Drunken Monkey

hmm, as far as i know, the three section staff is not a japanese weapon and as such wouldn't really feature in a karate demonstration.... and um, what do you mean by chane? cane? staff? the thing is, before you learn any other long weapon, you're supposed to learn the staff because that is where everything comes from. the flowering, weight control, blocking area, attacking area, parrying area, stances, body movement and all that stuff is all learnt with the staff. unless of course, you aren't learning how to use the weapon, just how to make it look pretty... but then what would i know?

depends on what you are looking for. from what i gather, there ARE reputable schools in china but i'm not sure you'll find them easily. in fut shan, there's a school of wing chun guys that teach the early wing chun of yip man from before he began to modernise the forms and remove excess. the five big familes still have their schools there. there's also the jing wu school of fok yuen kap. it's just most of the schools left china and moved to places just outside of mainland (hong kong, taiwan, macau etc etc) there are plenty of good schools in england. shaolin has a good school in london. wing chun is everywhere. eagle claw has a good school here. mantis has a good school here. i'm not convinced that the old chinese sifus are neccessarily going to be the best teachers (although the ones i mentioned all are tied to the original chinese sifus...). for a sart, not understanding the language is always going to be a hindrance, especially when the concepts and phrases do not translate well into english. you will always be losing something in the translation or else spend too much time trying to understand what is being said. either way, you lose. again, i stress, it all depends on what you are looking for and why you are looking for it.

in relation to the title of the thread. i don't think anyone can really just learn to fight without exposing themselves to the other aspects. the moment you start learning any fighting art, be it boxing, muay thai, jkd or whatever, you are learning what you can do, where your limits are and how to push beyond those limits. you learn to be efficient, precise, direct. you refine and redefine the techniques so that you can use them. you think about how you an use them. you think about how they can be used against you. i don't think the fighting style is an art by itself. painting by itself is not an art. instead, it is you and how you learn and choose to express the way that makes it an art.

again, some actual content might be nice. as opposed to blatent baiting/insulting/whatever. i tire of this already. maybe it's cos i'm getting old now but i'm not going to get drawn into empty arguments with someone who seems to be trying to win points as opposed to bebating them.

this is bait. i am a fish, blub blub blub. well, actually i'm not. this is getting silly. are you actually challenging me? on a forum? to a fight? and you call me a kid... you are the one who has the cartoon character name and the obsession with turtles and ninjas. i'm just some dude who likes to see solid arguments as opposed to unsubstantiated cow dung.

if you do not understand the importance of 'body mechanics' then there's not much for me to say. there are many here who have much more experience than me and when they say that learning how to move is important then i tend to go with them. in the mean time... yes, i have a lot to learn. yes, i am a punk-* kid. yes, i run away from fights. yes, you are so much smarter than me. if you actually posted something with content we could all benefit from your amazing wealth of knowledge on this matter. imagine what we could all learn from you, if you would only stop giving us very generalized remarks from what seems to be based on bruce lee books....

simple answer is: it depends on how you train. if you are a tai chi student and you train applications then i don't see why it would take you longer to defend yourself. it has been said that the most important factor in training is you. if all you do is run through forms ten times a night, 47 seconds for each form, with no consideration for what the forms mean then hell, i'll come beat you myself.... we try to get people to be able to defend from day one (whether you can or not is a diffrent matter...) forms always comes later. the first things we do are punch+receive+stance. pak sau+punch is the one thing that we do everyday from the first day we begin. you could say that everything always goes back to pak sau+punch.

i've said it before and i'll say it again. there are probably more mcdojos in china than in america. put it this way, if hundreds of thousands of people turn up in your neighbourhood every year asking if there's anywhere to learn martial arts then pretty soon, martial arts schools will open where there were none before.... don't hold too much faith in the shaolin temple as it is now. you have to remember that this was pretty much a cash cow for the government.... don't get me wrong. you will get to learn proper shaolin forms and stuff but i don't see the point as you can learn shaolin from lots of other very good sources, especially in the west.

not quite... kung fu can mean 'hard work' but it is used to describe the thing that needs hard work. um, let's see. if i was to praise your cooking i could say that your kung fu is good. if i was to say that the plasterer is good i would say he has good kung fu. so it isn't really a literal translation but the meaning is there. when i say your kung fu is good, relating to cooking, i am actually saying that you must have spent a lot of time and effort (i.e hard work) to get good. um, it's more like kung fu means 'hard work spent usefully'. if i say your kung fu isn't enough i can either mean that you need to work harder or perhaps you need to work differently. it's complicated. not much translates well from chinese to english.

