ovine king

wing chun dummy isn't a conditioning tool; you do not bash yor arms on it in the hope that it desensitised your arms to pain. It is a tool for you to practice your flowing both of your arms and in the combination of your arms and footwork, which is something you don't do often in single training. the first "new" thing you are taught to do on the dummy, is how to step around the leg as you do your hand tachniques, this being something that doesn't feature in any of the hand forms and being part of the first section of the dummy form.

I'm not too sure I'm entirely happy that you chose to adorn Bruce lee's name with "the late great" but then Yip Man's name was left with nothing. The thing with lineage is that it should allow you to get an instant idea of its provenance. The closer to the source you are, the closer you are (supposed to be) to the original thing you are learning. Yes, the important thing is whether the thing you are learning is good or not but then again, if the lineage is accurate and good, then this question wouldn't need to be addressed anyway. Taking Yip Man wing chun as an example. By knowing your lineage, you'd have a pretty godd idea of the differences your style may have with someone elses. If i tell you I practice and train with mainly with people from WSL's line then you'd know that I am going to be more actual fight orientated. If i tell you that I am a Lee Shing line student then you'd know that I am a more traditional student who also might have also trained in other versions of wing chun not taught by Yip Man. The short of it is that Lineage isn't a bragging rights thing, it is there to help you understand more about what it is you are learning.

The simple answer to this is that Tai Chi isn't seen as fighting art is because there are too many people in robes and with long moustaches teaching it as a slow dance.

Kind of true but not that simple. There's also the point that (what used to be the) foundation wanted absolute control over everything bruce Lee related, including the name of things that are tuaght. Dan Inosanto wanted to continue teaching the thing that he had been doing for lord knows how long following how the methodology of how he was taught, which like it not is mainly from Bruce Lee and his various versions of JKD. If they didn't fight over the right to use certain names, which i should say i understand part of the reasoning behind, then everything would still just be JKD. Firstly, seeing as how JKD concepts is the thing that Dan Inosanto teaches, I don't think it is appropriate for you to be tagging it McJKD as it is directly attacking it and all schools of it. Now ignoring your obvious bias and dislike towards Dan Inosanto and his teachings I'm gong to make a simple point. It is generally agreed that the JKD that was being taught was never a finished product and is almost always a thing in progress. If no one attempted to take a step beyond what was being taught then wouldn't they be doing exactly the thing that Bruce Lee was so against (the stagnation of the arts into a fixed dogmatic practice)?

Structure is about how you stand with regards to how your style works. Posture and stance shouldn't really be separated because they affect each other; Good posture with weak stance and you might as well have no good posture. The same is true the other way around. Structure isn't about making it easier to hit someone or making it hard for them to defend, it is about making your hits as strong as possible. You've probably heard about triangles in wing chun; that's part of wing chun structure. Maintaining vital structure would be keeping your hip placement correct (for your stance), keeping your back straight and your head "floating" and your elbows in and your wrists firm. Attacking structure would be forcing them to drop their hip, sweeping to shift their knees, kicking hip to take out hip/spine line, pulling on neck to take out spine+hip alignment and hence collapsing their structure, slap hand and trapping elbow to effectively close their small circle. In effect, you only have one vital structure per given style because that is the foundation of the style. Everything from how you move to how you punch is based on a set of principles regarding how you place your hip and where you punch from and where your hands tend to be etc etc. Your footwork is about being able to carry your vital structure around without compromise (think about how you shuffle/step and how your hip SHOULDN'T be moving with respects to your body). When you punch you are drawing on physical structural strength (most commonly heard as "punch from the hip").

i say it's bold because there are people who swear that blind-folded chi sau's purpose is to increase sensitivity. Anyway, your response is exactly what I am talking about, with the exception of the first because I never said anyone did. The point of my first statement is that just because you remove your sight from the training, it doesn't mean that your other senses are going to worked harder. Because chi-sau is only relevant when contact is made and contact being only a part of sparring, only doing one part in isolation seems to be only looking at part of the picture. Of course i see the relevence of doing it stand alone but i just don't how it can be perceived as being more important than the other contituant parts, as some do. Another point is that you don't need to be blind-folded to learn not to over-react. In fact, I'd argue that because you are removing other senses from the event, you are only doing harm when you re-introduce them. In chinese, the term that we use is closest translated to 'feel' and this interpretation encompasses all aspects of feeling from touch to sight and even sound. The purpose of chi sau is to test. In it you test your stance, your structure, your positions, your reactions, your speed, your strength, your abilty to read, your ability to lead and lord alone knows how many other things. It is through the testing that you learn what you can or can't do and what you need to work on. How you do it and the speed at which you roll is entirely dependent on you and how you want to do it. It isn't a fixed thing and in a way, doing it blind folded kinda fixes your focus too much. I much prefer to drill people allowing them to see what i am doin when I play "tricks" on them.

But doing things with a blindfold doesn't automatically make you do that thing better, even when it's a sensitivity thing (walking aroun with a blindfold isn't going to make you stop walking into things). You'd get used to it and hence make you less prone to over reacting but it doesn't actually make your sensitivity any better. It'll make you respond more accurately but that isn't increasing sensitivity. In fact, I'm going to make a boldish statement and say that to say that blind-folded chi sau increases your sensitivity is a massive mis-nomer as to what the exercise does.

