ovine king

where abouts in london are you?

no. the term "master" is not used (unless in a western/english speaking environment) and you would be very hard pressed to even find a term that translates directly into anything that resembles "master". si-fu means "teacher-father"

the vtaa is a sort of umbrella organisation that most of the yip man students 'reside' under.

i know tan tui. specifically, i know the sup yee lo tan tui. it is a style all by itself but is also sometimes used as a "basic training" in some schools before going onto more esoteric forms. I did the tan tui as basic training for shao-lin. during my tan tui training, i did in parallel, some shoa-lin sup sik as a 'hard' counter art for the more flowing tan tui forms. this is where i am confused. tan tui is probably the most common set of forms within long fist styles. mantis is not a long fist style. Even northern schools of mantis has a clearly short bridge flavour to them. Without knowing what mantis it is you are doing, I am not the best person, despite knowing tan tui, to answer. what is it you are having problems with, the mantis or the tan tui? are you having problem performing the tan tui set or having problem applying it? or are you asking what the tan tui set is?

i might have misread your original post. do you practice all of these forms or do you just know of their existance? i ask because i am quite surprised that many of them, in particular the ones i high-lighted are clearly chinese (named) forms. i was just wondering what differences there were between the original chinese version and the ones that now exist in the japanese/okinawan schools. the one that really surprised me is seeing Shouting crane" as it is similar to the the names of forms within one white crane school that i know but it isn't actually one of the forms (if that makes any sense).

just want to point out that the crane.50megs site is very biased towards the chinese styles and should not be taken to be absolute fact. the simple fact that it is generally agreed on that ng mui did not exist kinda puts a stop to this line of supposition anyway.

i'm going to do the usual pointing out that neither the japanese term used in the teaching of their styles, nor the one used in the chinese schools is the term "master". this is purely a western term.

i'm going to do the usual pointing out that neither the japanese term used in the teaching of their styles, nor in the chinese schools is the term "master" used. this is purely a western term.

i think it is all too easy to blame the school for the lacking in the training of the individual. In my experience, if a practioner of any style is lacking in any dedpartment, it is usually down to their own lack of work. In general, the art itself hasn't change much. How the individual trains is a different matter.

i think a lot of people have taken the wording of the title of the thread and imbued their own bias into the discussion. All i see here, is that someone is looking at how to practice the basics with an actual context i.e take that basic punch and put some esistance behind it. Does the fact that that punch might deviate from the non-resisted form, mean that it is no longer the same as the basic version of that punch done in the air? If done correctly, when-ever you perform a so called advanced tenchnique, the basic technique is still in there. Then there's the case that I believe that up a certain level, basic training should be something that is done outside of the class and class time should be spent of more 'live' training or else you are wasting valuable 'partner' time.

and I'll point out that a lot of what is taught under the umbrella (western) term of martial arts, was created and refined by civilians and were never taught to armies as their main form of fighting method. i.e they are not martial in the dictionary sense. In the case of the chinese name for these arts, being traditionally wushu, the wu is only loosely translated as being "war". Even then, the mean, not the translation, is closer to plain old "fighting".

we've been through this before. nearly all chinese people know that Hung Gar is a martial art style and is the same as Hung Kuen. If one was to say that they were from the Hung family (as in surname) they would state so "Ngo sing Hung". And no, I was specifically talking about "chuan fa chia". I have never heard of it, just as I have never heard of chia being used a a suffix for a specific style (i.e hung kuen chia, wing chun chia). as i have already said, i have only ever heard of it used for the very general description i.e wu hok chia (studies martial knowledge) ngai sut chia (studies arts)

so if the chi model isn't described by the 'usual' physics models, why use it as a means to give a possible explanation of chi? if chi doesn't follow stand physics rules, why does a physics related statement give room for chi's existance? If i was to choose between a reason based loosely on what is essentially bad physics and the 'traditional' chinese explanation of chi (being that it "just is"), i'd much prefer the ambiguous chinese way of thinking. I do not like these ways of supporting an argument, by which i mean taking a known physical/mathematical process and taking it as the reason for something to be true or false, mainly because the resulting argument is usually just another example of bad maths/physics. Relating to th subject of chi; in the chinese arts, there is only one chi. What you do with it is what varies but there is ultimately only one chi. Incidentally, I was addressing that quote of yours directly. What you did in your post, was to change the topic. According to the quote, you can train to affect matter/energy because they are interchangable in physics models. I am simply stating that this is false. In fact, I think that trying to look for holes where chi can be squeezed into, is often the wrong way to look at things. The two clearly don't mix so why use one to explain the other? Yea the body maintains itself but how does this give rise to an explanation and proof of chi? Sure the body knows that it needs food, rest sleep etc etc. Only problem is that the classical ideas of chi claim that cultivating chi can lead to virtually eternal life without need for sustanance, something that surprisingly is never brought up in any discussion where one tries to give a scientific explanation of chi. If the body's act of maitaining its internal balance, observed as a healthy balance, then does that mean that eating citrus fruits, and ingesting vitamin c, a known factor in improving the body's immune system, is a way to cultivate chi? Before this discussion gets taken out of context, it isn't what you are saying that I am in disagreement with as I am one who believes that what chi is needs to be understood on one level or another. The thing I don't agree with, is the means taht some people use to attampt to give credance to their argument by way of association i.e physics is a semi-known subject, therefore i will use physics to give an explanation of chi and thus my argument will have more substance. I also have a thing against all those who claim that x and y is possible yet show no evidence that it has actually occured in previous examples. In the case of the quote you gave, all that was said was that the model that they looked at, left room for the POSSIBLITY that the base form of the energy can be manipulated by training and then leaving that possiblity as being a fact.

