ovine king

double hit? um, no offence but that sounds like a really bad misinterpretation of the physics involved...

....let's not forget that we see many people take serious multiple blows to the head and carry on fighting/moving. a single instant hit, no matter how grounded you are, isn't really going to stop them from taking you down. all of the wing chun guys i know defend against a take down by essentially sprawling or by taking a backstep into a deeper longer stance whilst trying to divert the rush in (or get out of the direct straight line of the rush). not many advocate trying to stand their ground and 'fighting'.

east london..... there's bob breen's acamedy in hoxton. he is a very, very scary man. do a google. you should get to his site quite easily.

let's not forget that some of the major schools of 'ninja' were established by samurai....

y'know, i've seen a lot of things that show that shurikan were used in the hand more than they were thrown and they're a useful bit bigger than what people see in the comic books. of course, i could be wrong...... can anyone confirm this?

crikey, did you just revive the oldest thread in this forum?

chinese martial arts tended to be practiced in the courtyards of the their home/school/quan. the main doors of the quan were usually kept open to allow people to look in. this was for the general practice. usually, there was a closed off room within the main building where the sifu could if he so choose, teach advanced forms. there was no need to hide things in forms. they had a nice room for this. hence the term 'closed door'. the organisation of forms seemed to have mainly happened during the last 500 years in china due to the growing need to have a simple to learn and organised teaching system that you could take around the country with you. those who know about the history will know why this was needed.

that's just one story about the origins of one mantis school's style.

"Stealing and unecessary murdering, They are the main two which made them so different as, at that time, all Japanese MA kept to a strict code of Honour." nope. totally wrong. samurai were not known to be nice people. in fact, they were known for raping and pillaging the small villages that surrounded their 'base'. the code of honour that you mention, the budo, was a system that was imposed onto the samurai class to assert some sort of control over them. the difference between the ninja arts and the other arts is that the ninja arts had elements specific to their job eg. how to climb onto a meiji era traditional japanese palace roof. shooting arrows from that little bow whilst crouced in akward positions in odd places. "No they either worked for them as assasins or spies(Major Ninja clans), or they hated them for being the 'top of the people chain' and they counted the days until the age of the Ninja (These were usually single Ninja or solitary schools)." this is supposed to make sense? samurai did not hate ninja. at the later times when more of a gap developed between the two, their respective jobs were different. why would they hate each other? because samurai had 'power'? what power? they had a higher social class (not the same as power) but this was slowly being eaten away anyway? age of the ninja? what trash is this? even if they took command somehow, it would still be meaningless because command does not equal high social status, not to mention that as i said, people of the samurai class could be ninja. spies? anyone could've been employed to do work as spies. all it takes is a little intimidation. how about you pick up a few history books instead of comic books....

stay away from me? why? well, i've also noticed that also seems to attract a certain type of man as well...... paul smith extreme is a more 'man' smell. anyway. i wouldn't get anything that has a scent for use in the training hall.

well, you don't trap with two hands anyway so one hand will always be free, else you're the one who's trapped.....

how come no one seems to talk about the good ol' jutte?

if you're doing that from a trap (the trapping hand) then i'm guessing you mean you've switched hands and just 'shot' the free hand to the jaw area whilst walking forward.

also, while it's nice and simple to say "tke what works" from all of the styles and have one style made up of bits of others but in reality, you have to relaise that styles' 'flaws' are often addressed by other things in the style. i.e if you take a working technique from one style and ignore the other bits, that one technique might not work with the other bits from other styles that you might've collected. easiest example would be to take the fixed elbow principle and try to apply it to something like yang tai chi with it's 'floating' elbows/arms. both work, but only in the context of its own style.

....kata is japanese..... mantis styles tend to be chinese...... you're better off calling it a form. anyhow, do you remember the name of the form?

well, there's also the simple fact that whilst all styles do have their basis on similar if not the same principles, their interpretation and execution of them are different. i'm pretty sure that my idea of a soft deflection is going to be different to a tai chi's soft deflection which is going to be different to how the kempo guy does it etc etc..... styles are grouped and seperated because they, as whole, work by itself. this is a white crane technique, taht is a wing chun techniquq, that is a karate technique. they might not look the same. they might not work in the same way. but they might all be based on the same principle. the 'divisions', as it were, are a good way of noting how the same thing can be interpreted and executed.

personal gripe..... don't use kata when referencing a chinese style..... i'm curently in the process of discussing my starting in a mantis class local to me. i'll let you all know how i get on and whether my scrawny wing chun * gets handed to me on my first day!

ooooh, not sure i'd agree with that. tai chi is done slow to begin with only to ensure that you are doing it properly. after you re familiar with it, you don't concerntrate on anything. it isn't about keeping a clear mind, it is, like a great deal of other martial arts out there, about not having to think to react. it is because that tai chi has a very heavy emphasis on body position that you spend longer doing it slowly. the thing is, you can train in the same way in karate. in fact, i'd argue that karate should probably be a lot smoother (tai chi like) than what we see today at the average tournement where clear precise separate techniques are encouraged.

tai chi is at the end of the day a fighting art. if you can't fight with it, it ain't tai chi. that is probably the only thing i would like to see; more emphasis on actual use of the styles. how many so called tai-chi guys out there know that they're actually practicing arm breaks, joint locks and throws? if you practice a fighting art but don't know how to fight with it, is it still valid?

and in that single post i can tell that you know very little about the origins of chinese martial arts. chinese forms were never about hiding things. it was to record movements in a way that enabled you to practice in an organised fashion. if they didn't want to show you something, they just wouldn't show you. it was never 'a sort of dance'. of course there's the dancing as done in the imperial palaces that were based loosely on martial arts; well, they sometimes had weapons but that's something entirely different.

it's not that. it's the fact that the things that we practice today as chinese martial arts only generally date back 500 years or so. just so you know, there are no chinese records of single fighting systems that date back 3000 years. what they do have are records of army organisation but that is nothing like what we would call 'martial arts' today.

not always. whilst samurai were a social class and as such almost an entity in itself, ninja could be anyone, including a samurai. ninja only describes one who is doing covert work. sometimes, that person needs some training in order to help in that covert work. that is ninjutsu. not all ninja know ninjutsu. not all who know ninjutsu are ninja. a samurai asked to go and assasinate a rival under cover would be a ninja. a shop owner asked to keep track of one of his customers would be a ninja. of course there were specialist people who's sole job was to carry out these kind of jobs (ninja clans). then there's the shinobi...... so, ninja and samurai aren't always as different as you think.

mestre bimba organised a whole load of pre-set sequences to practice your moves in. you could say that they're 'two man combat drills' i think there are 8 main basic sequences. it kinda acts as a bridge between learning the moves and learning how to do/use them and using them 'for real' in the roda.

you can't really put all mantis kung fu into one catagory. you can't even really differentiate betwen morthern and southern. it really depends entirely on the school. in general, the key components to most mantis schools is heavy/hard forearms, close range shock power, low kicks to hip/knee/shin/ankle (occasionally chest), trapping, elements of stand-up grappling (albeit things that work with their primary hand techniques), reliance on structure and mobility of structure. in short, it is very wing chun like but a little more eccentric in it's execution. in some styles there is a lot of conditioning work involved. personally, i've only ever seen three mantis schools in my area(ish) that are reputable. it's not an easy one to find. on the other hand, there are also northern shaolin schools that teach a mantis style but i've never been sure if this is proper mantis or just another bastardised wushu form.

name ONE chinese martial art that is 3000 years old.