Drunken Monkey

to be fair, i heard that while you can't see the flag itself, which apparently got knocked over or something, you can see something that resemble the landing marks/patterns...

that is called taking a quote and using it out of context. it just sounds like you didn't even read the whole of my post. if you did then it suggests that you don't agree with what i said. then that means you believe that NO ONE EVER got into a positon that resembled the spider guard, ever, at all, before the gracies. that's like saying no one ever punched or kicked before martial arts existed.

no, i can't hit two people at the same time but i can move from trying to hit one to trying to hit another guy at the same time. can you switch from grappling one guy to grappling the other guy. once you grapple someone you are commited to that one on one situation. whilst i am standing up and trying to strike at two guys, at least i have the extra option to turn around and run. to put it this way, treebranch and i both attack you. i let treebranch grapple you cos he is better than me at it. i wait for you guys to be on the ground. whilst you two are occupied on the ground, i casually walk over and kick you in the head and stamp on your arms and kick you in the sides. that's the one on one aspect treebranch is talking about. sure, i don't think i can take two grapplers but then i wouldn't be taling two grapplers cos it would only take one to take me down. we're not talking about what is better. we are pointing out a weakness. if you can't see the scenario i am describing, there is nothing more i can say.

how about, if you're really desparate, smack your jaw against a wall to knock a few teeth out and then spit them in the other guy's face... if anything, them watching you do that might put them off attacking you...

depends on what kinda weapons i guess. i think the best thing about learning to use the long pole in wing chun is that it showed me that i could do with getting stronger. my knife training taught me a lot about the finer aspects of position, distance and precision+dedication to using a technique. i hear a lot of people say that training in traditional weapons is a waste of time cos we can't use them. now i can't speak for other arts but in wing chun, the weapons follows the same priciples as the hand forms except that you have even less room for error. also, our weapons forms also serve as a tool for strength training. after all, it takes more skill/strength/control to move a heavy weapon smoothly, cleanly and accurately. think back to the first time you used a weapon, let's say a sword, and you did a downward slash. remember how 'wobbly' the end of your slash was? how clean and tidy is the same move now? i always say look beyond what you are doing with your hands (or weapon) and look at the reason WHY you are doing something.

um, i know jack about grappling. what's a guard postion?

haha... did sano just say he hates mortal combat cos it's fake? what about wwe and dragonball? if that's anything but fake i'll eat the insides of my rectum with a spoon and wash it down with a glass of my urine.

so if you don't need that * then why do you list tkd and karate as your other styles? anyway, here's a little question. how many people can you take on (or attempt to take on )at any one time in bjj? you can only grapple with one person at a time until he is unable to continue before you move on to the next person. any striking art is immediately more rounded for actual street defence because you don't have to focus on a single person as much as you do when grappling. i say bjj is too focused on ring fights. i'll admit that i don't fancy my chances against any of the gracies but i'm sure they wouldn't fancy their chances against more than one serious attacker.

i say, just because you give something a name it doesn't mean you invented it. let's take the simple shoulder throw or waht ever you want to call it. who do you say invented it? well it can't be the japanese because the chinese arts predate them (i think, bare with me for a bit on this...) but then it can't be the chinese arts because some of the greek arts are shown to be earlier. my point is, i'm sure that somewhere/time, way before the gracies, someone got into a 'spider guard'. no one invents moves. they just saw one clearly, singled it out and gave it a name.

that's true. if a kung fu guy tells you he doesn't do any weight/resistence training, he is lying. a lot of them will try to sell you the idea that you can win with position/technique alone but even a fool should figure out that good position/technique AND good strength is even better.

hmmm, how about (surprise surprise) wing chun? after all, most of time, we train to instinctively get the other guy's arms out of the way and under control. the only difference is that you train to then lock down as opposed to knock down. (i.e intercept hit with tan sau, instead of hitting, feed other arm through to lock at shoulder, step on back of knee to take down to floor) we had a joint lock (chin na) session a couple of weeks ago at my kung fu class and basically i just used elbow positions to prevent myself being locked whilst allowing me to shift him into a better position for me to lock them. but then i'm sure the same could be applied to any art. after all, isn't the first stage of a confrontion interception? what happens after you meet hands is what we are talking about here right? maybe i'm wrong but i always assumed that most styles have joint locks and take downs and controls as part of the system that you can use after the interception. anyway, my police inspector friend in the hk police swears by his wing chun and i think the police in taiwan have wing chun as part of their self defence training as well.

when you throw a cross do you keep both feet flat on the floor or do you roll your back foot onto the ball? on a different note. latest report on my kick-boxing. i still find myself going back to wing chun postitions then realising that i've got boxing gloves on and i can't actually do small traps from underarm anymore... you have no idea how many times i've gotten hit cos of that.

