ovine king

i'm not a big fan of that site. it is so obviously biased towards chinese styles and i have no idea who the author is, not to mention that there are some very dubious stories on there that defy actual recorded history. all very suspect.

personal gripe.... i don't like it when people use words that are emotive or can romanticise/glorify what martial arts are ultimately about. why use 'combat' when really you mean 'fighting'?

nice how you conveniently omitted the part about the possible jujutsu link to china as being unverified.... anyway. it being argued doesn't make it fact. the point is, the body naturally has two sides, left and right which is separated right down the middle of your body (why lookie here, a centreline) when you face an opponent you are naturally going to be facing him, probably at his centre (tadaa! central plane). to have an advantage you make sure that while you face his centre, he doesn't face yours (bingo! centreline theory) in fencing the centreline is taken as a key conceptual line and that developed free from chinese martial arts influence.

still not sure about your insistance that the things found in your wing chun MUST have been omitted/forgotten/whatever from the other lines that do not have them. not sure if you did it but as part of my training i also did a lot of 'old school' (non style specific) training like small plum flower, walking the circle and some other small hand/foot excercises. it was part of the 'kung fu' but not part of the wing chun (if that makes any sense at all....) i did it. you might not have. doesn't really mean anything. also, the grappling/joint locks in any chinese martial art normally falls under a separate catagory (chin-na). as such, shaolin chin-na is the same as wing chun chin-na which is the same as tai-chi chin-na.... and so on..... so you can't really say it is wing chun chin-na because really it's just chin-na.

reality based is about how you train and your intention. yes, the traditional way IS about reality in as much as they did atually fight as training. to contrast, the modern reality based training focuses more on actually confrontation situations, using stress and pressure tests as their focus. in both, you end up with techniques that you know do work as you have made them work during your fight/pressure/stress test. problem with a lot of modern training in traditional arts is that they don't have the same type/intention in their training.

whoa.... back up a bit. before you start to explain what might be different versions of a centreline theory, all of which might be and probably are correct), i think you should start by first saying that: centreline theory is a set of principles within certain arts that take as their point of reference, the centreline as a means to attack and defend. the centreline, along with the motherline creates a plane along which you work. footwork, stance swithces, pivoting and handwork are then all about manipulating and generally controlling, gaining control of and maintaining control of the space between you and your opponent. with that said, every style is going to have a slightly different take. some styles even have a different idea of what is a centreline.

just a guess...... i think it might have something to do with general choi's work with tkd. his tkd was designed for the korean army (for his division) to boost/promote fitness and to boost morale. it might've been derived from fighting arts but fighting wasn't always their main focus. (they were known to have performed for a whole range of people). it seems logical to me, that this aspect simply took over from the actual 'bunkai' as it were.... again, in case you missed it: just a guess.

wait a minute. kung fu... kumite?

you do realise that you've dug up a thread that is more than a year old....?

hmm, at a guess he might be saying 正中

just want to point out, in some chinese styles, when you talk of a 'form' in english, it IS in reality just a simple mini-sequence of techniques that have been put together as a flow drill. it is a kind of form but isn't a form in the 'classical' sense. in a very loose way, a form is more of a learning tool. the mini-forms/drills are practice tools. very slight difference but at the same time, quite a big difference.

....well..... i'm not sure that special emphasis should be put upon that specific grade; at least not more than any other grade. that is kinda been one thing i never really liked about the common perception of things; that the black belt is more special than the others before it, as if the other grades don't matter as much if at all compared to the black belt. mental aspect? i'm not practicioner of a japanese art or one that has a firm grade system so i can't really understand the fixation on the attainment of that . i'll give a few things that were always repeated to us during training. i) we're not playing; take this seriously because you might need it when things are serious. if you want to play, go home. ii) i can only show you how to do something, it is up to you to practice and make it work for you. iii) don't show off because you never know what the next person can do. those things kinda illustrate the kind of mentality my sifu expected from us about the training aspect. we were also told that outside of training we are still represtative of him as it was known, especially to the locals, that we were training with him; anything bad we do eventually comes back to him. i guess this is just a simple example of the notion of 'the bigger picture' which is something everyone has to understand. granted these things aren't exclusive to people who train in these arts and some are dependent on your location (i.e the perceptions of the chinese people in hk aren't going to be the same as those of someone in the US suburbs) but they seem to play a bigger role becauese of the bad image that fighting has. of course, i don't know you so i can't say why you were told you don't have the mentality of a black belt. then again, what that means depends on the views of the person who said it.

