Drunken Monkey

whoa.... did a kempo guy say "jut sau"? regarding boxers and kicks. in the uk K1 competitions, sometimes you get the occasional boxer entering. the last time i saw a boxer against a uk/full rules muay thai guy, the boxer had no idea what to do against the typical kick aimed at the thigh. he ended up dropping his hands to offer more protection against low kicks but that kinda left him open halfway for both high and low attacks. he didn't make it past that match up. and yes, his legs went very wobbly.....

the fence is a situational tool, it's used kinda in readiness for something happening without being overtly threatening. i'm not the best explainer of this. have a google on geof thompson and 'The Fence'.

the arm lock. its where you thread your arm under theirs and hook around to plant hand on his shoulder. his arm ends up bent at the elbow (or you bend it this way with free arm) and the upward pressure causes him to 'fall'. it's not really done on a standing opponent. it's kinda of a halfway move to affect more pessure to make him go down easier. normally you've already got his balance and are doing this as means to control further. this was shown to me by a hk police inspector by the way so it might be more 'control' orientated as opposed to 'take the guy out'. as well as the 'pure' execution of this arm control/lock, a kick to the back of knee to make him buckle or use of a police baton in the lock makes it easier to get him on the floor. *edit* it's not strictly a right cross from an orthodox. it's a 'pre-emptive' strike from the 'ready' hand of a fence.

control the shoulder... interesting. i have to say i've always be taught to control upper body by controlling the head and this aims to get them onto the floor. i take it your (basic) aim here is to hit them until they fall as opposed to making them fall then hitting them as they're on the floor. .....sorry for the messy english. you should get what i'm trying to say. MS paint? damn... i've been trying to use corel to draw things and it's bl**dy difficult. mouse or tablet?

hey there. y'know, the forearm is used in almost the same way as the elbow is or it is used as a follow from an elbow. on a bag, what i do is this: punch as you have then step forward with left foot as i elbow the bag with left arm. this gives more torque for the extension of the left arm which results in the forearm 'strike'. this makes getting them to move how you want to a little easier. of course you could skip the elbow altogether and go straight in with the forearm (wing chun faat sau style) to the throat. try using the opposite foot to elbow/forearm striking arm. see how it feels. for me, it makes me feel more stable and i aim to get them to fall sidedways as opposed to falling backwards. the thing is i'm not sure if you need to aim for something so specific as the throat for this to work. the head is pretty heavy and if you can get your hand/arm in a position to move their head, you're pretty much going to make them move. the thing with the elbow going in first is that it alternates the direction that they move. it kinda makes it harder for them to recover. also, as in your diagram, it is possible for you to thread your right arm under his for an armlock which the knock to the head will also help with. although i've only ever done this as a (compliant) drill. when pressure goes up, the thread to arm lock never seems to work...... tried it with pads and head gear and it turns out the arm lock isn't needed cos the head control takes them down (when i'm allowed to hit for 'real'). i keep meaning to ask you, what do you draw with?

but would you say that the same is also true for the more traditional arts? i.e 'traditional' martial arts are also misunderstood (or maybe just badly practiced.....)

not style-less. just not sticking to style as religiously as it was done at the period (during which he was initially learning/training). it was his belief that to say you are of a style is to deny yourself any of the credit, as it were. what he (based on wing chun teaching methods of yip man i should add) realised is that the individual has to learn not only to do the moves as shown be it in a drill or a form/kata but to know why/how they work and more importantly how to make it better to suit yourself. this is where the formless bit comes in. that idea doesn't mean you don't practice forms or that you don't practice any set moves. to say so is a gross misunderstanding. it is not no form it is supposed to be no-form i.e you fight/move not like the style but to do things according to the underlying principles of the style. in a way, it is suggesting you learn the things that the creators of the style did. far from saying that you only learn what you can get to work and ignore the rest, it is actually saying you need to learn a whole lot more than is taught these days. you have to kinda go back to the things that the creators of the styles did before they devised their system; you have to understand everything. that implies that before you get to the stage of no form you have to learn proper form; to understand why things work. when you know how/why things work, you can then do things free from the actual physical moves you learnt in training and start to use the hows and the whys. that is the 'limitless' that jkd talks about. you are not limited by the movements taught if you understand why you move like that. a bit messy but that is the difference between no form and no form which is why i get annoyed when people say that you discard moves in jkd. you don't discard. if you're going to discard it, why learn it in the first place? *insert nice story about ice cube in a glass of water.....* this is where it gets really messy. jkd principles has always been taught as a philosphy; a way of thinking. it is in fact, nothing new. everyone who is learning a martial art should be doing it in their training. i.e we don't all just imitate things like a (drunken) monkey. doing it isn't enough. as people like funakoshi, yip man and more recently, iain abernathy have been trying to get into us; to copy the forms/kata isn't enough. being able to perform a kata isn't 'knowing' the kata. it is this 'knowing' that jkd is pressing us to understand. so really, it doesnt matter how many styles you go through in your learning process; it can be one or two or twenty two. the point is, you don't just copy the moves.