but what would you take as traditional? traditional as in chinese loose techniques that you train in kick-boxing style? traditional chinese shaolin style kung fu with lots of hard physical training and many, many hours of conditioning every day? traditional as in wing chun where the style was designed to take advantage of the 'traditional' styles? or are you talking about how traditional styles are taught and practiced today? sometimes, i really wish people would stop saying things about the arts and instead talk about the people who do the art. the martial arts that we have now work. they have all been tested in some situation or another and have thus survived until this day. the only thing that has changed is how we train. when a wing chun guy loses a fight, it isn't the wing chun, it's the guy who lost. when a bjj guy wins, it isn't the bjj, it's the guy who wins. go ahead, take your pick and insert your own style into either of those two sentences. how many out there can honestly say that you train as hard as the guys who originally did? i know i don't, that's for sure. but then, i don't expect to be called up to fight for my life against trained imperial soldiers. the xma guys train hard. that alone is worth respect. you might not see the xma as being a real martial art (or fighting art) but sometimes that's not the point. the fact is they have worked hard to be the best in what they do.

whoa... didn't i mention this somewhere here before??? anyway. i specifically taked about similarities in the histories of the newer styles such as wing chun, mantis, tai-chi (well, one of the chueng sam fung stories) and hung gar, all of which developed more or less around the same time. * * * anyway, if anyone has a good history/legend/myth of the the various mantis styles i would love to see it here cos i hear there are some very different stories in the different mantis styles.

when you try to sound enlightened, you will sound like a *.

well, disgust is a pretty complex subject and purely depends on the culture. anyway. things i have eaten that you might not fancy.... all sorts of cow insides. chicken feet. duck feet. duck's tongues. pig's feet. pig's ears. pig's lung (it was an interesting experience seeing the whole pig lung sitting in the sink). deep fried pig intestine. congealed pigs blood. snake. frog. seahorse was in a soup i had (yeah i know, it's illegal) blachan various 'wind dried' meats (but i had to refuse the dog) i also had to refuse a soup made with blue eggs...

um, should i tell you about their penchant for 'terrified cat' soup....

i was always under the impression that the foundations of what we see as tai chi was the original 'long fist' from the tang dynasty... (can't remember the dates). and i was also told that it developed, in it's present form, roughly about the same time as wing chun did so that would put it around the dates jerry gave. knowing how the chinese culture likes their myths and mystery i'd say that good old 'three winds of madness cheung' was nothing more than myth. chinese martial arts, especially those developed around the same time all seem to give an account of how someone saw a fight between two creatures, then some link to the shaolin temple as well as the five survivors. more than just coincidence i think. martial arts were supposed to have all come from shaolin (chinese thing... you may or may not agree) and these new arts: wing chun, tai chi, mantis, hung kuen, had no history so the originators made the stories up for some history (or another reason in the case of hung kuen and wing chun).

okok changed my mind. how about 'comprehensive' as opposed to complete? as for the drawing and painting thing. there are those who don't need to learn the basics and pick up a paintbrush and churn out portraits whilst eating lunch.... i had a friend who had an amazing eye for colour. on the plate the colour would look dull and flat but the moment he dabbed it on it's intended location, you could never tell it wasn't there to begin with. ahhh, the good old times at sixth form....

maybe it was to get more publicity for a flailing old timer?

sorry. the ol' 'mis-read sense syndrome'....

hmm, still not too keen on 'complete'. how about 'extensive'? but yeah, that's what i mean. we are learning principles that you apply. some people get too fixated on left/right/punch/kick/etc etc and fail to see the reasons WHY. y'know what i mean? they get too fixed on 'block this hit like this' and forget why they use the move in the first place.

a lot of people think it's a fake cos thre are a lot of discrepences on the photos supposedly taken on the moon and some from orbit. something about impossible angles of shadow reference marker crosses that are in the wrong place. same 'scene' used for two locations. that kinda thing. um, does anyone know if you really can survive going through the van allen belt? especially wearing the very minimal amount of protection those guys were?

trust me it makes more sense in chinese... the point is, it shouldn't matter what side they face you cos the end effect is still going to be the same. something enters your space. you deal with it.

but then, you say 'complete' some might say 'less focused'... sorry. that came out wrong. what i mean is, there's always going to be an argument over this which i'm not too keen on. when anyone talks of a 'complete' art, it really sounds like they are saying 'better' art. you may or may not mean it but that is how it would always sound. anyway. let's see, we have striking (most of your list but no real ground fighting) a little joint lock/throw/control two weapons ('knife' + a really long stick) train to not use our eyes train to use our environment. how's that according to your criteria?