this intirgues me, in particular the phrases that i've high-lighted. could you tell me more about these forms and their origins? In particular, what do you know about the "shouting crane" and do you know anything that might be translated into "sleeping crane" and "feeding crane" and a few other similarly phrased terms?

..well, I ask because I don't want to seem to be mean but that quote doesn't actually work by which I mean that what it says, is impossible. yes, matter is energy vibrating at a certain frequency; incredibly over simplified and not taking into account other things that come up when you look at mater/energy at that level but true to an extent. The problem is what the subsequent remark is claiming, specifically that you can train yourself to manipulate that matter/energy. What is the reasoning that you can train yourself to do this? And what matter are you affecting the change? The matter that surrounds you? The that isn't energy as described in the traditional chi model. Are you affecting your own matter/energy? Then doesn't that mean that as you increas your energy, you decrease your mass? Maniplute the basic energy? That basic energy being matter? Or the energy that becomes matter as it vibrates which again, is your own matter. What he is claiming in that statement, is that it is possible to train yourself to affect base particles. Now here lies the biggest problem. Affect base particles is something taht can be measured/observed relatively easily. So where are the people who have trained to do this? If you can train to manipulate energy/matter on this level, you are literally talking about being to manipulate matter. We're not talking death touch here, we're talking changing lead into gold type manipulations. In brief, the subsequent claim is based on a not very good understanding/description of the matter/energy model.

well..... not really; you still tend to say that "they practice chuan fa". I have to say that I have never never heard "chuan fa chia" used in any context, which now taht I think of it, is more true. It is the context that makes the chinese and japanese different. In the chinese, the chia (if i am thinking of the same word) means "of the family". In the case of the chinese martial arts, the martial art is considered the family, which is why it isn't used as a suffix to the name of a style. In the japanese case, the arts themselves (i.e karate) are considered the family. .....which now that i think about it, means that it isn't the word (ka/chia) that is different but the subject that the word is used to describe.... As you pointed out, the only martial art related term when that is used, is as a suffix to wushu/wutao/wuhok. In the other example that was cited, when someone says "he is hung gar" (in chinese) it is actually a shortened way of say "he belongs to the hung gar (family)" and is usually used in context of being a reply to a question. You wouldn't really say that you are hung gar (as in "I am hung gar"). Instead, you'd say that "I am a person that belongs to the hung family"). Alternatively, you'd say that you practice hung kuen.

Is it? The big point that i think you have missed, is that fighting whilst on the ground, IS taught except that other wing chun people don't go around proclaiming it to be PROPER ground fighting, nor do we go around saying that it is on the same level as a full on ground-fighting/grappling art. Even you have gone as far to say that the ground fighting that you practice, is on one level, how to hit someone whilst one or both of you are on the floor. Correct me if I'm wrong but don't all wing chun styles teach you how to continue the fight once: i) opponent is on the floor ii) you are on the floor? In fact, all martial arts should be teaching these stages of fighting and this is the crux of the debate. It isn't that these elements aren't there in the system, it is that in most cases, these stages aren't taught purely because of the incorrect assumption that once one of you is on the floor, the fight is over. The two biggest and most prominant examples is the tai chi puch hands game and the wing chun chi sau game. Look at the competitions of these and you'll see that the situation gets worse. If we apply your logic to what we see in these games, then we can say that both tai chi and wing chun don't actually contain striking. You seem to imply that just because you can apply chin-na in wing chun makes wing chun grappling. Only thing you have missed is that chin-na is a seperate entity. If you are doing chin-na locks and stuff during wing chun, you are doing just that. It is chin-na, not wing chun. Granted that there are certain locks and controls and throws that seem to flow more easily during certain movements but that doesn't mean much. Within the core forms of wing chun itself, there are less than 10 arm controls/locks/throws and even then, these are secondary techniques to the initial contact. Again, I'll point out the title of this thread is grappling. Show me a wing chun person that has grappling aspart of their syllabus and I'll show you a person who has cross-trained outside of wing chun.

