Drunken Monkey

i highlight so that people can see clearly what i am responding to. it helps keep the post clear and make it easier to understand what i am refering to. he wasn't yip man's most exceptional student. he was 'gifted' and he really did want to learn. you have to remember that at that time, yip man had many, many students, not all of which were actually keen on learning wing chun as a fighting art. people with bruce lee's enthusiasm were rare (but not unheard of). it can be said that he was a favourite but again, this was more down to the fact that he was one of the few who would go and test his skills in real fights. this testing, as well as who he trained with is what 'gave' him his fighting skills. which brings us to the topic of what he learnt. wing chun consists of three hand forms, two weapon forms and the dummy form. as far as i know, yip man only ever taught bruce lee the first two forms and part of the dummy form. this was in the span of four years. like i said, what he did do that many didn't do, was test his abilities. he learning speed wasn't exceptional but he worked hard. what he lacked in knowledge/technique, he made up for with sheer ability. i.e what he knew, he really could use which isn't always the case with people who train in wing chun. (god knows i can't use everything i've been taught...) why did he teach wing chun? who knows? whatever it was for, it wasn't just for any one reason. the most famous of the people who bruce lee couldn't beat was the guy who really taught him wing chun. wong shun leung was the person who actually taught/trained bruce lee while he was yip man's school. but then again, being one of the few guys who attended the after school classes, bruce lee had the opportunity to cross hands with people like, wong shun leung, cheung hok kin and cheung chuk hing; guys who participated in the famous rooftop fights on a regular basis. my 'problem' is almost the same as yours. you don't like to see people 'bash' bruce lee. i don't like to see people give more credit than is due. and it matters to me. the point of places like this is so that people can share things that they know of. sometimes, the result of this sharing is that people offer conflicting statements. if i see something that i don't agree with, i will point it out and give reason as to why i do not agree. i expect others to do the same to the thing that i post. if i am wrong, tell me cos i'll sure as hell tell you if i think you're wrong about something. if you don't tell me, i will just post that incorrect statement again elsewhere and what good will that do? is that really unreasonable? debate about a topic shouldn't involve emotion beause we are discussing a 'dead' thing, normally about events, facts, techniques. it isn't personal.

from what i have read. General Choi Hung Hei trained in shotokan under Funakoshi. This is what he taught to his soldiers under the name of Tang Soo. according to his words (translated) "....I wanted to create a new Korean Martial Art that was based on scientific movement and containes a mentality fit for Korean soldiers. I researched and practiced and refined this new art fer nine years. In 1955, I created the Korean Martial Art of Taekwon-Do." but then, is the Tang Soo he taught the same as the Tang Soo Do you guys are talking about? i have no idea. my knowledge of TKD is very limited.

i don't have any belt in any system. i've asked patrick to keep me permantly on white but he said he doesn't want to mess with the posting/belt thing....

perhaps i should just keep quiet. my big mouth gets me into all sorts of trouble. gotta train my EQ.

what can i say? i'm grouchy in the morning and ever since they closed the little high street post office, i've had to queue for way too long at the big one in the town centre. anyway. where do i make a mention of him being an actor? where do i insult him? where do i diminish him? everything i say here is, apart from my little conjecture about the fight situation, has been shown in other sources. you are right. i don't know you or how you train. am i full of myself? maybe. or is it just confidence? i'm not setting out to argue with you. but when i keep seeing the same old things being said (not just by you) without any background knowledge other than what is presented by representatives of the bruce lee estate, i get 'twitchy'. this isn't a personal attack. rather it is targeted for all of the people i have ever had say to me, 'yeah, i know wing chun' and couldn't even stand in stance properly, couldn't step, pivot, punch, couldn't 'walk'.

