Sim

If you want to learn kung fu and there is a Jow Gar school near by, go there! Jow gar is a great style. I’m a black sash and assistant instructor at the school I go to. Here is a link to our school. http://chanskungfu.com/ Go to the gallery, then go to videos, then click on the link that says “jow gar system” in that video you will see short clips of every form in the Jow Gar system =) You can also click on the one called “Duncan’s exhibition fight” to see one of our school’s top instructors fighting in san shou. Jow gar is a lot like Hung gar since it’s a mix of Hung Gar, Choy Gar and Northern Shao Lin, we even have the same Tiger and Crane form, as well as ‘Iron Wire’ and five animals and five elements. It’s also quite a bit like Choy Li Fut, since like Choy Li Fu its part Choy Gar. There is also a full range of kicks from northern Shao Lin. It may not be white crane style, but it does have crane style in it. Its in the tiger crane form as well as the five animals.

Here is an interesting article about the effectiveness of praying mantis kung fu (and in this case, Baji Quan). It’s a story of a Chinese master who trained his student to answer a challenge made by Thai boxers. http://crane.50megs.com/index6t.htm

Really! I didn’t know that. Man that’s just not right. Doesn’t exactly reflect well on the Kuk Sool Won organization does it. I didn't know that either, do you have any more info on Levicki? nevermind, just found him on the net ooh, not a winning record Well I see your point. There are a lot of other fighters that have abandoned their previous art in favor of Muay Thai/Jujutsu. I think the sad fact about a lot of kung fu/karate schools is that they put so much emphasis on forms and neglect the san shou/kumite part of it. That’s why I feel so lucky that I found the school that I did. Not only does he teach all the traditional stuff, but he also has a complete san shou class too. We even have our own San Shou team. One of the guys at our school went as far as to train under Cung Le and Shawn Liu as well.

I know, he is talking about the five animal style of Jujutsu I don’t know if I’m going too far with this, but the fact that a Brazilian Jujutsu stylist would label himself as a five animal kung fu stylist, A very well known form in Kung Fu, just to lose to Royce Gracie seems a little strange to me. Shaolin Kung Fu was not represented in the first UFCs and sometimes I wonder if they just did this to fill that gap. I don’t know… thats probably a little too far fetched but still. A more likely explanation is that he trained in kung fu, dropped that and turned to jujutsu. But why in the hell would he still be calling it Kung fu in the UFC when he is clearly a Jujutsu stylist

Okay, I may not know that much about the UFC (though I love Pride, K1 and San Da) but I do know a lot about kung fu styles, especially Shao Lin Quan. I know there is no such thing as a five animals set with mantis being one of the animals. I think Drunken Monkey is on the right track. I’m starting to think he is a Jujutsu/Aikido stylist that labeled himself as Kung Fu. Shaolin San Shou is very much a stand up art with very little emphasis on ground fighting yet in his UFC pics he is shown taking guys to the ground and using Jujutsu. Well, if he wanted to pretend he is a kung fu stylist he could have at least got the five animals right. BTW its Dragon, Tiger, Leopard, Snake and Crane. If what I suspect is true, it also means Shaolin Kung Fu was never represented in the UFC. For kung fu to be properly represented they would have to get someone like Shawn Liu or even Cung Le. Though Cung Le does not practice traditional forms or weapons like Shawn Liu, he did train under him, learning the core fighting art of Shaolin which is San Shou. Here is a link regarding this http://www.liuinstitute.com/ I don’t see how this could be done. The five animal techniques are distinguished from each other by the formation of the hand. The tiger refers to techniques that resemble a tiger’s claw. The claw hand is a strike that pulls, twists or rakes upon impact. Targets for this are the eyes, throat, groin, skin, muscles and wrists. The snake refers to techniques that use the finger tips to poke and jab soft targets. The crane is similar to the snake but can be used for more angular attacks. The leopard involves a punch that resembles a cat’s paw. In this technique the fore knuckles are used to jab areas such as the ribs. My point being that none of these techniques can really be “converted” into Jujutsu style grappling. The more and more I think about it, the more he just seems like a Jujutsu stylist that has grouped his techniques into five animals. This doesn’t make what he does kung fu in any way, just a big rip off of it.

