Drunken Monkey

the point, as understood by many, is that if you have the ability to change things or make a stance, in this case have a certain degree of say by a vote AND you don't go and vote, then i say you have no right to complain when things aren't to your liking. if you want to abstain then go anyway and mark down more than one candidate. at least that is what happens here in the uk. you have the option to mark down more than one candidate. in that case, the vote is counted in the numbers but is recognised as a (can't remember the actual term) 'non'-vote.

um, please excuse the ignorant brit but i find it kinda disturbing that the whole election seems like a game/competition. (but i could just be infuenced by the media portrayal of things) also, i'm not sure if i like the fact that the winning party/person gets to have total say afterwards. i.e after winning, he has no opposition.

just to point out. the armour as worn by regular foot soldiers, no matter what division they were from, tended to be quite light and wasn't really that restrictive. in the case of imperial guards they did not really serve to fight wars. their job was more to protect the emperor. war fighting armies were under command of generals, who often held more power in this regards than the emperor. an educated guess was sumise that their chosen style involved knockdowns because this would prevent a rush attack by an individual (remember, the emperor hardly ever left the confines of the palace and so an attack would almost always be by an individual intruder or very small numbers) so that the other protectors and palace guards could come and subdue. i've mentioned this before but the only known style, ignoring actual war skills like archery and horsemanship etc etc, that I can think of that was known to be taught to the chinese armies at large, was the original shaolin longfist sets (after yue fei i think.... or was it someone else from the fist soong dynsasty?) the whole shaolin burning, traitors teaching shaolin to the armies is sketchy so i'll leave that bit for another time..... there were always stories of other styles' being introduced and certain styles being taught to local peasant militia but it wasn't systematically taught like longfist was.

er.... if you're doing hung gar, then sometimes they also refer to 'face', which doesn't really fit in what i've said before.

here's what i don't get. why do people assume that tkd guys WILL use high kicks and jumppy spinny stuff in a fight? cos they do them in demos? as it has been said, don't assume; it makes an '*' out of 'u' and 'me'. thank you david brent....

hmmm, xiong chuan, so you couldn't type things from your own learning about this.....? anyway from a wing chun perspective. four gates. the body is divided down the middle by a 'centre-line'. the body is also divided into upper and lower by a line across your navel. two lines, divides into four gates. (top, bottom, left, right) this is a ver basic view of things and doesn't take into account a 'middle section' or 'inside/outside' but in most cases, good elbow position and common sense takes care of this. bridge is simply the forearm. specifically, it is the connecting/meeting of forearms. knowing the 'type' of bridging can help you see how/when to control the bridge. it is just a way to help describe to you what is/can be happening. i.e during a drill i can tell you to meet on top of the bridge then steal from underneath and it shouldmake sense without me having to actually tell you what to do. it allows you to see things as concepts/ideas without refering to fixed moves. combined with the four gates. i could tell you to meet the bridge on top from the outside, steal from the outside, hit with free hand, switch hands to control and hit, then circle to take the inside. only half mentioned one move but you should know what i'm talking about.

you're missing the point. wrestling as seen in the WWE is a predetermined event. the moves are done with both parties co-operating and done in isolation. they might be a somewhat bastardised version of what may or may not be authentic martial arts moves from what-ever style, the fact ramains that it isn't a real representation of what does or doesn't work. moving to the topic of the film medium. the difference here is what is being portrayed. in a film, there are questions of camera angles, what film can (or can't) capture, flow, editting purposes, continuity purposes, character (which kinda falls under continuity) etc, etc. while film can aim to portray certain truths, in most cases, it is widely accepted to be far from it (unless you're under 14 and like to argue over who is best.....). and using crouching tiger is a bit of a skewed example. it is a film based on a fantasy book (of a series of five). as such, the film is a fantasy representation of a fantasy world of fantasy martial arts abilities. i think my point is quite clear..... as for michele yeoh. for a long time, whilst she was making her movies in the 80s/early90s, she was under the tutelage of one of the kung fu brothers of jackie chan (the big scary one who is often paired with the skinny guy with the 'tache). and finally, as i have pointed out in the past. martial arts=war skill only when you use english terms. when you go back to the original names/terms in their respective languages, war has very little to do with it.

...so before this gets closed.... if you don't vote i don't think you have a right to complain.

but the point was, how many martial arts in practice today was used for survival?

before it went to america? at a guess i'd say that while it was still being taught 1st generation in the korean army it was probably still pretty close to what general choi had learnt originally. i think the focus only started getting hazy when the element of competition/forms came into the equation. purely conjecture of course. but then again, simply saying that TKD, as in ALL tkd, is not good is just utter tosh.

i'm working on that.... having a bit of trouble showing feet position, knee position, hip position and shoulder position all in one top down diagram. might have to do it like a little table. little stick men time!

....and here's me bringing wing chun back into the discussion. one reason we aim to target/manipulate the 6 strengths/gates i mentioned in the stance thread, is that they have a direct effect on stance/balance.

