GTF

that was also my impression

it was a pretty funny film

Kung-fu dates back thousands of years so if it could cause injuries(assuming it is practised correctly) this would have been picked up and because these people practised extensivly there whole lives they were very fit and because most of them lived away from cities they did not suffer from maney diseases because they were not in close confines with lots of other people so many of them would have lived long lives so if it was bad for you they would have picked it up by now. also my sifu's sifu is seventy eight and still very fit and suffereing from no injuries. also i am fairly new to kung-fu and i can manage about 1 minute 20 secods at the moment (legs parralel to the ground) and buy febuary next year i want to be up to 5 minutes (ive started training quite hard recently)

i heard that it's dangerous to use the cranes's beak attack on a punch bag, what do you know about this. a picture of the technique is shown below. http://mk29.image.pbase.com/u44/foxchest/small/28618718.jpg

i can do it

i've just got back from my hung-gar class and we have just been practising joint locks and there are quite alot of joint locks and take down manuvers and ways to hold people on the ground as well as the neck breaks and limb brakes already mentioned so there is a little bit of grappling sort of stuff in it. also have to agree with what people have said about stance training(get ready to be sore the next day).

in Hung-gar we are told that most of the power comes frome the stances and the body.

are there any ways to strenghten your wrists first before doing alot of bag work to reduce the risks, i think that there are some joint strenghtening techniques in Kung-fu which is what i study so maybe i should talk to my instructer about it. also are you saying that using a punch bag will inevitably cause damage or just if over or incorrectly done. p.s you mentioned that when you did boxing you only used a bag for the length of a realistic fight so how long is that in boxing. p.p.s i have no intention of having a career of doing tourniments and things while i am young, i want a skill i can keep up with for pretty much the rest of my life like many people do for example my instructors instructor who is 78. p.p.p.s i am talking about a free standing back not a hanging one(wave master XXL) if thats of any use.

yes we have the lau family flexible staff.

so what should i avoid doing technique wise and should i only use it for a short time at first and break myself in before going all out. also after using it my knuckes are a bit sore but i asume this is normal for the first time that i have used one but i have been told that punch bags are good for conditioning the fists.

are there any risks with using punch bags such as damage to wrists or knuckls and aurthritus in later life or any thing along those lines.

my sifu mentioned something about getting some body armour sorted out and testing our skills so i asume that he was talking about sparring. could have some thing to do with changing the man he trains with. i probably wont get to participate though because i dont even have half a years training yet.

very well put

my sifu's wife who also practises the same style refered to him as a master once but then said that he does not like to use the title.

Congratulations

elbows_and_knees as you said that sparring in one martial art can help with another i will take up karate soon as well. thanks for your coment.

i asked my sifu about sparring last night and he said that he does'nt like to use sparring in hung-gar but he uses it alot in wing-chun and karate so it looks like in the foreseable future i will not get to sparr with hung-gar but i am giving serious consideration to starting karate as well as hung-gar when i get to around my yellow belt because karate seems to resemble hung-gar. he did say that we will do alot of training involving pads and things just that i havnt seen this because i am new so at least we will get the oppertunity to do some things at full speed and power which may be slightly more realistic. one point my sifu did make and he aplaid this to all martial arts is that sparring is not totaly the same as being in a real fight because there are rules and no one has hidden weapons and there is protective gear etc. also can sparring in one martial art make you any better at using the techniques in another because i supose that it will still improve one's relexas because this is one of the reasons that i may take karate as well.

KF dude how long did you train before you started sparring because it may be the case that we only sparr at a certain level for example there are no black belts in my class so we may only start after black belt level, this would explane why i dont see any one ever doing sparring, just a thought. also do you sparr in your regular classes or do you do it seperately for example with friends from your club at home or something, but i can imagine that expert supervision is important when sparring with any martial art. i am going to my hung-gar class tonight so i could ask my intructor in more detail about this subject. i also found out from another topic on this web-site that there is sparring using weapons have you ever done this before. thanks again for your coments. P.S was sparring something that you can decide to do or is it part of the cilibus.

i'm left handed to and i can imagine it would come as a surprise to most people because when we do drills at kung-fu i often start with a left hand punch and occationally it is met with the wrong hand making it less effective(because i am at a low level i usualy have to train with lower levels so they arnt always ready for every thing)

KF dude i havnt learned alot of it yet and i asume that you have but all of the kicks that i have done so far have been intended for the knees or groin which seems kind of nasty for sparring with but my judgment may be missled because i am sure that there is alot left to learn and there may very well be some kicks and other atacks that will not cause serious injuries so i will just have to wait and see about that. i must say that i am fairly new to martial arts full stop so i dont know much about other styles so the fact that there are no martial arts that are to dangurous to sparr with i will just take your word for. i would be interested to know why mine and ninjitsus instructers do not teach us sparring but yours does and its not that my instructor is against sparring because he teaches sparring in other arts unless maybe it is simply because he was never taught sparring when he learned hung-gar. thanks for your contribution KF dude because you actualy have studied the art before making a coment. P.S am i spelling it wrong because i have spelled it Hung-Gar and you have spelled it Hung-Ga

i will start by saying that perfection is inpossible to achive, so you all know that feeling when your working towards something and when you get there you seem to be bored because you have nothing left to do then you should aim for perfection because you will never reach it so you will never run out of something to do. as for a perfect art it cant exist, as i said perfection is inpossible.

i dont under stand the principles of the style very well yet because i am very inexperienced at the moment, maybe another year or so yet i can imagine. but i have considered taking up karate as well which is taught by my hung-gar instructor and i am pretty sure that they will sparr with that so i may start karate as well, when i get up a few levels in hung-gar of course (yellow belt maybe(getting my white belt soon).

with all due respect those of you that have said that people should sparr from looking at your profiles you do not study hung-gar so you may not know enough about it to say that. i am not suggesting that you dont know what your talking about but there is one other person on here that has done hung-gar and agrees that it is to dangerous to sparr with. also this may sound kind of silly but if i was to cross train with another art at some later period and sparr with that would that make me any better at hung-gar because i would still be practising to throw punches and blocks even though they are not the same ones because i have to say that sparring looks like fun but it is not tought in my current martial art although my instructor practises karate and wing chun and i am sure that the sparr in them. it must be said though that some of the people at my school that are at higher levels despite not sparring are still capable of blocking full speed punches from practising against partners. this may also sound kind of dumb but when people sparr nobody ever seems to get hurt, a friend of mine that does kick boxing said that he has never been seriously hurt so how hard do you actualy punch each other because you need to make it realistic without serious injuries taking place. if any body could tell me something about it or give me some advice it would be greatly apriciated.

i have been hearing alot about iron skin, body, head, forearms and fist and things to that extent both on this forum and at my kung-fu school. i was wondering if any one could actualy tell me what it is for and a little about it pleas.

i just take a botle of water