For those who don’t know, Jason Delucia is a fighter from the UFC as well as Pancrase who is supposedly a five animal kung fu stylist. Being a kung fu stylist myself, I went to his website to get more info on his martial arts background. I was rather disappointed when I couldn’t find anything that even resembled the five animal form. The five animal form exists in the style I study since Jow Gar is 1/3 Hung Gar, so I know what the five animal techniques look like. Another point I should make is that the Five Animals form is just that, a form, not a system. Examples of styles with the five animal set are Hung Gar, Fut Gar, Shao Lin Quan and Kempo. But I see no mention of any system like that on his site. What was even more confusing is his five animals are the dragon, snake, crane, tiger and mantis. Every five animal form I know of includes the leopard, not the mantis. In fact the praying mantis is a separate style altogether. He shows the techniques for the respective animals, but the techniques he shows are all actually jujutsu and NHB techniques. And the positions and stances he shows with the black and white pics don’t look anything like the five animals of Shaolin Kung Fu, or any kung fu style for that matter. It appears the only thing he teaches is Jujutsu and Aikido, why doesn’t he teach the five animals? Here is a link to what I am writing about. For those of you that also practice a system with the five animals form, please give your thoughts and opinions. http://www.jasondelucia.com/kungfu.htm

What’s with all the use of “you” and “your” is this all directed towards me? Just to make things clear I do not act or think like that. I admit I am a little ignorant about the UFC being I’m not that much of a fan. I like tournaments such as K1 much more. Thanks to those who corrected me as far as the rules of the UFC are concerned . I just remember being told by someone (who must have been badly misinformed) a long time ago about the rules involved in those tournaments. Sigh… Yes that happens a lot with beginners because they watch too many kung fu movies or read stupid books by stupid authors. I admit I was like that when I first started. As far as Dim Mak itself, it is nothing more than pressure point techniques. Most people think of it as literally being a “death touch” which is absurd. The techniques do work for causing large amounts of pain, numbness and in some cases unconsciousness because it’s simply putting pressure on nerves and arteries. You will actually find that doctors know where those same pressure points are, they just don’t say they are acupuncture meridians. Most of these techniques will not work in a real fight since adrenaline will be pumping and what ever pain they will cause might not even be felt. Sadly that is not just beginners. I have run across Tae Kwon Do and Karate teachers that don’t believe in full contact training, saying things like, “My techniques used in full contact would destroy the human body, that’s why I don’t train full contact”. Anyone who is familiar with full contact training will fall over and laugh after hearing that. In order to become a black sash at our school you have to take the San Shou classes. This is because my Sifu believes that you should have at least some full contact training before you start teaching lower ranking students. Though nobody from our school does that, I do think it is a little silly when I see karateka’s walking around stores in their gis. I mean don’t they have a changing room at their dojo? I usually want to get out of my uniform after class because it gets soaked in sweat. I admit I would practice my techniques at work, but usually when nobody is around because I don’t want it to be construed as showing off.

Thanks for the info about the UFC and PRIDE, a lot of this I simply didn’t know. I will have to find the original UFCs and watch them more closely and look for the things you mention. I will also have to look for more info on Delucia, its just that the little bit I saw of him gave me some doubts. To be honest, not long after I wrote those posts I was learning some BJJ from one of my friends at my School’s Chinese New Year party. Most of the things that I brought up in this thread were proven wrong to me. I plan on learning more jiu jitsu from him when we hang out again. I want to make it clear that I am not biased to one method of fighting or another. I know the fact that my styles listed to the left are traditional kung fu styles and that will probably give most MMA the immediate impression that I am very biased to traditional arts. I love to learn any techniques that I can, in fact that’s why I chose the school that I did. My Sifu is a master of 3 kung fu styles, his cousin is a black belt in Judo, the top student is a San Shou fighter etc…. I am not an avid fan of the UFC so you will have to forgive my ignorance on the subject. I haven’t watched the UFC in a long time either. I will be looking into Brazilian Jiu Jitsu more now since I had so much fun learning it yesterday.

