ovine king

that is 100% valid but not 100% indicitive of tai chi and it's effectiveness or lack there-of. if a guy who trains for full contact mma fights gets beaten up in a bar, does that mean mma isn't effective for self defence?

you don't have to teach wing chun in forms either and there are schools of wing chun that have don't use forms.

i'm glad that some of you have done a little research and come up with a few, although unverifiable, sources of "traditional" chinese kung fu training. As I and a few others here have said on many occasions, I really doubt that many people these days train as hard as they used to. The exceptions, surprise surprise, are those who compete and hence in part rely on their fighting for a living. Strange that..... people trained hard in the past because they really did rely on it for living. People who train hard today do it because it is part of their living.....

Seeing as i am a stupid brit who has no idea bout these sort of things, I have a little question. Just what do you guys do in High School wrestling? What format is it? What techniques do you practice/train? How do you train? What is the focus of the training? etc etc. thanks.

slightly off topic but you're 18, right?

the thing with the chinese and their take on religion is that it is more or less part of their culture i.e things that can be taken to be religious practice is inextinguishable from normal customary actions. The chinese culture is more or less a mongrol mix of buddism, taosim, ancestor worship, belief in a kingdom of gods/demi-gods, legend is mixed with history, gods are mixed with real people and a whole other big mess.

isn't it easier to just go and spend the £5 (or the equivilant) and buy a pair?

hey, I'M allowed to mock wing chun...... Did i ever tell you about the time I was trying to convince someone that the bong sau has a weakness during chi sau? We were at it for about an hour, with him telling me exactly what he would do and why the bong sau wouldn't be used if it didn't feel right. It took less five seconds for me to show him the gap. There was no need for him to say a word, not to mention that I know the reasoning behind it anyway...... I still haven't told him what I did to get past the bong sau.

hey... what did you expect? He stared off as a wing chun guy; over theorising is a wing chun speciality.

daft question. it has no answer and can only be answered when it happens and even then, the answer might not actually what you intended it to be.

what does what i think matter?

so what other aspects of the buddhist religion do they practice?

...which is exactly why i get so narky when anyone puts any style from any country on a high horse and refer to things such as a "chinese style punch" or a "thai style kick" or a "judo throw". with few exceptions, none of these things are exclusive to any one style/country.

no. it is refered to as death touch because too many people don't know what it is and so end up spreading around things that are simply wrong and it gets taken to be truth, dim mak=death touch being one of them. on the other hand, there are points that if you attack are suposed to be able to cause death. these points are called (roughly) "sei yuet" and is only a poetic name refering to a point weak enough that if you attack, can lead to their defeat. To say it causes death is too literal a translation of what is, as i said, a poetic term. In general, it can also be taken to mean a weak point in any aspect. For example, one of my "sei yuet" would be strawberry cheesecake ice cream. in my opinion, this constant spread of the use of "death touch" is a result of the oft cited common disposition of people who don't want to actually work hard to get results and so believe in such things in the hope that it might work.

mix how?

dim mak does not translate to "death touch". dim mak translates to point/press/point (acu/pressure) point.