Doesn't WC have a stance that is similar to our neutral bow? Your right and left (bow?) stances have the same heel-toe allignment, and your guard is similar except for the 'immovable elbow'? And the torsoe and hips should be at 45' to the opponent? If your hips and body are square to the opponent, doesn't it render the classic WC guard position useless, as all he has to do is take a slight angle to go straight between your guard?" um.... yes..... i think it all depends on what we are doing. when not doing anything, we try to maintain neutrality (square on hips). or if we are strictly going forward we aim to have SOLID (non moving hip)structure. at all other times i.e moving, not necessarily forwards. your hips will change from being square on to 45 degrees and even sometimes 180 degrees to opponent. go back to the central plane. we try to maintain our central plane to face his centre line (actually it faces what we are 'hitting'...). as i said before, we are only totally face on when we are not doing anything or going forwards (for the circular punching). if they were to make a move to enter my guard, i should have already chosen a direction to move in which case my hips would've moved also. because i'd be standing neutral, all it takes is the half turn to 45 degrees for me to 'close the door' and he would've hit my the small circle at my elbows (assuming he got past the bigger wrist circle). hmm, methinks i need to do some drawings..... ***edit*** i've just spent ten minutes going through stances and foot work in the kitchen (smooth floors)..... y'know what, square on hips doesn't happen that often. aside from the neutral square on pre contact 'ready' stance, my hips tend to go to square on when my structure is being compressed. my left forward stance feels best with square on hips. my right forward feels best at something less than 45 degrees. my side stance feels best at about 25 degrees. when i go forwards by shifting, my hips feel best taking an angle. when i go forwards by stepping (changing feet) my hips want to be square on again (as i said before) it seems that the thing that doesn't move in guard positions are the shoulders but then again, there doesn't feel to be much difference between angle or square on..... all i lose is about 3 inches of reach if i turn slightly and my stance feels a little looser. damn... now i'm confused.

well, it was a t-shirt with a velcro patch on it that you could stick on letters (supplied) spelling out anything you like. i wanted it nice and simple so i chose BOO! i wore it to the uni halloween bash. it meant that i had lots of ladies playing with my t-shirt all night.... which was nice.

wow. that makes three of us from the same area!

depends on the style. sometimes, it is better to cross hands with as many different people as possible. at the end of the day, how hard you work is down to you. no offence but saying you don't learn enough cos there are too many people is too much like an excuse. granted that when there are a lot of students there will be those who don't work as hard and these people can mean you work less but then, it is your job to make them work. that is kinda part of the chinese family system. you are there not just to learn from the teacher (ignoring the sifu ideals), you are also there to help the newer guys learn. after all, if you can get the new guys to work harder and learn more and get better quicker, then the group as a whole will progress quicker and get onto newer things quicker.

there's a little thing about 'breaking/cracking/deciphering' the motherline. this is about disrupting the motherline and hence disrupting the structure. the mother line is the line that determines the direction. er.... the direction of movement is generally, perpendicular to your motherline. i.e if it (motherline) isn't vertical, it is 'broken' (or again, facing the wrong way). um, i think that was long way of saying 'yes', motherline is what is used to look at balance (in conjunction with looking at structure, which relates to the motherline anyway....)

i'm not sure if it would work anymore. different times, different culture, different society. i have to say that my second wing chun si-fu was like that. there was another guy who trained with us who had a little bit of a problem at home. si fu let him stay with them for a while until things settled down. he also helped him find a job in the mean time and acted as mediator between him and family. but then again, that place wasn't a big time school and it wasn't exactly his main profession. it was his passion as it were and he was kinda old fashioned about training wing chun. he didn't like it when i said i was going to the tkd class at uni. he didn't object as he did say that it would be good to do new things just as long as i don't let my wing chun slip. i think i got extra hard training after that.....

literally si-fu translates to si=teacher fu=father what it means conceptually, is that the person teaching is more of a father figure. he is there to guide you and to help you and to provide you with support of your training life. it was often considered that your martial arts family is just as important as your real family. i.e not anything like today's version of martial arts schools.

"Actually, from what you kenpo guys have talked about, a lot of what we train in at my dojo sounds very similar to things that you all do" that's the thing that really got me interested in kempo. a little while back, delta1 wrote something that sounded to me exactly like wing chun. the more he talked about it, the more similar they seemed and here you are saying the same thing about shotokan.

"Yes, but does that mean that Parker "beat" Bruce?" well, i might be a bit dim but all i read in those lines was that bruce lee stayed at parker's place for a year during which they exchanged ideas.

literally or conceptually?

no.

forget it.

age/years has no baring on whether or not you are a 'si-fu' you don't suddenly become a si-fu after x amount of years. being a si-fu is about taking on a student. (or someone wants to be your student). not all top class kung fu guys have students. technically, these guys who don't teach (professionally) aren't a si-fu cos they have no students. it is also the case that not all who teach are si-fu cos they consider themselves to be teaching for their own si-fu. if i were to teach you wing chun, i would say that i was teaching you kinda on behalf of my si-fu. i would also say that i wasn't training you properly and that you'd have to go to my si-fu to learn more.