If I remember right, Keith Hackney was punching just above the guy’s cup. Keith Hackney is a Kenpo Karate fighter and it was cool to see him use an eagle claw technique to the grappler’s throat and win. This goes to show you that they at least allowed clawing techniques to the throat. I have used that technique against a wrestler myself and it worked great. You do have a point about some of those guys not using any technique and just brawling like idiots. One of the reasons we train in full contact san shou at our school is help deal with the pain and adrenaline rush you must deal with in a real fight. Strikers are starting to dominate in Pride nowadays. Vanderli Silva is a Muay Thai stylist with BJJ training and he can end many of his fights with an overwhelming flurry of punches and kicks. As long as strikers train in the basics of ground fighting, enough to get them back on their feet without being submitted, they can force the grappler to play their game. This raises another interesting point. I think a lot of the grapplers trained to defend against strikes, where as the many of the more ignorant traditional strikers did not train in how defend against grapplers. This fact alone gave the grapplers a huge advantage. I think it is sad that Kung Fu was so poorly represented in the UFC. There was Jason Delucia, a guy I have a hard time believing is a legitimate kung fu stylist. I’ve seen his website and it looked like a bunch of * to me. Then there was that sloppy out of shape Wing Chun guy that didn’t look like he even had a clue what he was doing. The reason I say this is because for a stand up art, real Shaolin kung fu has excellent take downs and take down defense. The key difference, and what makes Shaolin kung fu very much a stand up art despite all the grappling, is the fact that falling to the ground with the opponent is avoided and the throws are very forceful and designed in knock the opponent out. The idea being to throw the opponent very fast and hard while staying on your feet, allowing you to move on to the next target if you are fighting more than one opponent. A great example of a good full contact kung fu fighter would be either Shawn Liu or Cung Le.

I have most of the best UFC fights on tape, including the fights from UFC 1, 2 and 3. I’m sure the promoters of the UFC wanted everybody to believe there were no rules except no eye gouging and biting. But if you look close, you will see many of the same rules found in kickboxing being employed. People think strikes to the groin were legal, but do you remember anybody even making attempts to front kick each other in the crotch? If they did you would see things like what happened to Gilbert Yvel when he fought Silva in ‘Pride’. The fight I’m referring to was when Silva kicked Yvel right in the cup and broke it! You could here the very loud pop when it hit. Yvel fell to the floor in extreme pain and agony. This would be a very common occurrence if this type of attack was actually legal. You also didn’t see techniques such pulling and tearing of the earlobe. No attempts to break fingers or wrists. The fighters also never made any real attempt at breaking each others legs with round or side kicks. None of the fighters tried to punch or strike the throat. While the audience may have been told that there were no rules, the fighters were probably given a different story.

