pocketcoffee

I was generalising. From what I have seen and participated in, from classes in the UK, Hong Kong and China, I have only ever come across a class that would train with reference to how other people do things. Saying that, knowing the way that Wing Chun works, I know that you don't really need to really know how some other style deals with things but every time someone did an impersonation of a "boxing style" jab or hook or cross, I had to look away because that impersonation was a poor excuse for a half decent strike. Have you ever sparred against a boxer? A karate guy? A hung kuen guy? A jutjusu guy? A Jiujutsu guy? Or did you also just pretend that you knew how they would fight and then imitate what you thought they did? My point is, calling something mainland china wing chun doesn't mean much as all that does is rule out ONE line of wing chun, that being Yip Man's. My second point is that even though some lines of wing chun have remained in China, they are not all without heavy influence from Yip Man. You did not need to tell me that Hong Kong is not China and thus you do not need to differentiate them to me. What makes you think I have not already visited several Wing Chun schools in China?

Don't know about you but I don't kick with the toes of my feet so steel toe caps don't mean much to me. In fact, seeing as my shins and my heels are my kicking tools, the type of footware I am wearing only serves to match my outfit.

What is this unleased business? It's Danny the Dog thank you very much.

45 seconds of doing nothing? If it is a real fight, you'd be beaten to a pulp and if it's a competition, you'd be beaten on points. My friend, fighting is not like a computer game and there are no sure win strategies. You just do what you need to do when you see you can do it. And who says the other guy can't be another combination of things? Unskilled, high pain tolerance and built a brick outhouse? Fast, strong, skilled and accurate?

Are those 3 direct hits without the other guy fighting back or is it assumed that he doesn't know what he is doing anyway and hence unable to resist? By far the biggest problem I see in wing chun training is that it only approximates what other styles does in its references and it does this in a way that renders that approximation useless as it usually only ever of a single movement without reference to what the opponent might actually also do. Calling it mainland China wing chun does not really mean much as there are more than one lineages of wing chun that mainly teaches in China. Of course, things being the way they are, saying something like mainland China wing chun only means that it is non Yip Man wing chun. Even then, if you are talking about Yuen Kay San wing chun then even that has had massive influences from Yip Man back from when he and Yuen Kay San more or less developed the poon sau excercises. Then there's the other lines of wing chun that some Yip Man students were practiced in before they studied uner him. Lee Shing and Jiu Wan come to mind here. I live not too far from Central London by the way and depending on the time of year, am in china quite frequently as well.

I never said that it was incorrect, merely that I did not understand what he was trying to say.

but then if you talk of mushin you still fall into the problem of having to define what mushin is which is just as big a minefield as chi can be.

I have trained wing chun and have done hard sparring during that training. We used to train, to a degree, to hit certain areas as you pointed out but most of that part of training was to do with how to make those targets available. The way we made those targets available meant that if we could hit them, it would be obvious. Example of this would be if we managed to bui sau to push their head up/back to reveal throat. If we did this we would still aim to finish the movement except instead of striking in hard, we'd walk in and apply a push. Did it hurt? Sure but it wasn't fatal and it got the point across. Much of the sparring was to do with making the entry anyway and how or what we hit with is secondary. There isn't anything that you can't spar with to a degree. Besides, everything starts with a punch and if you don't even do hard sparring with punches then how good can your more dangerous techniques be seeing as the only difference between them and basic sparring is what you hit with. How you get to that hit doesn't change.

post removed by mods in error and re-posted by me with permission from admin that is another reason why this discussion is wrong to begin with. Within the sport catagory, you have point sparring on one end of the spectrum and full contact mma on the other and yet in these two almost polar opposites you have similar ideas/philosophies that come from the two other proposed types of fighting. Point sparring can be said to be an ultimate expression of getting in that single perfct hit, if you ignore what it has turned into of course. Does this make point sparring budo, jutsu or sport or all three?

So are you saying that Ki is the effects of adrenaline?

Not only is it a generalisation, it more or less doesn't need to be said. Re-phrasing him slightly you get, if you can't beat the other guy, you're either not very good or your training isn't very good. Isn't this obvious? And let me guess, if that guy is doing the wrong kind of wing chun, then yours must be the correct kind of wing chun? Can I ask what kind of wing chun yours is, why it is better than the rest and where can I go to learn your wing chun?

Knowing how martial arts is taught in China, I would be very tempted to that say the answer is Yes, you would be learning the same thing. However, that is not to say that what you learn is what you think you're learning.

If you cannot see the martial art in what sport fighters, be them competition fighters or full on MMA fighters, then your view of what martial arts is at best narrow minded and at worst, insufficient.

i don't think the punch is different. In sport I aim to take you out. In a real fight, I aim to take you out. The only differences that occur are set by the environment i.e gloves, time, ruleset etc. but ultimately, the punch is the same. It won't work otherwise.

Mushin is not what this guy is talking about. Mushin is a state of mind. It involves being awake. It is about not having to think what to do in an altercation, you just do. The thing you learnt is meant to become as natural as breathing; you don't havc to think to breath, you just do it.

You lapped a hook? I'd like to see that.

Weak spot? What is a weak spot? Get hit? Isn't that what training is for?

I'm not sure if I agree with this. To me there is only ONE style and many ways to apply it. The style itself is a dead thing. What you do with what you have learnt is totally up to you and the style does not play a part in this choice. If i am to punch you, it would be the same whether it was, to use your terminology, with budo in mind, with bujutsu in mind or with sport in mind. The punch itself is just that; a punch. The intent and reason behind the punch is what makes it different. Sport can=budo can=bujutsu can=Sport. In fact I think fighting is a balance of all three and what it is changes as any situation progresses. When you are fighting for your life, it is all about the bujutsu. When you have won the confrontation, you have a choice to kill or not; budo. Getting into what ever situation it is that requires you to fight has already meant you have taken a line of choices, again, Budo. Fighting skills themselves can only be trained in a live environment and part of live environment training is sport fighting. Fighting is fighting. Everything comes back to how you train and why you train. The thing you train in, whether it is for sport, for budo or for bujutsu, the thing itself is the same. It is your approach and eventual application that is different and even then, it is situation dependent.

My first ever ring fight gave me way more reference material for my more traditional art than I ever had before. You can simulate how other styles fight as much as you like in your normal class but there's nothing like being punched and kicked by a kick-boxer to show you how they really do things.

Which is exactly why I'm always a little bit suspicious of Kung Fu schools insisting that you buy the baggy black trousers and insisting you wear a white t-shirt. In Hong Kong, I trained in shorts and what-ever t-shirt I was wearing that day.

Has it occured to you that he is just telling the truth? After all, he has literally zero experience in that arena, not to mention that he just isn't skilled in the right areas.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/entertainment/2006-03/26/content_552432.htm

aren't the decendents of the huo family suing the film-makers for defamation of character or something like that?

You initial posts highlights to me one of the things that people seem to fail to see and understand. Sure you might have slightly modified the thing you originally learnt so that it works for you but you can;t teach that to others because your personal adaptions may not and chances are will not work for everyone. In order to teach what you know effectively, you have to teach it in it's original form so that others can learn it as you did and make it fit their own body as neccessary. I don't want to make you a copy of me, I want to make you learn what I learnt.

master of performance? is an olympic gymnast a master gymnast? pretty much the same thing with wushu.