ovine king

TKD is picked on because it is an easy target due to the way they train and the competition format which they adopt. In a time when more and more styles are putting themselves through heavy testing, TKD's reluctance to make this move and stick with their point sparring means that when crunch time comes, they aren't as prepared for real fighting as others. Another factor is that TKD is very popular and very widespread. What this means is that there are many more TKD kids around and you all know what kids are like. I'm pretty sure we all know some TKD kids stories.

Several other martial arts forums have semi-regular meetings where they train, fight, spar, exchange ideas. Some of these meetings are rather informal and some are properly organised and insured events. If you really want to get with other martial artists and train, spar or fight in a safe environment then your best bet is to find these groups.

I think it is misguiding. Doing sticky hand exercises whilst blindfolded has a purpose but it isn't the be all and end all of training. One of the things taught in wing chun is awareness and as such you train, like in most martial arts, to be watching the middle ground so that you learn to read signals that might give away people's intentions. Whilst training chi caus blindfolded does test your chi sau, I'm not convinced that too much emphasis should be put upon it. Another thing I am not pleased with is how many modern wing chun teachers seem to high-light blindfolded chi sau almost as a supreme expression of wing chun when it is, to me, just another training exercise. In my mind, the blindfold isn't needed and in fact, I think that without it, you are more free to see and test things that you know your partner can actually see. It's like the old saying about feeling. While it is all good being able to feel something happening, if you can't see it either, I think that is only half of it. besides, feeling is something that occurs during initial contact. A part of wing chun deals with pre-contact which once again, is something to do with awareness and sight.

a yellow belt heading up a group for drills?

that's just it. the poster is not a teaching grade student.

don't forget that in the ring, where you have tow people who know what they are doing, things are going to look 'slow' because the guy on which the lock is being applied knows how to resist. it's not like the guy applying is doing it 'slow' because he wants to; it's because he's trying to make a guy who knows how to do the same things to him, tap out.

the characters for tai chi do not translate into english properly at all. the best i have ever heard is tai=very chi=very. i know it doesn't make sense in english but hey, it is another language. what? you expect things to translate properly and directly all of the time?

why would you be telling her what to do?

.....so is it just another publicity site? if you want really cryptic puzzles, sign-on to https://www.thestone.com

and you don't think that the schools who aren't so obsessively formal are against the extreme behaviour found in those classes either? don't generalise. for the record, i've never been in a traditional martial art school that goes anywhere near the examples of extremity that you mention. on the other hand, i've been to a boxing gym that was run, at times, like military. i don't generalise by saying that all boxing gyms shout at you, swear at you, hit/slap you hard when you don't reach the target reps etc etc, so extend the same courtesy.

read this again. you are associating the misuse of the term and equating to the style. it is no different to people here seeing disrespectful posts made by a lot of BJJ guys and equating it to all BJJ guys being disrespectful. why do some people call their doctor by that title? why do some people call their coach by that title? why do some people call the head chef by that title? simple answer; because that's what they are. sensei/sifu ONLY means teacher (or perhaps 'someone who is skilled in the thing that they can teach'). inferiority complex? so does that automatically mean that the guy who refuses to bow, even if it isn't in the same context as western bowing, has a massive superiority complex? and once again, what does this have to do with the thing that they are teaching? i'll end this how i ended my last post here. would karate (or any other 'traditional' art) be instantly better if it removed it's traditionl customs? would bjj be instantly worse if it instilled some of the japanese traditional customs?

i keep meaning to get my self to the nec every year as well..... maybe this is the year that the little fellow <------- will get himself there!

er.... i got a nasty splinter from that rattan staff once.... didn't really notice until people were noticing little spots of blood on their forearms. it was eventually traced to me, being one of the people without specks of blood on my arms but instead them being on my palms.....