Linda Lee Cadwell was in a docco saying that Wong Jack Man spent most of the fight retreating from Bruce and Bruce had to chase him down. i'm aware of that. but then again, you have to be aware that she would most likely defend her husband. i have read in other articles about the fight, that wong jack man was keeping away from where he knew bruce lee, due to his wing chun, would have an advantage i.e close and in his centre. retreating? or playing tactically? depends on who you ask. Can someone clarify for me when he EVER called himself a wing chun master? Book, documentary? anything nope. he never and couldn't in any way call himself a master. and that's kinda the point. he never really got that far in his wing chun training and yet he was able to tell it was lacking? despite him continually 'losing' to a great many of his seniors? if wing chun was so lacking, how did this keep on happening? Fair enough, though there were witnesses and there are exerpts so how come none of these people can actually agree on anything? no records of how long? no records of anything happening other than wong jack man keeping distance and bruce lee chasing. And you consider any form of fighting proper proper fight as in toe to toe match up of abilities. not what sounds like a schoolyard scrap. It's not a fight I would have taken part in, but much was at stake, and Lee felt the need to teach actually, i think he never expected it to go that far. he was by his nature a very arrogant and boastful person. he started to teach people his kung fu because it got him the attention that his personality craves. unfortunately, the teaching caused a few people to frown which in turn resulted in the fight. he could've backed down and said, "yes i'm sorry, i am not qualified to teach wing chun" and then that would be the end of that. he could've still gone on to develope his jkd concepts. no one could really complain then. after all, it would then be his product. but of course, again, going back to his personality. he would never back down, would he? If it happened, then so be it. Wong Jack Man must have left the target open i mentioned this not because of any construed honour but because taht is the only detail of a decisive hit being made in the fight before what sounds like a ground and pound situation. I will concur to a midpoint on this matter. Neither of us know the details, and neither of us know how good Lee really was with Wing Chun... what details do we need to know? he did not get halfway through his wing chun training. he did not know wing chun like his seniors did. he was consistantly beaten by his seniors. it's simple. he didn't know half of the style. therefore he thought the style was incomplete. (or was all that he said just marketing for his new product...?) y'know, half a cup will always be half a cup. but in studying it, it does seem incomplete, and even before studying Lee I felt that something was missing in everything I read or spoke about involving the arts this is you speaking of your 'experience' in wing chun. also, you have said before that you have never stepped into a place of training before. very little real experience and yet you area able to deduce that wing chun, as well as all other martial arts, is missing something. no offence but we (as in people who train in a dojo, quan, dojang etc etc) see people like you nearly everyday. you read your books and you copy the moves. that's fine. do as you please. but please have the respect (for us who literally bleed to learn the things we do) to not use words like 'learn' or 'study' when the fact is all you did was read about it. while i'm at it. i'm not insulting bruce lee. i never questioned his ability. what i do question is his knowledge of wing chun. once again, i point to wong shun leung. go find what bruce lee had to say about him. what i also do is point out points of contention in the typical bruce lee worshipper's arguments. i guess i could just leave it alone but what good would that do? in my old wing chun class whenever we have a guy who read a lot of wing chun come in we would make sure he gets the worst days of his training life for that first few days. its to get it through to him that all the reading in the world means nothing. sure he knew how to 'do' the forms and all that but when a real beginner can hit, control, take down and generally embarrass the guy using pak sau, punch and step; three little things, well, it makes him realise how little he really knows.[/i]

i call him a worshipper. part of the intent is mockery. part of the intent is to sneer. is it degrading? maybe. if he wants to worship bruce lee and from his choice of words i don't see otherwise, so be it? his choice. i don't even care but at least offer good debate. i haven't gotten any of that yet. in fact, all i've seen so far is what every other person who falls in the 'worshipper' catagory gives when such topics come up.

isn't it strange how the top jkd guys all had a proper base in other martial arts before taking the jkd road? do you think that helped? or would they have all gotten to the same stage if they didn't learn from their instructors? let's take two people. stick one in a room with every single jkd book out there and every bit of equipement he could ever need. tell him to learn jkd. now take another person. y'know, the good old identical cloned person..... now stick him in a room with dan inosanto and tell him to learn jkd. who would you put your money on?

i'm misinformed? the wong jack man fight offers nothing except that bruce lee won. by all accounts it wasn't even a proper fight (don't romantasise it by calling it a 'battle'). chasing each other around like little boys? i seem to recall something about hitting him in the back of the head? and wong jack man wasn't even a 'rival' as you put it. he was merely someone who stepped up when some guys proposed the fight. (....this was before Lee reached his martial peak), he felt that it had taken far too long to win with Wing Chun yes. like i said. he wasn't exactly an advanced wing chun player. he didn't know what to do, not because of wing chun's failings but because of his own failings in not knowing all of wing chun. anyway. looks like we have another worshipper in our midst.....