no offence but I have never encontered anyone who has said this. You yourself say that wing chun is appealing to you because it is so DIFFERENT. make up your own mind. I have no idea what the chinese martial art environment in like where you live but I like to think that I know a thing or two about chinese styles, especially two that I have spent quite a long time training and learning. one thing that concerns me is that you seem to have a emphasis on doing the fixed things of martial arts i.e lots of forms training, stance training fixed drills etc and I don't hear you talk about actual fighting aspects. while you need someone to show how to do something for the first time, you say that you already KNOW two forms as well as several loose techniques. At this point you don't always need someone to correct you but more importantly, I think you're better of having someone who can spar with you and get you to leanr how to use the things you know. That was what my post was alluding to. Simply knowing how to perform somethign is next to meaningless. no. I am saying that chi sau is not a reason to want to do something. am the only one who looks beyond the obvious? capoeira and wing chun similarites; use of fighting at incredibly close range from elbow contact to body to body contact range. use of technique that is trained to be natural instinct through practice in a safe "game" environment. use of control of balance and ways to disrupt balance though interruption and interruptability. use of cutting in, cutting off, sidestepping very similar issues with facing. Watch a capoeira guy move and check out how he's facing and draw triangles; what have you got? a VERY similar use of a centreline. I would actually say that wing chun and tai chi don't actually go that well together, especially if you don't have a strong foundation in either. Wing chun is a rather fixed structure thing whereas tai chi is always more fluid. Part of wing chun's power base comes from a rigid adhesion to a strong body structure that you carry by moving a relatively fixed hip position. Then there's the way that tai-chi ward offs are too commited for wing chun, always going/turning far more than you need to. The same can be said for other basic techniques. Also, tai chi has a rocking motion in several of their stance transitions, again, a big no-no in wing chun. the only way the two are similar is in certain issues with dealing with energy. However, the way that both actually apply the principles are very different.

i'll quote myself here and now i'll quote bruce lee. what you have done, by questioning the meaning of the name, is exactly the thing that you're not meant to do which is put meaning and significance to the name.

no it is not. fighting the shoalin way is nothing like fighting the wing chun way. The very reasoning behind wing chun is that it is first and foremost, UNLIKE traditional shaolin styles. and? i know quite a lot of forms from other chinese styles and as much as i train them, I will never claim to know them properly beyond the form itself. Learning a style is a lot more than just doing the form. Sure you can practice the forms as much as you like but that doesn't actually equate to much. chi sau isn't anything special and in my opinion, too much emphasis is put on it over the other training exercises. It is just an exercise. If what you were doing previously was a traditional shaolin style/school then you'd already have your own versions of such exercises. because techniques aside, they both deal with the same issues.

that has always been one my complaints with how tai chi is taught. in a typical class, too much time is spent of doing forms. In nearly all other styles, actually doing the forms is kept to a minimum in class, instead it being something for you to do in your own time. Class time is better spent practicing with other people drills and exercises but I hardly ever see this in tai chi. It's a shame. Sure, i know that correct form is very important but then again, as a martial art, so is the fighting aspect. It doesn't make sense to me to devote more time to only one aspect and ignore another. Two years is more than enough, if the training is right. Unfortunately, more often than not, it isn't.

was he? so how does that account for taky kimura? there is a difference between having resentment for another country (and things related to it) and being racist. Did he have predjudices? probably, as did a lot of (hong kong) chinese but that doesn't automatically make him racist.

shh, it's the little things like the wrist movements that mark out people who have actually trained in something and the people who just read books. Haven't you noticed that books hardly ever talk about wrist movements in basic movements? and before anyone gets narky; i'm kidding....

all chinese styles deal intercepting. the word that bruce lee romanised as "jeet" is better translated to "receive" (or even "catch"). Bruce, being someone who was trying to sell a product chose to use "intercept" instead because it is practically the same a "receive" but it sounds better. intercepting/receiving is a term used to describe the phases of fighting. It isn't specifically a term used to describe a concept.

that's not what you originally said. your first post said that you wanted a style to compensate for the "minuses" in wing chun, specifically more stances and high kicks. here's my honest advice. if what you want is lots of stances and high kicks then don't go to the wing chun and just do something else. if you just want something else to do when you are not in a wing chun class then I say, organise training sessions with other people are the wing chun class. if you want to train in something else as well as the wing chun, then go for the angola capoeira.

also, don't forget that at the time, martial arts in the west was generally only known as karate. Bruce was just putting his own slant on things in order to seel his product and mark a is being different as karate. Anyone with an ounce of experience in anything would know that a typical basic karate punch isn't that far off from a typical basic kung fu and more ironically, a wing chun punch. what's the difference? just the name.