I was refering to the original post. The wooden man is a training tool. You work what you learn on it. You don't learn something that you only do on the wodden man, hence, there is no such thing as a wooden man technique.

tai chi has a lot of joint locks, arm controls, take downs involving joint manipulation, taking of balance, tripping, sweeping and throwing of sorts; i.e chin-na. while it had methods of getting you on the floor, it doesn't teach actual ground fighting.

and what do you define as real shaolin kung fu?

or you could just ask them for a bottle of the stuff.

technically, there is no such thing as a wooden man technique.

and that's where one of the flaws lie; you can only feel when there is something to feel and that's why i feel it is more of a test rather than training method. during normal chi-sau, we switch between seeing, looking and feeling as it progresses. when blindfolded, you are limited to only one means of sensitivity.

...and the same can be said of the 'fight clubs'. for as long as people have been training in martial arts, they have getting together with other people of different styles to test, judge, refine and learn. the film just gave a pop-culture name to what people were already doing.

The biggest reason why physics shouldn't be used to describe how power/force/energy works in martial arts is because we are not point masses in a vacuum.

Eagle Claw as in the style taught by Gini Lau?

In a way, I see blind folded chi sau as more of a means to test something more than a direct way to train something. The learning of feel is a slow process and while being blinded does force you to be more precise, it doesn't actually get you to feel quicker. In fact, some might say and I can see the reasoning behind it, that the extra pressure that a blind-fold adds to the game of chi sau can actually detract from the process.

Sword styles are normally catagorised by blade type. Taking fencing as an example, epee is different to sabre because of the way the weapon is used and how you score. The same is true of chinese weapon styles. The short stubby broad sowrd is used differently to the long sword and is catagorised to correspond. One is a chopping weapon because of its blade design, the other os a slicing and pointing weapon because of its design.

Please don't get me wrong, I am not saying it isn't important nor am I saying it is an easy game to play. What I am saying is that to me, it is too narrow minded in its approach. Yes being able to play chi sau blindfolded is good but it still isn't complete chi sau. Chi sau involves things such as giveing/yielding centre, false centres, cutting angles, shifts and other subtle pushes and changes in direction. While some of these can be done whilst blindfolded, you are missing an element if you cannot see or make the other person thinks he is seeing, something else happening. That misleading is one of the key aspects of chi sau by which I mean the confusing of the mind between what you see, what you feel and what is really going on. The other thing I am not too keen with regarding the over emphasis of chi sau is that when you are sparring properly and with other people of other styles, the sticking moment is very, very short. From my personal experience, concerntrating too much on chi sau invariably means you don't spend as much time working or drilling basics with the pressure required to simulate what might be a real attack. In most chi sau games, that pressure just isn't there and so even though it trains your sensitivity to a dgree, I have to question how relevant it is when the likely attack I will face will, in most circumstances, not resemble anything i'd come across normally during chi sau. Again, don't get me wrong. I do a lot of chi sau and I love it. I just don't rank it as being a better owr worse type of exercise as I believe that all forms of training has to be done. As for blind-folded chi sau, I see it as being a variation of chi sau and not a better or worse way or doing it, just a different way that focuses on something else.

I've always found them too light and not strong enough. i recently redecorate my house and had replaced all curtain tracks with dowel rods to make things easier. Just for fun, me and my cousin thought we would do a little weapons sparring in the very secluded corner where my house is. We had to go back to the DIY store to get two fresh dowels. The other problem with using a light staff is that you miss out on one of the important aspects of handling a heavy long weapon and that is the feel of it in your hand. The point of the weapons is that they are heavy and that it isn't that easy to wield them. The weight is an important part of their use.

Too many people mistake Muay Thai as seen in ring fights as being all there is to it. My memory is a bit hazy on it but i remember a friend talking about something like 12 major techniques and 12 minor techniques and some of them are more than a bit outrageous. But then again, I'm aware that winning a ring fight and beating the hell out of someone aren't always the same thing. How much of the non-sport Muay Thai is taught?

I think it's a cultural thing. For a long time, martial arts was a big part of the cultures in china and japana dn to a certain extent, they still are. in the west however, the culture tended towards the sword arts and boxing/puglism/wrestling was relegated towards the lower classes. The fact that one society saw fighting as a high art and the other saw it as a low class thing is a factor in why western martial arts, especially when it comes to stand up fighting arts, isn't very well known. I mean, how many comprehensive western stand up fighting arts can you name? On the other hand, I would also say that western sword play is much more sophiscated and more highly developed than chinese sword play. I have a friend who fences a lot and I am always fascinated by the depth of skill involved. In a way the things she and they talk about mirrors things said in the typical chinese stand up fighting art. Both talk about touch and absense of touch and gates of entry etc etc. Fascinating stuff.

Have a look in the back of Combat magazine. There's quite a good listing of biggish schools in the there.

That's something we do during training sometimes. It's almost like roleplaying situations where one or more people will suddenly become aggressive and you just have to try and react. Nothing like suddenly being shouted at to test your reactions.

Nothing like a good teep to the gut to put a stop to schoolyard fights.