....well, that's the thing. it is long held that the reason that bruce lee found traditional (and for that read chinese) martial arts to be so fixed and dead and what have you, is because he never got anywhere near the later stages of his training. i mean, he left after learning the second form, which does not mean he 'mastered' it. if you look at his jkd concepts and the freeing yourself from the style, it does read just like wing chun (and from i gather, kempo...). in direct relation to wing chun, the things he couldn't figure out were things that were answered by the third form. haven't you noticed how little he used his elbows in his films? no third form....

Lee intended Jeet Kune Do to be a base and way of learning the martial arts that would be practical and require only hard work a teacher is not always needed to learn so how do you learn the martial arts without someone to show you what they are?

**edited cos i missed a post** (sorry. i was more addressing the more general issues that are associated with the padded sparring debate) i am fully aware that locks cannot be completed to the fulest because of injury but that's a slightly different debate. besides, i'm not nearly qualified enough to address that area hey, i'm not saying they don't exist but do you really need to do them to the extreme? i know, in a life or death situation you will do what ever it takes but again, they are only dangerous if done to the extreme. it is not safe to stick your fingers in someone else's eyes but if you don't even approximate it, what's the point of 'pretending' to practice it. let's not even go into the mentality of doing something as intrusive as that. i don't know. maybe i say this cos of how i have trained in the past. i don't like to talk about things that i cannot do. i don't care if i have all sorts of eye pokes, throat grabs, arm breaks in what i train. if i don't know 100% that i can 'do' them, as far as i'm concerned, i don't know they work (for me). i have done the headgear and gloves thing and i have to say that there was very little i couldn't do to my sparring partner. the best thing about padding up wasn't that i could use the 'deadly' techniques, the best thing was being able to use BASIC techniques to the fullest. i could punch your head targets repeatedly as hard as i could. i could elbow your head targets repeatedly as hard as i could. i could really jerk on your head as hard as i could. i could drive punches into body area as hard as i could. the next best thing was that the same could happen to me. everything i could do, my partner could do too. what did i lose? jabs to the eyes (which i never do anyway.....) kicks to the knees that would cause damage (not that i don't kick to the knee...) hits to the throat (but i kinda do these without padding anyway... well, how I attack the throat...) it's not much compared to what i can still do. the problem with light sparring is that you can never approximate what happens when you get hit, when things don't go according to how you want. this is one of the problems inherent in chi sau. it is, at the end of the day, a game. it translates into fighting but it doesn't have the same level of pressure. sure you could apply the pressure, but then it is no longer chi sau. (please forgive me non-wing chun guys for breaking into wing chun talk...) sparring in this way also tightens up your game. normally, during un-protected sparring, you play at the edge of your range. (but may not always be the case; depends on your style) protected sparring closes that range up. for a style like mine, that is a very important aspect. and the fact that you can go in a little harder, you can begin to see what does or doesn't work. AND because both sides are 'safe' your partner is going to be more willing to 'absorb a few hits, again, adding pressure. end result, you make sure that you are doing more than enough to take him down. you don't stop the hit in front of his face, then both of you pause while you do a little display of cyling in front of his face. you punch the front of his head gear (caged in my case) and proceed to rock his head with continuous punches until he goes down. breaking into a lock if his arm presents itself or kick his knee if he begins to buckle and turn; do what-ever you can see/think/feel. also, because you are going in harder and going to be taking actual hard hits, everything about you matters more. your stance really has to work. your footwork has to be light and natural. your balance has to be good. you body structure has to be correct. timing, technique, execution, angles, everything is worked in a way that no other type of training works them. ok, you don't have to do this. training without this type of pressure is fine but it only gets you so far. the best way to really test your martial/fighting arts under pressure? fight. next best way? fight with padding. dont get me wrong. i'm not saying that this is the be all and end all as the guys who've been here longer will know that i'm an advocate of all types of training. just saying that there is a lot to be gained from it. AND it isn't really valid to say that it hampers you in any way. padded sparring does have its flaws. but then so does unpadded..... they both show you different things and becaue they show you different things hopefully, you will learn different things from them. **edit number two** i have also just re-read this thread and realised that i have taken a massive tangent from the topic....

