the one that most people imagine in their head and equated it to be the useless high kick people talk about. However, this is also the most common head kick used by thai boxers. The mechanics of them are almost exactly the same so even then:. not all head height round kicks are useless. I Believe it is a generalisation to say that head or high kicks are useless as things are never that general. For me, head kicks are useless and high kicks are useless because I am hopeless at them. The safest and most useful height for me is to not kick beyond my own chest height. Where this equates to you or any other person is almost secondary because if I were to kick you, the height would depend on the targets avaialable in relation to my safe kicking height. For some people this relationship might well be a head kick. For some it might only be a kick to the hip. I should also add that I'm also not a big fan of the talk of techniques as being singular things that exist in a vacuum. You don't just do a high/head kick just like you don't just do a armbar or hook. Everything happens when it is appropriate to do so. You jab to probe then close up to hook. Without that jab, the hook is almost useless. Does that mean that hook punches are useless? In order to apply a throw or lock you sometimes need to probe and engage. Without this, the lock or throw might not work. Does this make the lock or throw useless? Same with the head or high kicks. Same with every other technique you might have. Rely on it by itself and you're in trouble.

So are you saying that those who can kick the head will only use kicks to the head? The only idiot I see here is the one making assmptions about the way people will fight because of something they can do. Not all high kicks are 'seeable'. The execution of some kicks, be they high or low are exactly the same. The shooting type kick I mentioned before being one of them. The front kick too, can be aimed for the jaw with little sacrifice in terms of speed, accuracy, power and non-telegraph AND this is the easiest kick to tag onto simple punch sequences. You attack what is most useful and easiest for you to do so. In some cases, the only available target is low BUT if the target is high and you know you can get a good shot in, why not? Because everyone goes on about high/head kicks being useless? They're useless if YOU are useless at doing them. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that they're a must do thing. I'm just saying that to rule them out because of general opinion is stupid because there are those who can use them and have used them successfully.

So are you saying are all of those Pro kick-boxing and thai-boxing fighters who use the occasional kick to the head area, idiots?

Many of the older teachers of martial arts stayed in china and just chose to not teach. If they did teach, it was in secret. You have to remember that there wasn't just the ONE person from each style who was capable of teaching their martial arts and not all of the top students were interested in teaching on a professional basis anyway and so did not teach beyond their own family. The famous teachers of today of that generation, are only known to be good teachers because they opened schools. In most instances, where they moved to was Hong Kong and Taiwan. The more recent move of students and teachers to America and Europe only occured in the last 30 odd years because of the impending HK handover. Fact is, there are still a lot of highly respected sifus of Traditional Chinese Martial Arts in China.

Candidate for oxymoron of the year?

I don't see anything on that list that a Wushu praticioner who does San Shou doesn't/wouldn't do.

I would call this a misappropriation of the culture from which Karate came from. Traditionally, the Japanese arts were based on the Principles of Budo which function alongside the Cultural ideas of honour and respect, not to be confused with your western dictionary description of respect. That's not to mention the aspects of the adoption of the Budo as means to control. Part of Budo was to be subserviant to your Seniors, in terms of social order and otherwise at all occasions and situations. IF you were in Japan, especially fuedal Japan, then you would've been bound by your honour to obey an orders given by a senior in whatever situation. However, you are not in Japan and so it shouldn't extend beyond the training hall. Of course this does depend on the type of relationship and how much YOU choose to extend the boundaries of the teachers influence. I know some people who would listen to his Sifu outside of the training hall and to an extent, some of the senior students too. But then, that is not exactly the same as what is described here.

What JKD is depends on what school you go to and what the instructors specialise in. In a lot of cases, especially in the UK, JKD is taught in the Dan Inosanto way which doesn't have a set number or even a set of styles from which to pick at. It takes as it's core, Bruce Lee's words about how to train and what you should be doing during training instead of looking specifically at the things that he did. However, there are as et of core skills that they have in their training that includes elements from Wing Chun, Kali, Silat, Boxing, Thai Boxing and many more. When taught in this way, it really is about philosophical approach to training and not style.

Defence from a distance against a gun begins with getting yourself a decent bulletproof vest.

You get used to the headaches but like I said, we have the dummy wear the heavy boxing gloves. But then we can afford to get and test a variety of different gear. There are also these things called boxing coaching gloves. They look like normal bloxing gloves but they have a more padded palm section. The idea is that the coach can punch at you and set up the gloves as if they were spot pads. I really like these as they're quite soft and he doesn't have to hit hard and just do little pushes on your face to make a point of your weaknesses. I'll try to find pics of the things I'm talking about and edit them into this post.

Where did I say I was 16?