.....i'm not sure what to think about this..... i think maybe you need to emphasise the 'game' aspect a bit more. y'know, get it into people's heads that this is not a serious self defence thing.

"And not anyone can call himself a Leung Ting Wing Tsun Kung Fu teacher he will have a lawsuit" and once again, so what? believe it or not, not many people who teach wing chun want much to do with them. for a start, not all wing chun is yip man wing chun. ignoring all of the bickering he has had with other yip man students; i have to say i'm not a big fan of his teaching methods. wing chun is supposed to be an instinctive, personal and quick system to learn. historically, it has been said that five years is all it takes to get proficient. in leung ting's organisation, it takes you 20+years to get anywhere near 'instructor' level. it's like the whole system is designed to keep you there as long as possible to suck money out of you. there was a period a few years back when they were adding 'levels' to their grading system on regular basic, which resulted in a lot of people requiring a few more years before getting their leung ting wing chun instructor title. is this a good thing? about the forms. it's not about size. it's not about striking higher or lower. it doesn't matter how big/small you are, your form will be the same; you pak sau to the same level, you fook sau at the same level, you punch at the same level, all in relation to yourself. what is different is in the details of how you do something, not where you aim for. famously, wong shun leung and tsui sheung tin did tan sau differently in their sil lim tao. the point was, that according to how each person uses it, and the situation in which it is used, the tan sau is different. both sifus had learnt to do it their own way. the only difference was that one start palm down, one started palm up. i'm pretty sure i do it differently to both of these guys, whose students probably do it differently to them as well..... wing chun was never ment to be a uniform style. it has been said that in leung ting's organisation, there is none of this personal growth. you are taught to move and fight like leung ting. is this a good thing?

....sorry, i haven't actually seen the american version of the ring so when i make mention of that film, i'm only talking about the original. also, the thing with the ring is that it deals with japanese mythology with regards to man/demons/ogres etc etc. a lot of the creepiness is kinda lost if you don't understand it like they do (and i don't but i'm a good empath... ) y'know, the whole 'sensing spirits' thing is deep in japanese culture and the whole demon thing is even stronger than it is in chinese culture. i mean, they have part of their creation myths based on demon worlds and all that and it's all pretty serious. i have to say, that the chinese versions are um, well, a joke compared to the truely nasty (and yet still quite normal and humane) japanese version of things. there's a sense that it's all just a series of unfortunate events that sadako isn't really a monster and that the real monster is/was the horrible step father/professor. it's very dracula/frankenstein in terms of the whole story. or am i reading too much into it....? anyways. "awwwww heeeeell no.....!" "why didn't you kill him, that's what i hired you for?" "wait a minute, he's a hit man too?" that little guy, can't act for poo but he can sure move.... ahhhh how about larry vs lateef *whack* *pause* "WTF" *falls* pure class. GF forever!

wrong forum.

......you don't 'discard'. to discard is wrong.