something that needs to be repeated many many times: we are not point masses.

so are you in agreement with that quote or are you just posting it to give another persepctive?

there is a fundemental reason why ground-fighting in the form of the gpalling arts usually seen outside of china is hardly seen in the chinese arts but this takes some explaining. ever since Confucius's ways of teaching were adopted and taken as the model of chinese (let's call it) nobility, certain ideals were taken both metaphorically and literally. One of these things, was that man should be able to hold his head high, to stand "with you head holding up the sky and your feet firmly on the ground" (translated from chinese phrase). As a result, all of the "high-arts" (for example have a look at the correct approach to chinese caligraphy) have an emphasis on being standing on two feet and also goes in part to explaining why the only proper ground fighting style has the given common "name" of "dog boxing". Anything that required you to roll around the floor was deemed to be of the common and low class people (which again points to the chinese snobbery against the minority chinese of the period) As for the earlier comment of chin-na being applicable on the ground. on a very BASIC level this is true. the problem arises when you go into the techniques in a more detailed fashion and start to see where it is you are affecting (and effecting) when you apply a technique. As ultimately the lock/siezure is working on a joint, the lock/siezure works on a structure that is assumed to be standing on its two feet (which lines up the body in a certain way). When that body is not on it's feet, the muscles/joints are no longer working in a certain way (i.e you can twist more and be twisted more and differently becuse you are no longer on your feet and thus your hip isn't that fixed). Granted that there are a few types of locks that can be applied on the floor, getting into them from a position of the floor isn't natural (becaue tehy rely on an opponent who is moving and extending) and because of the displacement of the hip structure, isn't as stable anymore (those here that actually know chin-na will know what I mean). The point is, chin-na, on all levels was never designed to be used when not on your feet against someone who also isn't on their feet. Some of it works but then again, you can do pratice forms in freefall from 10,000 feet but that doesn't mean much. Remember that the topic in question, is GRAPPLING not ground fighting and the simple FACT is, grappling does not exist in the common chinese styles and it is nowhere as advanced as it is in the japanese derived arts. The chinese never took it upon themselves to persue something that involved rolling around the ground because it was against their basic cultural ideals. Again, if you look to how some styles are described, the ones that do have movements on the gound are often described as "perverse" (in the traditional meaning of the word). For the record, I was taught grappling (as in chin-na) and how to flow from into and from these things to further the striking process or to take down or to breaking something and I'd like to think that after nearing 15/16 years of this, I know more than a thing or two about the chinese arts and their development. I'd love to ask you for more detail about your wing chun training but i gather that on these forums, such questioning isn't always appreciated. In any case, you have stated that you've only ever seen it; as in, you don't actually know what it is that they were doing so me asking for more detail probably wouldn't get me much.

true but that is a very very generalised term. it's usually used to talk about being a person of the martial arts or in the cooking arts or in the musical arts (as the term literally means "family" and implies being of that family) in the case of the japanese version of the term, it is more specific. the difference is in the use of it in terms of grammar and subject which in turn means that there is no equivilant in chinese.

most important thing is never stretch a cold muscle.

the operative word in your post being "could". too many variables to say anything. if the whole thing can be worked into what the thing is now, there is no reason for it to do anything the main art. at the most basic level, it is a safe envirnoment in which you can work some of your techniques and methods. the problem arises when PEOPLE decide that one is better then the other and divisions appear. No one tells point sparring people to only do point sparring. That is something they they and their school decide to do. The art hasn't changed and as long as people keep to how things are and just ADD the competion version to it, instead of making competition a separate entity then not much should change.

there is no leopard style. the leopard as mentioned in five animal styles is a way of describing the intentions and principles of a particular movement. As such, any movement from any other style can also be catagorised as being a tiger type move or a snake type of move or what-ever. This is the same for the rest of the animals. Now granted that there are certain individual animal styles that are designed to work by themselves, the leopard from the five animals form cannot be isolated because that form, is designed to work as a whole with the rest of the 'animals'. The use of animal titles in that form are a result of designing/teaching/learning that particular form. Instead of saying something like: "if your opponent is cloing very quickly and hard, you need to use a whatever block to grab to disrupt opponent's balance to get your strike in" you can simply say "use snake or dragon principles to clear+receive then enter using tiger or leopard" less descriptive but it allows for the learner to see things differently and get's their brain working slightly differently.

i have never heard this. the proper way to say what it is that you do, is to simply say that you "train in *" (*insert name of style). thus, there is no chinese equivilant of karateka; you simply state that you learn/practice what-ever style it is you do. This is not true. In conversation, there is a proper term for 'skill' that is used. The term 'kung fu' is hardly ever used unless in a martial art context (and maybe two other cases). When it is used, the meaning is often one of slight mockery or false familiarity.