ovine king

It's not always about winning or losing. In most cases where you are attacked by more than on person, it will be can you survive long enough to get away.

Irrelevent. The targets and types of hits that a boxer trains for don't require penetrative qualities so the typical wing chun method being more penetrative means next to nothing to a boxer and his game. I'd rather not get hit by either. The biggest difference is the kind of base from which they ground themselves. One uses the groundto support themselves as they use their body/body mass. The other uses the ground as a reaction force to utilise body structures. The effect is different, the result is different, the usage is different. To me, this is an machete/scalpal type of comparison. Both are highly effective, both are deadly sharp but they're intrinsically different.

No offence but would this "attack" have anything to do with the fact that you are a 14 year old blackbelt?

I am a guitarist wannabe and not practicing as much as I should be. At the moment, my fingers are still recovering from practicing chords. Anyone else got little lines of bruises on their finger tips? I never even knew you could bruise like that.....

I don't think any push-ups are bad per se, just don't do something that your body isn't prepared for or else you'll end up damaging yourself like you would any other type of exercise.

The best thing I like about working on a heavy bag is that it can imitate different situations. You can chase it on its way out as you would a real opponent or you can close in on it as it returns. You can walk around it and hit at various stages of it's outward/coming back motion at various angles or you can get partner to hold it and give you active resistance. You can work multiple hits and different heights or you can work a single hit at a single height. You can punch it or you can kick it. Now I've not trained with a makiwara but I do have a three-section wall bag in my garden and as much as I love it, I know that I am missing out on it being immobile and essentially flat.

it's not that people think it's un-usable, it's because some people like to think that the thing that they use is better and hence, the thing that you do isn't as good and therefore either un-usable or un-realistic or ineffective.

i have to say i've not seen any school actually making the differentiation between muay boran and muay thai. Instead, they tend to differentiate the thing that they do into "things for the ring" and "things in the art".

Not quite what i was refering to. The first persecution happened was before then when the emporer got cold feet about the skills of the fighting monks and had the big temple burnt down (all legend of course). This was taken to be first cause of the spread of the chinese martial arts to the, for lack of a better term, common people. The period you mentioned is slightly different and is again, full of debate. During the boxer rebellion, the empress dowager persuaded the Tibetan Bhuddists to help fight against the rebellion, the Ming emperors having been rather nasty to the Tibetan people previously and hence still hold a big grudge against the Ming (anti-ching) people. She also lead a campaign to turn the common people against the anti-ching people which to an extent, worked although a lot of this was also down to some of the downright evil things done by the anti-ching people. It was also common knowledge (whether it was true or not) that the anti ching people were using the shaolin temples as a training ground and a great many of them were learning shaolin skills. This obviously lead to the dowager keeping more than a harsh eye on them. Hind-sight would suggest that the supposed shaolin link was to semi-hide the real activities of the red junk opera troups. Whilst they were watched, they weren't as persecuted as they were during the mao period when they, the monks and any openly practicing bhuddists, were arrested and whatnot (sorry for seemingly belittling their treatment). It was during the mao period that all shoalin activity, both worship and martial practice, as well as martial practice of any sort anywhere else was shut down and everyone forced to "go farming".

Depending on your style, you do end up pointing your chest towards your opponent. The difference is that they aren't facing your centre when you are facing theirs.

that's also kinda true to an extent; I can play three songs on a piano but i am sure as a mushroom that i am no musician. In the case of ninja/samurai, the biggest difference is that theirs was really a question of profession. They learnt their skills to make their job easier, they didn't learn their skills to be a ninja. Whether or not they actually trained in the ryu, they were still by way of their profession/family, ninja.

wing chun. mainly from the yip man hk line but also some strong influences from a different canton line from leung jan. weakness. not really the style but in what people expect of it. Too often, people who practice wing chun talk about theory too much and they put too much reliance in theories; they expect that just because they know how it's suposed to work and why it does, that they'll be able to make it work without actually practicing it. People have tended to sell wing chun as an art that doesn't rely on being big and strong and instead uses body structures and position and hand speed to neutralise everything that they end up believing that you don't have to work hard to get good.

And most of what is trained in the more traditional muay thai isn't used in ring fights. have you ever seen anyone step off the opponents knee to get a knee to their face? have you ever seen the same step off a knee to get height to get a good kick to the head? so if these things also aren't ever really going to be used then why do they still train in them in proper muay thai schools? there is a big difference in training in the art and fighting with the art. there is also a world of difference to playing a roda and fighting.

.....there is a difference in training in ninjutsu and other arts used by people who were called ninja and being a person who used to be called a ninja. knowing how to cook doesn't make you a chef. knowing how to drive doesn't make you a racer. knowing wing chun doesn't make you a anti-ching rebel. knowing jujutsu and kenjutsu doesn't make you a samurai. knowing ninjutsu and other ryu doesn't make you a ninja. someone here (or it might've been on another board) mentioned that what people like hatsumi, ignoring his personal claims, are teaching what used to be ninja arts. They are maintaining the traditions and hence keeping them alive more than they are for anything else. They are most definitely not training people to be ninja, even though he arts that they train used to be used by them.

