ovine king

Y'know, I think we are saying the same thing. My point is, it is there and most people just don't look into it and then just say it doesn't exist. Or probably more accurately, most people aren't taught it and so the students don't know it's there.

and as i said, read the rules. It's all there.

Did someone say "receive"? Sounds like the secret wing chun ninja is doing his job well! "receive", "centre-line", wedge" and "re-direct" all in the same post! sorry. just kidding. But you're right; it is all just movement. It's a block when you need it to be, a way to get hold of a limb, a lead to a throw, a covering postion to strike or whatever whenever you need it to be. At MY risk of sounding like a Bruce Lee wannabe, it is this fixing of things like this IS a block, or this IS a strike is the fixation on dogmatic practice that should be avoided. Taking the wing chun approach as an example. The very first thing you learn is the basic punch. The basic punch is a block, a strike, a covering move, a lead to a arm lock (if you add a small circle), a means to take balance and that's just usig one arm. Change what's at the end of the movment (replace fist with a palm) and you have another set of things you can do, even though the same basic movment is the same i.e you extend your arm. Now add your other arm into the mix and you have just increased the things you can do that only involve extending your arm BUT it's all still from tht basic punch. I don't think the question is "are blocks just blocks?". I think the question is "what can these movements be?"

Me not being a karate person, i'm not too clued up on the specifics but once, during a "discussion" a kata was taken apart and demonstrated to me as a comparison to how we deal with forms in our respective styles. Pretty much anything I could do chin-na (locks, take downs, joint manipulations)style that was overtly present in the form, he could do from things overtly present in the kata. While it's not as comprehensive as say BJJ in terms of grappling/ground fighting, that's not to say it isn't extensive. It all comes down, according to him, to a too simplistic view to what the kata is; too many people are fixated on only the things that you do in the kata instead of what you can do from the movements shown in it.

Did someone just imply that fight scenes in ong bak are realistic? Or did he just mean that it was worse than the things in ong bak?

the answer is still no.

Crikey, I know some shotokan people who would have a thing or two to say about that.

Your missing the point. When i say "kick like that" I am talking about the whole kick, not just what the foot is doing. The image you chose, while depicting a kick to a leg, isn't typical of how shaolin kicks to the leg, the most obvious point being the stance employed, as well as the underlying fact that they use different body structures. Wing chun is nothing like shaolin. To say it is "only modified" is a gross error. I'm not saying anything about you getting beaten. I am saying that the environment is a strange one with rather limiting rules that don't equate to normal sparring in chinese styles.

So is it known who does the katas closest to how funakoshi taught them? And does anyone know how much they differed from what he originally learnt?

Strange. You show an image of a kick being done by two kids practicing wing chun. First of all, I've yet to see a Shaolin student do a kick like that. Secondly, it works nothing like the how Muay Thai people kick. If you've never done point sparring before, you are either going to get disqualified very quickly or beaten very quickly. Best thing to do is to go and download some point sparring videos and read the rules again.

The odd thing is, you do actually strike the arms quite hard so you do kinda bash but the point isn't to desensitise; you hit them hard because you are suposed to find that "sweet spot" on your arms where receiving doesn't hurt as much. This is why many non-wing chun people think you hit the arms hard to condition. You hit the arms hard because that way, if you do a bad movement, you get hurt. Do it correctly and you don't. Best example would be the three star (or five points depending on your lineage). As i said, the most important point of the dummy is to show you things that you can't see/feel in just forms.

Punishment was not a fixed thing. From what i recall, traditional punishment ranged from extra training, copying more scripture, having to do extra alms rounds and only in the worst cases in the monk expelled. How you were punished also depended on who you were outside of the temple before becoming a monk. If you were a heavy gambler and you broke the gambling rule, the likely punishment would be something that would aim to get you to think more and keep your mind focussed something other than gambling i.e scripture copying. If you were a violent person, you weren't likely to be told to do more training.

What style? The blind-folded practice? Not sure if every school does it but I'm pretty sure every wing chun school is aware of it. It's not just wing chun that does it either. The Silat/Kali/Escrima (sorry for the simplified grouping of these) styles do blindfolded practice as well.

Christ almighty. Monks were not allowed to drink alcohol, it being one of the big nonos. No women. No alcohol. No killing. No gambling. No lying.

No they weren't. Traditionally, the monks and nuns kept apart, both having their own institutions. Ocassionally, one would request to stay at the other's place during travels but only if their own was not available. Traditionally, only men were allowed to study at the temples (unless you were royalty) and only monks were allowed to train there. Those that learnt shaolin outside of the temples were usually rich folk who paid the temples lots of money, conveniently in the form of alms.

Is that 1/5 of chi sau or 1/5 of all training? I would say that blind-folded practice, chi sau or otherwise, is only done maybe once a week depending on what I'm doing right/wrong that week. Even then, it's not done as an exercise of itself but as a means to show what's going on.

I really don't like the term. In my opinion, a bad school is a bad school, no matter the reason why it is bad. Sure a school might sell it's product well but if it is actually a quality school, so what? I much prefer a school that over-charges and teaches properly than a place that doesn't over-charge and teaches badly. Which one would be the McDojo? Which would you choose to go to? Aren't straw men great?

piano players know their theory more than some others because that is the way that music is taught to them (thanks to people like bethoven). the layout of the piano lends to music theory because there is also a more visual element to the thing you are learning being able to physically see 5ths and octaves right in front of you and "playing" with things you have just learnt i.e the theory is one step easier. As a result, you can learn and are hence taught more theory early on because you can apply it earlier on.

wht ever the legend, it's all false.

they represent how many people he's killed with his little finger.

the father of the woman of the legend in which she was being harassed wasn't a shaolin monk. The most common story; after the burning of the temple, the elder nun escaped and along her journey she came across the girl being harassed. She taught the girl her own mix of boxing skills based on her small frame and extensive knowledge of trditional shaolin arts. The thing she taught was simple, didn't require brute strength and didn't take take long to learn.

sounds like a modified, or even the same thing because i can't really picture what you are describing, of a type of four gates blocking. Basically, it is a method of training blocking of up/down/left/right using left and right arms in simple movments taking into account of the indoor and out door. This is done, in slightly different ways, in most chinese styles (at least all styles that I know a bit about has something like it). Each style does it differently because of stylistic and structural differences.

brick fu.

It isn't that the thing they teach is watered down as often it is very good form. It's just they don't tend to know what that form is for and hence don't practice the applications of them. The same can be applied to moast arts where a form is used in training; if all you do is the form and nothing else then eventually, all that is left, is the form, which, whilst it is part of the art isn't all the art is.

Exactly, which is why I prefer to do chi-sau without blindfold because then i can learn to ignore the things that might distract me from feeling, instead of not having the distractions there during the rolling. On the other hand, we do an exercise where a blindfolded guy stands in guard andsomeone attacks into his guard and the blind-folded guy just responds depending on what he feels. I feel that this works touch/response better than doing blind-fodled chi sau because it translates directly in sparring practice/drills.