.....i have some issues with leung ting/kieth kernspecht's organisation (not the style/methods...) and i'm not the only one. emin boztepe left because of issues he had with them. when he left, he also took with him, quite a few highly ranked people. i mean, wing chun as a family of styles has within it lots of political issues, especially with yip man's first gen (well, a couple of them...) family/generation of students. leung ting's system has it's own host of problems. in a way, the way he's seperated himself from 'mainstream' wing chun schools is good because his internal political issues don't affect the family of styles as a whole. in direct response to your post. 1) trademarking a name means nothing. does it prove you are a legit instructor? of that particular group of schools that own the name, yes but what does that mean in the grand scheme of things? i.e is nino bernanda really gonna care if he;s not a certified ewto instructor? does joseph lee care that he's not a wing tzun instructor? 2) the forms taught by yip man have always been varied among his students. the students at his school were taught with reference to their personal nature and mostly by other students in a workshop environment. in that way, most students of that generation developed their own 'style' of applying wing chun (note i didn't say their own style of wing chun, merely style of applying...) 3) like the forms, the stance and how you moved depended on how you were. if a guy moves better with 50/50 weight and still maintains good structure, are you really going to force him to shift it all to the rear leg even if it means compromising his structure? as a result, some people stepped, some people slid, some people hopped..... 4) the only difference i have noticed is regarding when the dummy is introduced as a training tool. the first place i trained at, the dummy was introduced once we were beginning to move properly i.e step, shift, pivot etc etc. the dummy is just a training tool. it's purpose is to i) help you correct technique/flow/unit body movement against an unyielding partner. ii) get you used to atual range without a 'messy' partner ii) allow you to hit something hard with fear of hurting someone i.e who else is going to let you strike/elbow to the head/eye region, stamp on their knee, jerk elbow joints etc etc. it is used as an accompaniment to chi sau and like otehr aspects of wing chn training, it isn't by any means a stand alone training method. dummy feeds chi sau. chi sau feeds dummy. both feed sparring.

....well, the ring has it's moments. again, it's highly predictable and the structure is a bit off but then i think that's the manga culture influence. but then, we're talking about horror. what's the last good horror film you've seen? pah.... the best 'film' with martial arts in it has got to be "damn 3" who could forget: "la la la la la.... la cherie amore, lovely as a summer day....." ahem.... have you gotten round to seeing fireflies yet? my cousins' just got back from hk and i've yet to see what lovely japanese dvds they've bought back. last time it was the "tomei" series; not brilliant and rather funny for all the wrong reasons.

i've got ju-on on a vcd somewhere. i remember being very bored by it but deciding to stick it out due to um, quite an attractive girl in it. c'mon, you can't say the old one made any sense. i think the best bit was when the dad saw his 'future' daughter and the daughter saw her 'dead' dad. although this bit really confused a friend of mine who was and still is totally un-used to japanese film/fantasy..... i think dark water was slightly better as a film, although very predictable. well, it had me out in hk searching high and low for one of those bags...... nothing beats the ring in terms of 'modern' japanese horror.

there's one place near me that i think teaches wing chun very well as a self defence art. they teach the whole form and all the related jazz but when it comes to sparring/drilling they keep it very simple. a lot of it is based around simple step/pak sau/punch. y'know, the basics.... that work. a lot of the training is for receiving hard attacks under pressure. even the beginners are facing attacks at decent pace after three/four lessons. one excercise has a few of your classmates in front of you acting out a type of scenario where they are 'aggressive' (varying levels of aggression). one of them attacks without warning. typically, we have the attacker go for a grab on the throat cos it's not that dangerous, i mean, it's not like they're going to tear your thorat out. just make the light grab.... it works and really does give you an idea of how you might react, or not as the case might be. you also have to bare in mind, you DO know that you're going to be attacked in this excercise so you're kinda ready for it. more often than not, you'll end up doing a step/pak sau..... but this is more or less the self defence/fighting part of the training. we did do a lot of 'art' training as well i.e 'pretty' wing chun stuff. but we did these with decent pace as well. then there was the 'after class' lessons where we would maybe gear up and pound each other..... i know full well that this isn't a typical wing chun class. i would have to say that the sifu being a doorman has something to do with the way the class is geared towards actual use/effective use. the good thing is, i've noticed that more and more wing chun classes are going back towards a more real traditional 'fight' style training of first gen yip man hk students (wong shun leung, lee shing, jiu wan etc etc). at a guess, i would say this is because these classes are now being run by those sifus' first gen students who are by and large around 30-35 years old and pretty handy with their fists, just like their sifus before them were at that age. like i said before, self defence is something that you train for. it doesn't come from the style itself. i mean, basic tkd form is a series of blocks and punches (four direction punch+block) if you want to learn self defence you can take this and work with it and make it self defence applicable.