i've been hit by a forearm from thai boxer. well, it wasn't really a hit, she (yes... she) was trying to get a hook onto my head/neck so she said she'd just give my head a 'nudge' with her forearm on the way to make it easier. she then proceeded to show me all the little tricks she knows about how to take control of the other guy's balance. gasp! what trickery is this? taking balance? surely thai boxing is all about kicking and elbowing and jumping knees..... incidentally, boxers use their forearms a lot, although not when the ref's looking.... using your elbow is not allowed remember so they would normally use more of a forearm bar strike but not when the ref isn't looking and if he is, it was accidental.... honest.... didn't that happen in some of the ring/cage/octogon fights; elbows were outlawed so they all switched to using forearm strikes?

i've done a little longfist, specifically some tan tui short forms. everytime i was taught a little set, i was also taught every thing that goes with it; how to apply the locks, how to take to and go to the ground, how the angels of the locks work, what happens when the angles change (i.e what breaks the locks). like i say, HOW you train. i'm still crap at it but that's not the point. some people only train forms. some people don't. the thing that bothers me is that people equate heavy fighting/sparring and weight training as being modern training. if anything, i would say that REAL traditional training is way more hard-core than any modern martial art. of course, i'm also really annoyed with the chinese closed door policies (trust me, i have first experience) and too much magical mystery tour. little grasshopper; look to the moon for your answer and you will find it walking on a piece of rice paper jammed right up my furry monkey rear-end.... you only learn from practice and application; proper (stressed filled?), resisting application/practice. i've mentioned this before but it was normal for people to go to a chin-na expert to learn that aspect of training. they recognised in the past that it is good to learn something from people who know it better. again, cross training isn't a new thing..... here's a simple question for all of you who take a traditional style. do you think you train traditionally? here's a simple question for those who do not take a traditional style. do you think you are doing anything that they didn't traditionally do in their (non modern) training?

so you are basing all of this on your experience of a place you attended when you were younger and one that you know to be bogus? what you call the guy who teaches doesn't have any bearing on what is being taught. some of it is just tradition. every style has some sort of tradition and some have more than others. whether you bow, shake hands or whatever, makes no difference to the training. this is probably good time to remind people that bowing is the norm in japanese culture and like it or not, karate is japanese. you ask; why can't you just shake hands? i ask, why do the japanese styles have to adopt the shaking of hands into it's custom? in anycase, you are reading too much into the act of bowing and associating with it, things from a western point of view. it's not putting the instructor on any sort of pedestal. the same with sensei and master. firstly, sensei simply means teacher (or something approximate.... the langauges don't relate very well) and 'master' is something that the western world introduced to the martial arts world. in it's use in the context o the native languge, sensei and sifu is simply the same as the use of sir or professor or doctor or chef or chief engineer or whatever other work/proffesional title. sensei/sifu does not mean master. so the bjj classes don't tend to be as strict as some other styles. so what? what's wrong with a little formality? the average class lasts what, two hours? (at least i hope......) can't you for two hours let go of your ego somewhat and follow a little custom/tradition? ok.. before this gets removed, i'm not asking you directly, i'm being general here. the point is, those things, like i said, have no bearing on the thing being taught so why do people use these points as a way to bash some styles? why does having these things make it worse than a style that doesn't? by the same token, do you think that bjj is the only style out there in which people are informal, mess around, swear and what not? would karate be instantly better if it removed it's traditionl customs? would bjj be instantly worse if it instilled some of the japanese traditional customs?

er..... don't put rattan staves in that group... in the chinese styles, rattan staves are almost considered a different weapons to hardwood staves.

and that's another personal gripe of mine. people are all too ready to believe things aht they see and read without bothering to go to the source. it equates to people 100 years in the future using things like the movie hero as a historical documentary.....

it's not that punching and kicking don't go together, it's that the way boxers punch (wide stance, drive through hips, planted back foot) doesn't lend itself very well to the kicking method of the that boxer. (he has to close his stance to be able to lift a leg to kick) besides, the way a boxer plays his game, if he were gloveless, something like judo might be a better training partner because that would compliment his toucing range game. individual permitting of course. point is, not everything can be paired with everything else, not without some compromise. going back to the thai boxer. i would say that if he were to attempt to adopt the boxers punching technique, he would be compromising his kicking base.