I study Jow Gar Kuen and Wing Chun, but since Wing Chun was already described above I will focus on Jow Gar. The full name of the system in Cantonese is Siu Lum Jow Gar Kuen Fat, in Mandarin it is Shao Lin Jow Jia Quan Fa. Jow Gar is a very traditional Shaolin style. The name means Jow family boxing techniques. It is a combination 3 Shaolin related systems. Those systems being Choy Gar, Hung gar and Northern Shaolin. This combination of styles makes Jow Gar one of the most complete kung fu styles. Instead of giving a detailed description of the Jow style of Shaolin Kung Fu, I will give a description of Shao Lin Kung Fu in General. Examples of Shaolin systems include Choy Li Fut, Hung Gar, Fut Gar, Li Gar, Bak Siu Lum, Hong Quan, Lohan Quan etc… Shaolin Kung Fu is a very complete martial art and is the ancestor of many non-Chinese styles. Techniques include Ti (kicking, sweeping) Da (striking with the arms) Chin Na (joint locks and submission) and Shuai (throwing). These techniques are learned and practiced with forms, set routines that help build coordination, speed, technique, posture, endurance, leg strength and spirit. Forms also help you to remember the very large number of techniques and consistent practice eventually makes the techniques second nature. There are both empty hand forms and weapon forms. Most Shaolin styles have about 18 weapons that must be learned. Shaolin Kung Fu does not consist of forms alone, real combat skill is learned through San Shou (free fighting). San Shou can be thought of as Kung Fu in application. Now a popular sport, San Shou matches were originally fought at the temple on raised plat forms known as Le Tai. Fighters would fight using punching, kicking, throws and joint locks. Challenge matches were fought (and are still fought) with no rules at all. Today one of the greatest San Shou Kung Fu fighters is Cung Le. Few realize that Cung Le was trained in San Shou by Master Liu, a Shaolin disciple of the original abbot of Shaolin. Master Liu is known for being an undefeated full contact fighter from Shaolin. He has fought numerous bare knuckle fights and has defeated Thai Boxers from Thailand. -Techniques- Da- Shaolin Kung Fu utilizes virtually the entire arm as a weapon. Techniques involve the use of the finger tips, fore knuckles, fist, edge of the hand, palm, back of the wrist, inside and outside edge of the forearm and elbow. Many punching techniques resemble those of western boxing, with hooks, uppercuts and jabs used in rapid combination. Ti- Kicking techniques in the northern style are very advanced, using high and low kicks, spin kicks, jumping kicks, knees, sweeps and scissoring techniques. Unlike karate and tae kwon do, the ball of the foot is not used for round kicks; instead, the instep and shin are used, not unlike Thai Boxing. Chin Na- Chin Na means to seize and control. These techniques are what formed the basis for arts such as Aikido and Jiu-Jitsu. While these techniques work very well on the ground, most Chinese styles teach their use in a standing position. Techniques involve the control of the finger joints, wrist, elbow, shoulder, neck, back, knee and ankle. There are also pinching and clawing techniques. Some techniques such as the “eagle claw” can be used to crush the throat and kill the opponent. Shuai- The wrestling and throwing techniques of Kung Fu are somewhat different than those seen in arts such as Judo and Jiu Jitsu. Falling to the ground with the opponent is generally avoided and throws are performed with the intention knocking the opponent out by hitting him with the ground. Ground fighting is avoided in Chinese arts. When a Kung Fu stylist falls he is taught to get back up as fast as possible. The reasons for this are many. Taking your opponent to the ground will remove your ability to fight more than one enemy. It also removes your mobility, leaving you unable to quickly disengage and run if you have to. In fact in old San Shou fights, the fight would end when one fighter fell to the ground. While ground fighting is often taught in Kung Fu schools nowadays, the emphasis is still always put on stand up fighting.

I often see competitions such as the UFC and the like being used as a way to prove which style would beat the other in a real life fight. The most common statement being that it proves ground fighting styles are superior to stand up or traditional styles. Most people who claim this do not realize that the rules in these competitions help “protect” a ground fighting stylist from the stand up fighter. Of course, the promoters of these competitions want you to believe that there are virtually no rules. As in kickboxing, there are no kicks or strikes allowed directly to the knee joint, ankle or groin. This is the reason why you see round kicks aimed at the thigh instead of the knee. You will also notice that there are no stomping kicks to the ankle or knee joint. The knee is a rather fragile structure and a blow like this would be likely to cripple a fighter and possibly end his career. Again, as in kickboxing, punches or strikes to the throat or side of the neck are not allowed; the reasons for this being obvious. There are also no attacks allowed to small joints such the fingers and wrists. Bill Wallace has also stated that the matt in the octagon is so soft that it makes punching and kicking on it very difficult. If there were literally no rules allowed at all in the UFC, you would see stand up fighting coming out on top more often. The fights would also be much shorter. Many fights would end with kicks to the crotch, broken knees, bitten off ears, broken fingers, gouged eyes and deaths from punches landed to the throat. A good example of this was back when I was in high school. A wrestler attacked another guy on the bus and tried to use his wrestling techniques, only to come away with a shirt soaked in blood. This was because the kid that was being attacked simply started chomping on the wrestler’s chest. The wrestler immediately started screaming and crying in pain from the rather deep bite wounds. My point here is that the UFC and the like are NOT examples of real fighting and should not be used as a way to prove which style is “best”. I am not saying that if there were no rules the strikers would always win, just that strikers would win more often than they do in the UFC. “In competition, the fight often ends on the ground. In a real fight, it ends when one person can no longer continue fighting” –Benny “The Jet”