...and we get onto the point i have always made. the training and realistic practice is way more important the actual style that you are taking. kano showed it to be true. the gracies showed it to be true. heck, even the older wing chun guys, back when fighting was common in hk showed it to be true. look at the past generation and how they trained and you will see the one thing they all had in common was that they really did live and breath their respective martial arts. they didn't just perform the forms and make nice poses. they trained hard and heavy against other people who didn't mind a bit of blood on their shirts. actual fighting was part of their training. how many of us actually train anywhere near that level? off the top of my head, the only people i can think of who do that are the pro fighters. now i'm not one to say whether or not one art is better than another, especially when the talk of ring vs street is quite pointless as both are practically immeasurable quantities with un-repeatable results but numbers do say something and you can't argue with the success of BJJ and other ground fighting arts over the stand-up arts as well as other similar but more 'traditional' arts.. my wing chun against a bjj guy? i don't think i have a chance because i) they train harder than i do: their regular training is the same as their fighting. my regular training is something to prepare me for the reality of fighting. my actual fighting is much, much less. ii) they train to get people onto the ground. i don't train to remain standing (it is almost assumed that i can....) iii) on the ground i do not know how to safely disengage. i can possibly fight back but i can't say that i would be happy there. the biggest thing to me is the second point. whereas they train to get to the floor, i can't see how you can train to prevent him from going to the floor. please note; what i have typed is about differences in training and methods. the use of wing chun as a reference is incidental, which is why i talk about what I can or can't do.

nope. i was and always have been pointing out the irelevance of the term warrior in this, and most other uses. this is especially true when warriors/heroes are only generally known after ONE heroic deed. all other cases of treachery or otherwise underhand deeds seem to be swept under the carpet. best example when a warrior like deed would be to murder/assasinate someone who didn't get on with your boss. a warrior, but not truely 'noble'. they are warrors by virue of them actually fighting for a living but they are far from the perfect characters that the modern world seems to portray them as. if you wnted good discussion about the actual topic, you would've been better off keeping the initial post purely objective, somewhere along the lines of: "how far would you go to defend what you believe is right?" or "does knowing martial arts really give you an extra responsibility over those who do not?" my first response when someone says this is: "name martial arts that were designed specifically for war".

whao there mama..... that sounds to me, like the general feeling of what was going on at the time. there was a case around then, of a farmer who had shot and killed one of two guys who were robbing his home. he was arrested and charged with (i think) murder. the general feeling then was that you were not allowed to defend your home, even from blatent trespass. take into account the old english saying "an englishman's home is his castle" and you get an idea of what that case meant to the british psyche.

no idea but i do know that genuine nice guys don't whinge about it.

the way i've always been taught to spin a staff involves both hands firmly on the mid of the staff, hands at shoulders width apart.

hmm, not sure about that, from the sounds of it, the forced rapid focussing would quicken the onset of short-sightedness.

how about you guys answer the why part as well? makes for more interesting reading than just putting down an animal.

well, then again, he also added moves to forms to make them generally more complete (in terms of range). y'know, actually, i think yip man is probably the cause for the big split and variety of versions of wing chun. as i said, he was known to have taught every student differently. i recall something being said of him not being a good teacher in that if you didn't understand what he was showing you, even after he has done most of the work for you, he'd give up on you and just let the other students train you. this goes back to the best/top students having their very own 'after school class. perhaps if he had a more standardised and less specificall specialised way of teaching, there would be less 'problems' as it were.

not to mention that our modern day martial arts are not war arts and the majority were never preacticed by any persons fighting in wars. if anything, our martial arts were mainly practiced by the rich people who had plenty of time to have such hobbies. so would "idle people's arts" be a better name for what we practice?

how about you ask if anyone's actually interested in hearing it first before going to all that trouble. i mean, only one person replied giving advice kinda says how many people 'care'....

acceleration is not speed. also, all of them physics equations are based on singular point masses. we are not point masses and how 'quick' we are doen't follow that not to mention that physical speed is not the only factor in being quicker or not. you can get a general idea about how much work it takes to move an arm or a leg but apart from that, it's pretty much meaningless. there's also the point that you don't always need to be quick if you are accurate and precise in your movements.

technically, wing chun didn't start in the shaolin temple apart from in legend. in that case, tai-chi came from shaolin scripts.....

i remember once, my friend grabbed onto the cage and used it to pull head about.... they're good as far as i've experienced, as they let you take full on (and give full on) face shots, which is good in terms of wing chun training but it does give you a false sense of what 'hurts' and how much you can take. bear in mind we don't always use the head gear. sometimes we just use the gloves and if we bleed, we just try to make sure not to get it everywhere. it's good to get hit properly once in while. i think.