and on what do you base your assumption that the okinawan centreline theory was 'enriched' by the white crane kung fu? do you know traditional okinawan karate? do you know white crane? do you know the extent of the influence? this is exactly the conjecture that i am trying to avoid. you say you 'believe' but in reality, you are making an assumption which has no basis apart from it being something 'you think' might've happened. point is, no proof, no evidence suggesting so, nothing pointing to anything either way. also, there isn't just one centreline theory which is exactly why i started in this thread by describing what A centreline theory is. also, not all styles draw the centreline in the same way. heck, not even all wing chun draw the centreline in the same way. in turn, this means that even if the principles are the same, the practice of them are different.

what you intially describe isn't MMA. MMA is a modern system that blends moves to form a fighting method that goes from kicking to punching to grappling. in the places i have seen, it is like they aim to get to grappling range and work their way from kicking to punching to grappling as their method. MMA isn't simply training in more than one style and trying to make it work all together. as the others have said, most traditional styles are MMA of sorts and feature cross training anyway. in the chinese styles, things such as grappling/chin-na and tumbling are usually learnt after the core styles is learnt or singular techniques are shown to give the core styles' moves more 'colour'/depth i.e showing how to do a take down from a certain position because that position is a common situation when using the core style. also, like the others have said, simply mish mashing two styles doesn't always work because whilst the core principles might be the same, their executions thereof might not be. like i said in another thread; the idea taht taking a good kicking system and adding a good hands system (muay thai+boxing) on the surface seems to be a good idea but in practice, they don't really work with each other. what you end up with is a compromised style that i would argue is not as good as if you just stuck with either one of them; that's ignoring the fantastic elbow and knee work of the thai boxer, which goes in part to illustrate my point. the thai boxer doesn't need to punch like a boxer because he would use his legs at that range to take your base and then close up to elbow and knee; a boxer's punching just doesn't fit in with muay thai tactics.

in chinese internal (noi) means inside external (ngoi) means outside. i was taught that the external means things you can see and internal means things you can't. as such, forms, sparring, drills, are considered the external aspects. things like stance, structure, dead resistance training (this is slightly complicated and even questionable...) and theories are the internal aspects. put another way, waving your arms about is external. the things that go behind making that hand waving strong is internal. as for hard/soft, this has not a lot to do with internal/external as in practice, styles do both because one acts as a reference for the other. besides, hard/soft are only two aspects/types of energy dealt with in chinese martial arts and is as such, an incomplete picture of things.

this is going to sound rubbish but look nowhere and everywhere..... try to look at the other guy generally but not focusing on any one thing. take in his whole body (or as much as you can). taht way, you will notice general movements better. if you focus, you'd tend to end up half a beat behind. incidentally, i normally wear glasses and during kick-boxing i have to take them off. i can't focus if i wanted to.... haven't decided of that's a benefit or not. during other normal drills and sparring when i can wear my glasses, i usually place my eyes on their face area (if anything to keep my back straight).

you could but that would just be conjecture. it could easily be argued that the opposite is true; that the japanese arts influenced the chinese arts. of course, this too would be conjecture which is why sources that point to actual recorded evidence is more valuable than just 'someone says'. as i said earlier, when you are dealing with the human body, it's pretty hard to have any system that doesn't make reference to the left and right sides. as such, the centreline is something that will appear in all martial arts which by their nature are about the human body. the documents as mentioned in one of the links gave clear indications that formal organised jujutsu was practiced before the chen person was even born. it is very unlikely that this system did not deal with the centreline. to try and suggest that one country or even one person from one country 'gave' the centrelne theory to the martial arts of another country is rather stupid. like sevenstar said, you can argue the sun is green if you so wish.

as a general rule, in any fight, you want to have an equaliser or something that will give you an advantage. the chair, in any situation can be used on a basic level as an extra barrier between you and the knife. it can also be used a means to trap the knife, a weapon of sorts or even simply be thrown as a distraction to give you some time+space to exercise the best course of action; to run.