best of his time. stick him in a fight against modern fighters and how would he fare? how would he do against a bruiser like tyson? how about against a brick wall like lewis? you seem to forget that what makes jones jr respectable is that he proved (to a degree) that weight/size isn't that important (or perhaps it would be better to say that he proved that the smaller guy can beat the bigger guy). anyway. you can't just take people of different generations and use them in a straight comparison. it's like comparing a model t and an lp400. both are good but only in their relevant context.

whoa. you don't think that knowing how to move and what happens to you and your opponent when you move is most important? what good is punching if you don't know likely reactions? what good is a punch if you do not understand how to move? what good is a punch if you do not know how move to and from the position from which you punch? tell me what aspect of training can you do PROPERLY if you do not understand the body?

um, can you refrain from citing bruce lee too much, especially when it's slightly out of context and slightly misunderstood. it doesn't present a good image of you... here's a novel concept. how about instead of just bashing what people say, you tell us of your accounts and experiences? i mean, what better way to prove that tkd doesn't work in a fight than by telling us how you got your butt kicked when you tried to use tkd? oh, unless of course you've never tried it...

well, i don't naturally have any problem with wushu. or even the people who do wushu as long as they recognise what they do for what it is. i mean, after all, they are all highly trained athletes with way more dedication and they work their arses off. much respect is due to them. what i don't like are people who take wushu to be a fighting art and then cite it as representative of allchinese arts (i.e dumb ignorant ucks). name famous wushu guys and look for what they say about its fighting ability. i guess the most famous son of wushu is jet li. even from way back, he never claimed that his wushu has made him a good fighter.

not really. kung fu, gung fu is just the closest romanisation of the chinese (cantonese to be precise) of a term used to describe any skill that requires time and practice and effort, normally associated with the chinese fighting arts but can also be applied to anything from driver to decorating to designing.

what kung fu?

nah.... big family. i always have somewhere to live. if anything, i can always stay with the 'missus'

here's a semi-wild idea. i think the apparent lose of interest in karate, in younger people anyway, is because in the matrix, neo said 'i know kung fu'. imagine now, if he said 'i know karate' instead....

its the same thing with wing chun. people see chi sau and think that's wing chun fighting. people see the roda, especially when they see beginners do bimba's sequences and they think that is all there is.

not quite... when chairman mao took over, he effectively banned anything that can lead to the people rising up. certain classical teachings (martial arts, religion and generally anything that is 'anti-communist' or anything that can lead to a community/grouping beyond that of communism) were restricted and then banned. a little while later..... they realised that they needed something to strengthen the peoples trust in them. they needed something to promote that is chinese, for morale if anything. what they came up with was the teaching of what they then called quo-shu (national art) which was supposed to instill some sort of national pride. this title was then changed to 'wu-shu' for a reason that i cannot remember. now while these arts look spectacular, there was always the reminder of what happened with the boxer rebellion, hence the wushu forms, which you must remember were chosen by a panel of government recognised individuals, were not in any respect fighting forms even though they might contain moves taht resemble 'real' techniques. also, the teaching of this new wushu was not focused on anything other than the exhibition of so even if there were legitimate techniques, the performers, which is what they were, were unable to use effectively.

but wushu san shou is not the same thing as wushu. it isn't even vaguely similar.

oh nonono.... nothing like that. homeless as in training. i haven't done chi-sau for about a year.....

.... so without having actually spoken to him, you already know that you will not "receive a well constructed, intelligible sentence in return"... if you're going to make this kind of judgement against someone then at least go and speak to him first. after you have heard him ramble (or not) for a while, then i would say that you are qualified to make a judgement. before then any judgement is unbased and unfair.

um, there's a place in london behind soho that has the korean bbq. i'll have a look for it. it might be dinner if we ever sort out the meet.... if not, i know a great little japanese restaurant right next to goodge street station.

well, i'm pretty sure most of us will look like a fool there..... but latest report on that. i've had a look around and while i know there is a club there i can't seem to find any real details. i hear there's alos a place on brick lane at the old truman brewery but again, can't find any solid evidence. but from the sound of it, you're quite keen on giving it a go. hehe, i just always wanted to try it but never had the incentive. damn, them guys are hard to find...

not just today but for the last sixty/seventy years. wushu means something very specific and it is definitely not fighting. taking the name wushu and applying it to your club is a sign that you do not understand fully the implications of the name as it is now, nor do you understand how the name as used in the past. in the past the arts were called wushu very loosely and very rarely. they were almost always refered to as kung fu and probably even by the actual style's name. you don't say you learn wushu, you say you learn hung kuen. you say you learn wing chun. you say you learn shaolin. if you were being general, you would say you learn kung fu. also, the only times that i know of that 'wushu' was used, was to refer to the old stage/street performers. make of that what you will.