Drunken Monkey

it just isn't the same if you're not on the dancing stage machine with the music booming out at you.

well, like most things in wing chun, it looks dull but it works...

how about the chinese 9foot pole wing chun style? or even just the shaolin style with the long pole? i have to admit i don't know much about karate's use of pole weapons. if it was a chinese staff style against the chucks, i'd have to say the pole will win.

and they never bother to find out what sil nim tao means...

just what i wanted to hear. well, like i said, it almost counters most basic chin na techniques which is always a good thing. them things hurt like buggery!

is that john g from memento? cool film...

well, that just goes to show how much you know doesn't it. and that's just the thing i was talknig about. too many western guys selling it on soft, relaxing form and not knowing about the joint locks and breaks and throws. and despite what you might believe, many of these techniques do not take many years to learn. how can you puch if your wrist is broken? surely YOU have a response to that?

it sounds to me like you know very little of other styles. you say you do not wish to offend but you insist on calling other styles' training methods "stupid" and you have no idea what katas are for. just so that you know, muay thai is not the only martial art in the world that uses knees, elbows grabs, grapples etc etc... maybe you would like to learn a bit more before saying your art is the best, because let's face it, that is what you are saying.

wow, imagine if it were like china in the old days, "kick door" all over the place! sure would weed out the crap though.

the only little problem i see with taking bits from arts is that you might end up with a group of individually effective movements that don't work well together. and lets be honest, most styles have answers for most situations only you as the student aren't shown all of the answers because you're not ready for all of them. i mean, why teach you 100 responses if you can't master three of them? traditional arts are far from outdated. it's just that the average student today doesn't have the patience to learn all he can from one style so he seeks another style to fill in the gaps. this is good because it teaches the student another perspective but it doesn't mean the older style is useless.

sorry, just trying to lighten it up a bit.

er, no muay thai is from thailand. both of the others have a chinese origin.

well, like the advert says good things come to those who waits. in our wing chun, the first thing we do is punch. week after week we punch. after about three weeks a lot of people will have gone. that 's when we start something else... well, slight exaggeration but you get what i mean.

we're lucky enough here to have a direct representative of yip chee keung here in the uk that teaches. mantis was one of the styles i always wanted to learn. i intended to learn mantas after my wing chun but the way things are going, my training in wing chun is going to take longer than i originally thought... but i am young. and it is never too late to learn.

well, we were asked to do a demo of wing chun once. as you know, wing chun isn't much to look at so we just made a little two man fight sequence of sorts. what we did was to just take some movements and link them and then just work out the counterpart for it. unfortunately, we went a bit wrong on the day and had to do a bit of improvisation that turned into a bit of free sparring...

*wow, you're incredible* *are you listening to the music?* *love is the power*

the ones with the hook on the nearside of the grip for turning on your thumb... well, you might have figured that we use them in wing chun and it's often regarded as the highest level training set. some will argue that it's biy gee. i'd argue that they are the same but that's another discussion... what do you want to know. there are lots of us wing chun guys here who can answer your questions.

just a few things first.... the "flying" bits in crouching tiger. well, they're not flying, it is an artistic impression of the grace and abilities of the ones who train hard in their art. would you have enjoyed it as much if they just climbed clumbsily? and who can doubt the sheer power of the whole scene. in the cinema where i went, yes people made comments but this died down a few seconds later and the whole theatre was silent until that last drumbeat.... and just to point out, chow yun fat never did any formal martial arts training. nor was he very educated in his youth. that's what makes his success so much more poignant. excellent actor. hard boiled and the killer. nothing made by holywood matches them.

well, that's the thing, there is very little documentation of any fights between bruce and anybody. this is slightly dubious because i)if bruce beat them surely the foundation would tell people ii)if you beat bruce, surely you'd tell people even if you take into account the wish to not disrespect people/clubs/style/organisations, it is still a little strange that there are no records of ANY fights. make of this what you will.

something else just came to mind, do you guys use your thumbs when you grab/grip? cos we don't (to allow you to slip from chin na techniques) but a friend of mine says that they do cos it gives you a better hold.

the point i was trying to make was that there are hardly accounts of any actual contests between bruce and anybody else. the only sensible conclusion to this is that bruce never really took part in any challange fights apart the famous one. unfortunately there does not seem to be a reliable/accurate account of what happened. if you want names who of people who beat him, well, wong shun leung used to do it on a regular basis.

as the wing chun butterfly knives?

i know what you mean. i mean, have you tried to explain to someone that you concerntrate on the elbow moving and not the hand?

uhhh.... in one word NO

it is widely known that the wushu arts that are taught in china are not much more than acrobatics. the punches and kicks are loose and a bit messy and there aren't many usable techniques and it IS more a dance than anything. as for bruce lee beating everyone who challanged him... well, i challange you to name all of these fights and who they involved, how long they lasted, styles used etc etc...