Drunken Monkey

sigh... it's hard to believe that full grown men can get so attached to what literally is a piece of wood.... when you've had a long day, have just gotten home and need to release some office/school 'stress' old woody in the corner is there for you. when you need to clear your mind from all of that autocad, old woody in the corner is there for you. when you get up and are feeling a bit off, old woody in the corner is there for you. when you've had an argument with your girlfriend and want to forget about things for a while, old woody in the corner is there for you. the first thing i do when ever i get back from my travels is say hi to old woody (actually he's called tim in my house). sigh... broke my heart when i first noticed a crack on my first one.

well, do you know if thre are any wing chun (or jkd) people that might use the hall? if there are then try to get hold of a decent wooden dummy. i know they're a bit pricey but it is so much fun. IF you do find that your budget can stretch for one then don't tell anyone you're getting it. this is going to sound a bit lame but the wooden dummy is like part of the family to us wing chun guys. when-ever and where-ever we see one, even a manky old one, it's like seeing an old friend. so, don't tell anyone you're getting one, then watch their eyes light up and that smile appear....

i don't get it. why would being half thai, half chinese make you raise your leg?

well, if all you want is to learn to fight quickly then i say forget any formal training in 'style' and just find a willing partner and fight. it still seems to me that you don't really get what air drills are for. it is a completely separate entity from bag work. you can't compare the two at all because they achieve different things. you even said it yourself, punching a bag helps develop power. punching the air develops precision and form. you need both power AND correct form so you need both forms of training. fighting ability doesn't even involve these two things either as like i said at the beginning of this post, if you want to learn to fight quickly, go and fight. nothing teaches you how to avoid hits like actually having to avoid hits.

like i say i'm not anti-book. just not too keen on the way some people are when it comes to martial arts and books... tofu what do you mean not too useful?

but telling you 'more power' without telling you how, is a bit useless. explaining and telling are two very different things.

just because i can, doesn't mean i always will... just because i don't, doesn't mean i can't...

i think someone's mentioned this before but how do you differentiate between 'cross-training' and training in multiple styles. for instance. i mainly train wing chun and have been for quite a few years now. on the side i have learnt some choy li fut (ng ying kuen) some hung kuen (gung gee fook fu) tai chi (chin na) and currently take part in kickboxing classes and have trained with people from other styles (boxers, tkd, katate, judo). BUT i don't think i have 'crossed-trained'. what i have done, is expose myself to other arts for the sake of having a reference point (and a hell of a lot fun despite the bruises, thanks to michael and pops and 'sifu dave').

everyone wants to but how many are ready. you might think you know better but you have to remember the guy at the front does actually know what he is doing. if he lets you spar too early, you risk getting into bad habits and you lose form. if you want to go and fight, you don't need to go to a karate lesson. just get yourself some gear, strap up and spar with your friends.

its hard to be the best when you're dead.

i thought the hakutsuru was the name of a kata, not a style....

so the greatest fighter is probably not some unknown shaolin monk in china...

'bo staff'? someone's gonna get a little annoyed at that...

just so that you know, there aren't any 'real' shaolin monks anymore... the temple, as you know it, is an organisation set up by the current chinese government to promote (and for this read, 'make money from') chinese culture/history. if you want, you can £3000+ to spend three years training there. not sure i'd recommend it though...

hmm, i wonder how many of the tai chi teachers know that the chi in the name isn't the same as the chi that you practice.... as for a translation. well, this is how i make it out to be (in cantonese). 'tai' translates into something close to 'grand'. we refere to our great-grandparent as 'tai-po '(roughly). 'chi' is something like ultimate/extreme/very. i think the 'grand ultimate' comes from the meaning rather than a direct translation.

built a stick. probably underweight.

all very valid points. like i say, i am not anti-book. you could be right. maybe i just haven't seen a book good enough. but then, doesn't that actually mean that considering the quality of books available, it is not good to put too must trust in their teaching ability? i think one little problem with the debate as we are having it, is that we are all looking at the question from the perspective of people who have spent real time practicing martial arts. jerry has said that he has learnt to fence from a book, with a partner but i would say that he was able to do so only because he already has a practical base in martial arts (if not because of then it must have at least aided the process). as i have said before. i am only really against the people who would copy the moves from a book and then claim to be advanced students. too often i have some guy say those words that make me cringe... 'i saw this in a book' and then was forced to witness the poorest execution of technique. what saddens me is when they go on to decide that the art from which the move was taken is deemed useless because of the guy's poor understanding/execution.

why don't high speed trains have seltbelts?

actually i found that not many could speak english... except for this old lady who worked the checkout at that little shop at the 'bottom' of mount fuji, where the buses stop. y'know, where you buy the little egg souveniers.

i'm not an anti-book guy. i'm anti ' i can learn a martial art completely from a book' guy. as for what you can learn from a book. well, in classical terms you are learning the external aspects of the art; what the thing looks like. it might look like wing chun but i can bet you that a guy who only learnt purely from a book will not fight like a wing chun person. we spend god knows how long doing the most mundane thing like punching (as you must have seen me rant on about by now...). how long do you think the average person will spend doing this when he has the complete 'advance form' in front of him in a book. (and you have no idea how often i've come across a book student who doesn't even realise that a punch is the most basic wing chun 'block'). my point is there are very strict limits to what you can learn from a book. in most cases the apperance of the moves is not half as important as how the movement is done. it is hard to see from a picture in a book whether a tan sau comes from your centre, from the side, turns on it's way out, turned before extending, elbow pushed in or turned as you rotate wrist etc etc. even in a video where you might be able to see how the movement is done, you still cannot see where the 'force/pressure' behind the movement comes from. sure you can read in a book somewhere that you 'relax the shoulders and let the tan sau come forward as you move the elbow' but are you really going to know 100% that how you are doing it is good enough? the worst thing i have come across is a kid who knew all of the forms and could do some very pretty things in the air with his hands BUT his feel was completely off. we had to take him back down to the basic moves to get his stance+movement balanced, something that he couldn't check having no partner or someone with enough experience to offer good resistance. needless to say his attitude to this wasn't great because after all, he 'knew' all of the forms... anyway, i am just offering one story. i'm sure you can learn about wing chun from a book but i just don't think you can learn wing chun itself.

if your flight really does crash, are those little seatbelts really going to save your life?

well, no ONE person invents a martial art. it takes a group of people to test ideas. however it started, i can bet you that it wasn't from a book.

like you say. not real. you can't really learn any martial art from a book. all you will be doing is copying the moves with no real reference to the physical aspects (balance, structure, weight, force) that you need someone with experience to check.

you can't learn wing chun from a book.

well i am simplifying it somewhat (in terms of wing chun). remember the first saying of wing chun, 'receive what comes'.... it kinda depends on what you are comfortable doing. i am happy to let guys aim for my centre cos i'm confident that i can defend it. it's just slightly easier for us (and for some people) to not let them have it in the first place. or we let them work along it then 'steal' the centre when we need to. after all, it doesn't matter too much unless they are about to hit you.