mantis.style

Which is probably down to the fact that they actually train as hard as they fight and that they do work hard with parters unlike the majority of other Chinese styles where the norm is merely talking a good fight.

So are you saying that if your first two classes of a Chinese martial art does not involve and sparring or dynamic drills, you are not in a proper authentic Chinese martial arts class?

There have been several tests that show that accupuncture and accupressure points dont actually do anything. These tests range from single blind to double blind to fake needles. But that's not the point of this discussion. When you talk about pressure points, you first have to specify what ype of point you are talking about. In the Chinese, a pressure point is something specific but some other points used in fighting are also classed as pressure points when talked about in English.

As far as I am aware, the one hit one kill is about the intention that should be behind every strike and is not to be taken literally. It is very much like someone saying that they were driving the wheels off the car.

Hello. To address what you have said in the above quote, I have to say, yes and no. Yes because I know a lot of the differences only occur when you try to talk things that are originally described in chinese terms based on Chinese principles in English for which there is often no direct translations. On the other hand I say "no" because the things that are being talking about here, names such as "black tiger steals heart" being in English, it doesn't matter how it sounds in the Chinese because the individual characters will always be the ones for "black" "tiger" "steals" and "heart". What he is talking about is when the same names are used for different things. Some schools that teach let us take Crane as an example, it being something I am familiar with, as purely a set of principles based on the characteristics of a crane. Then there are some schools that are based on not only principles based on but movements that look like a crane's movement as well. In the case of mantis styles, the variation between the different schools is even greater with Northern Mantis styles bearing little resemblance to Southern Mantis styles in principles, training and especially in appearance and application and yet there are similar poetic names in both. Also, your example of the name for wing chun being different in English is also slight wrong. Yes it is true that different people have spelt the name differently in English but then again, there are different ways of spelling it in Chinese as well, depending on what particular branch/school you are from. Also, the two versions you gave are also peculiar in that one is a spelling of the Cantonese and one is the spelling of the Mandarin, itself an indication of a difference in school anyway. I also agree that there is a lot of misconception about the Chinese Arts. However what concerns me is that too many people think that Traditional Chinese Arts do not contain hard training such as weights, resistance or heavy contact sparring or fighting.

Yes, the overall path is never ending but until you actually reach the point where you can begin to step onto that stage of training, there is an end to what you learn. In the case of Chinese styles, the forms are a finite thing and you can dive into them striving to learn them in as short a time as possible. Once you have learnt these, then comes the never ending path of practicing them. The difficult to understand is that knowing how to perform a form doesn't mean you know it. That is the big difference. In fact, I would question any school where you take 3+ years to just learn forms. Don't forget, historically, people used to train these things 7 days a week and they used to train hard.

UFC and MMA isn't just about arm-barring people. You only tend to see that in the ring because against other highly trained people, that is often their best option. That doesn't mean they don't know how to punch and kick.

In my experience, in the past, you were taught both the action and the name almost separetely as a means to semi-hide the intention of the actions. That way, anyone who is spying on you as you trained would not in theory know the actual use of that action. In the stories of legend, you often have people begin their training by simply learning to perform the forms first then the poetic terms are taught to them when the forms have can performed to a high standard in order to make sense of them. How the style uses the poetic terms also depends on the school or style. While some are perhaps too poetic and truely poetic, some schools uses the poetic as a means to organise and reference the types of movements and actions. In the case of the animal forms of some schools, the name of the animal can sometimes directly describe both the type of hand position and the intention of the movement. The rest of the poetic would then describe the rest of the movement. In that way, once you get to a certain level of proficiency and independence from the forms, you can begin to be more freeform and begin to see and apply let's say a snake under water, as simply being an/any underarm/bridge type of move instead of just being the one as taught in the form. In the case of black tiger steals heart. Are you sure you can't do it with the opposite side?