you don't really need an instructor for JKD so um, who do you get to show you how to do the moves properly in the first place?

is immitating the same as learning? one thing that a secondary source can never give you is feel.

depends. if not being able to 'complete' dangerous moves hamper your training, then how come the grappling guys do so well? i mean, the majority of their techniques breaks bones/joints, cause unconsciousness etc etc. i don't see it as being a valid excuse and yes, i think it is just an excuse. like delta said, why can't you pad up, even just lightly to test moves? you don't need to go full on body armour and all taht but why can't you get yourself a hear gear of some sort and a pair of decent gloves. so you can't do a few moves but so what? are you saying that the basic moves of your style don't work? that you have to do 'advancced' dangerous techniques to win a fight?

for crying our loud, don't post passwords.

....what it is called depends on where you come from. generally, i think you'll find that when translated, it still comes back to being 'three-sectioned-staff'. anyway. well, if you hold them as two separate sticks, you're still using three sticks.... the thing that gets me is that even when you are 'throwing' the three, you are still using it as a fixed weapon. hmm, but then again, there are whipping/flexible moves too..... well, if the nunchaku is considered a lexible weapon then i guess the three section is too. or maybe it's both.

.....in relation to grammatical forms and differences in language. as i mentioned elsewhere, the grammatical form of chinese, especially the poetic form, was based on confucius' 'style'. the scriptures, being chants, were translated then 'reformatted' to fit with the chinese poetic structure to retain it's 'flow'.

not really. the chinese term for fighting is a descriptive term and doesn't really have any moral implications associated with it. hmm, well, there are kinda two terms for it. the poetic version when used to describe a contest between two people in a noble way is 'bei mo' (compare-fighting). the not so poetic term for just plain old fighting is 'dar-gow' (hit-conflict). like i said, there is no moral implication of good or bad there, unlike in the english.

not really. the form of the translation is of the old poetic format (which is the thing taht hasn't changed since confucius) and actually follows the original text quite close in meaning. but from i gather, it isn't a direct translation of meaning rather it is translated into an understandable form. as for the original buddhist text. i only know of it with the cantonese name.

i'm really tempted to say yes. hmm, make that a provisional yes for now. how close are you to the site? i can get myself to dartford quite easily. it shouldn't be too hard to get there from the crossing.

um, not sure i get you properly. by 'structure' i mean complete body structure, not just about the lower half. the phrase is 'from the ground up' but it is actually talking about your body. it doesn't actually have much to do with power coming from the ground. are we talking about the same thing?

i know. i was just pointing out something about the chinese langauge and how it is in a way, along with chinese culture, entwined in chinese martial arts. i'm not sure if the same could be said about the japanese styles. oh. oops. i just re-read MJ's post. ok. my bad. but the thing is, at the end of the day, the words are there to help understanding. what's more important is how to actually do it and the chinese white crane guys are very hands on. one thing that has also puzzled me is what exactly did the okinawans do with the white crane text? did they get it translated? or did they try to 'read' it? and y'know, i haven't actually seen okinawan karate but i have seen white crane kung fu and i really can't imagine the karate looking anything like the kung fu.

my 'copy' is a photograph of the original and it is supposed to be one of the ones hand written by the emporer qian long. now admittedly, that's not too long ago but as i keep saying, the characters used hadn't changed much since the unification of states+languages in 221 BC which took the writings of confucius as it's focus. i.e you were 'copying' confucius. in fact, the education system in hk still bares the 'scars' of that same teaching method.

oops. yeah, typo. i meant civil. anyway. don't care too much about them.... engineers in general. grrr.....number crunchers, the lot of them. and whaaaaat? oooh, you mis-understand, i was talking about the lack of girls that take the I.T courses..... it should've been explains the lack of girls on the course honestly.