whoa.... a truely honest answer!

but the 'question' here isn't about a great instructor or not, rather a discussion about what are the ways of teaching and how they differ and what might be a better way. i'm quite aware that what/how you are taught and what/how you train is going be down to you, which your teacher should recognise and hence adjust to follow. i know that personally, i'm better if i'm shown physically how thngs work then left to disect what i've just been shown. for my own benefit, this is often where i sometimes take some time to think about what is going on in words. sometimes during training, i would actually 'commentate' on what is going on: it helps me visualise and remember. i guess that kinda puts me a little more towards the 'words' end of the spectrum but thats only at the beginning of the learning process. as i get more familiar with things, i can then drop the words and concerntrate on my hands. the 'words' just act as a reminder when my brain freezes and i don't know what to do i.e it gives me something to think about when i can't think.

hmm.... yeah, forms and flows i tend to visualise instead of performing them physically. i do however, sometimes count out the beats or rock/sway/nod my head along with the timing......

i'm not sure if the average wing chun school is going to give you fast self defence lessons. then again, i'm not sure if krav maga classes do either. self defence is a very different animal to 'normal' training. a style might be an efficient self defence system that has instinctive moves but without real SELF DEFENCE emphasis and training, it still means squat.

"there does seem to be an underlying intent with our actions" but most of the time, it's not a conscious thing and it is far froma display of martial prowess. going back to me fishing change out of my pocket; i do it in a certain way because it is more or less habit/reflex. y'know, it comes from having done it too many times trying to get it smooth and quick and clean. it's not really as overt as performing chunks of form as i walk. rather, it just looks slightly out of the ordinary. the same for when i handle a deck of cards. it looks normal except the is an added precision to it. y'know, everything looks the same. every cut i make, every time i flip the deck to shuffle, every card i draw off the top, every time i pick up the deck or hand it to someone; i use the same motions. no one, unless they know what/why i'm doing something will actually know what it is. and i do it that way because that way is 'normal' for me. of course, that is handling a deck of cards. with martial arts, i know it's slightly different. i've been told that i hold my wrists in an odd way, um... kinda like i have stiff wrists and this has an effect on how i generally move and do 'normal' things. but again, like the card handling, unless you know what it is about my movement that is strange, you're not really going to know that i do a martial art. like i said, it's not as if i am performing outright martial arts moves in the open. it's just my 'normal' way of moving. i'm not going to lie and say that i'm not aware of the things i do. i am fully aware that it might look odd; point is, in terms of moving and doing things, the 'normal' way no longer feels 'right'. i push open a door by placing my forearm low, elbow in and just walking, letting my hip structure and me moving forward do the work. it is easier and 'normal' for me to do this. then again, i'm pretty sure the style you train in has something to do with this as well......

so what tkd do you do?

wait you forget, this time it's an amazing tale about a guy who effectively fell into a mystic cult.....

well, when i said a student who works it out physically, i was thinking more of the guy who listens when the teacher says something, then goes off to 'work it' and work out things from it as opposed to the guy who asks all the questions that if he spent time doing the thing he was told to do, he would find out anyway. i guess the point here is, what is 'better'? learning all, then practicing or learning all by practicing? also, with the teacher, i think i was more thinking along the lines of, "can a teacher teach too much?" are there times when it is better for him to just shut up and let the student work it out (which relates back to the first pair).

the "dragon whips tail" i know is a hand technique that uses the stance you describe below "right forward dragon: stand square. step forward with your right, turn ankle 90 degrees to the right. draw left knee up to touch the bottom of right calf" but this doesn't sound like the dragon stance i know either. dragon stance for me is like the "front bow rear arrow" but narrower. more importantly is the way you move in and out of it. it flows as opposed to clunks; y'know, you don't step into it, you sliiiiiide into it (if that makes any sense).