Wasn't there some issue with the state of health/mind of the bulls that were used in the demonstrations?

you are aware that most of the TRUE monks from shaolin were driven out or killed during the mao revolutionary years right? we are talking about an almost total wipeout. Then the shaolin temples were re-instated and a wushu program was put in place under the then title of quo-shu. This version of wushu had no martial application as it was carefully engineered out of the forms. This wushu is what is widely being taught. In short, wushu and the stuff taught in the shaolin temple that now exists in china is not traditional shaolin kung fu. Sure they'd teach you some of the stretching and general exercises that are known from documented sources and the occasional 'original' forms but it isn't really 100% original shaolin. However, since then, some outside sources of real shaolin kung fu has been re-introduced back into the shaolin curriculum in an attempt to regain some of the fighting skills that was taken out/away. If you want real shaolin martial arts, you are better off looking for the sub-styles that are offshoots from shaolin-proper because these styles because of their often being based on family practices/teachings are going to be more authentic. Dont get me wrong, the stuff they teach at the shaolin temple isn't all worthless as they do have a prett serious "hei ang gung" program and a lot of chinese bodyguards train in that as a basis for their professional work. Just don't have a too romantic view of what the shaolin temple is and what a shaolin monk is.

That is a misunderstood statement. Wing chun was designed to be learnt and practiced more easily and more quickly, unlike the shaolin styles of the time, where time was often regarded as a virtue. Instead of taking three months to learn a form, you can learn all the forms in one. Instead of needing a largish clear area per person to practice in, you just need about 4 square metres. Instead of using large movements for momentum as a power base you look to using body structure for a power base. That is how wing chun is designed to allow the guy practising it to be better quicker compared to a guy who has been training in an equivilant shaolin style for the same time. It isn't stricly true that it was designed to be better. It's just that it allows the people who relied on it at the time i.e the red junk/anti ching rebels, to be better quicker. The best example would be this: if it takes two wing chun guys, who have only trained three months to take down and kill a shaolin style practicing soldier, then even if they have died in the process, it's only a combined of 6 months of training, compared to the shaolin guy who would've typically taken longer and worked harder in his, considering the amount of hard training that was undertaken before actual training often begun. One more thing. chi sau isn't a defence technique; it is a training method. we don't do chi sau to defend, nor do we do chi sau when we fight so it is wrong to say it is "chi sau defence techniques"

and the scary part is, the belt is marked on both ends to represent left and right hands, and on both sides to represent hands and feet. Sauzin, being the sensible chap that he is, likes to train evenly so he has managed the exact same number of kills with his left and right little finger as well as his left and right little toe.

No worries. My closest connection is my grandfather on my mother's side, who used to do some unknown "kung fu" back in his youth. He and his brothers were, I have to say, apparently the equivilant to a local gang back in the day. I never knew this until after I started my own training. On another side of the family, there is a strong Choy Li Fut history and a neighbouring village to them (they all share the same surname but are not strictly or even that closely related) is a very strong wing chun history and I am luck to have the opportunity to train with them due to pure luck and coincidence. Don't get me wrong, with the exception if the wing chun family, it's not like it is taught father to son in the traditional sense so I'm doing it as a continuation of what they did. It's more like it was something that the dad showed to the kid as a little something as something that would be good for us and I have picked on something that i seem to be not that bad at. My own interests came about totally separate from my family history of training. There is also a little gap in that history because of the period during the 1970s-now when our parents came to the uk to start business. It is almost like the kung fu skipped our parents generation and us grandchildren are picking it back up again. Since then I have trained with the choy li fut side, although I have to say that he hasn't really kept it as how he was taught it and it has turned into almost a tai chi style form. Well, eh calls it "tai chi" and we did do it every morning on the roof of where we stayed but I'll be damned if tai chi has tiger style moves in it. As a side note, one of my cousins is a bit of a japanese fanboy and he has expressed interest in aikido and karate. I always say he has turned to the dark side..... but then again, it does mean that I/we get something else to play with so it's all good.

And you've misunderstood me again It's not that i ahve family members who are also into martial arts, it is that I have martial arts in the family. Back in hk, my village and that of my cousin's has a few families that have been practicing them form 100 odd years i.e our grandparents' generation.

it is a simple idea based on always having a 'guard' of sorts which no one around you should be aware of because it is natural. It's slightl more complex than that but it isn't a complicated thing. I've tried to find a link but all I can find are reviews of the book of the same name.

White Warlock, are you aquainted with what is known as "the fence"?

You misunderstand, I said that less than once a week is devoted to blind-folded practice of any sort. Chi Sau features in every training session with the sole exception of when we decide to pick on something to do i.e chin-na, "conditioning", dummy/weapons. I am lucky in that two of cousins also train in wing chun of slightly different lines and also has a family background in other chinese martial arts.

Of all the wing chun people, you could do better to choose someone else to base your arguments on. Leung Ting is not the foremost exponent of wing chun, nor does he represent the whole of Yip Man's school, like you are implying. That's not to mention the many questionable events in his wing chun career.

It was neither of them. The legends of the five elders is just a legend/story used to hide the activities and origins of the styles that were developed at the time.