Northern/Southern Shaolin

[CapitalKarate]

What are the differences between northern and southern shaolin kung fu? Are either one of them effective for self defense? And if so, which one is more so?

[Snakeeel]

http://www.shaolin.com/styles_shaolin.aspx Good site with an explanation. Way too complicated to do any justice here.

[CapitalKarate]

Thanks... I think. Didn't really answer my question. I guess what I'm trying to say is, I want to take a modern art and a traditional art. I found the modern art I want to take (mma, muay thai, bjj, modern kempo) and I wanted to take a traditional MA also, but one that will help me be able to defend myself. Will Shaolin Kung fu help me?

[Snakeeel]

Southern styles tend to be "harder" and more aggressive. Lots of in close fighting and offensive in nature. Upper body strength is important. Northern styles involve more kicks and generally, at least the ones I've seen, tend to be more defensive arts.

[Snakeeel]

Pick a style...master it...then learn another if you feel the need.

[KungFuMan]

CapitalKarate,

 

Shaoling kungfu is a fighting/selfdefense art. If you find the right school/instructor and train hard you will know how effective kungfu can be. It will take a lot longer to master than your average modern martial art and even some traditional MA's, but when you do master it you will see that it is worth the time and effort.

 

Just a personal comment. I believe that if you are training kung fu you are better off putting all your available time and effort into it, rather than sharing that time practicing other martial arts as well. If you choose any major style of kungfu it is more than likely that it will cover striking, grappling and even ground fighting. We are talking about complete fighting systems/styles here. That is my personal opinion.

 

By the way I see that you practice Shorinryu karate. My respects. That is a great art. If you practice it long enough (assuming that you are in a good school) you will become an effective fighter as well - without any need to cross train, again my opinion.

 

Sorry about "my opinions", but I think I have answered your question about wether shaolin kung fu is effective or not. Good luck.

 

KungFuMan

[Popkov]

it depends how mutch you are willing to put in a day, a teacher cant make you great at kungfu you have to do it yourself, if you want to use it extremely effectivly i would suggest 3 hours of training a day, if you realy want to be excellent at it i would go to a chinese shaolin kungfu temple/school. in my opinion this is the only way you can get very good at this, there are not many schools which do this martial art though in most western countries.

 

if you do not want to know alot in great detail you can find things on the internet and teach yourself from them.

[CapitalKarate]

The reason I want to learn modern martial arts (muay thai bjj etc.) is because if someone who comes up against me and they know those arts, i'll know what to expect and how best to counter it. plus muay thai is just great because of how tough their PT is. BJJ because I plan on becoming a cop and swat member and bjj is good to use for restraint and take downs w/o injuring whomever it is i need to take down. And lastly, because of how long it take to learn and become effective in shaolin, I want to learn some other complete system that takes quite a bit less time to learn and become effective in.

 

J/W, the shaolin school I'm looking into going into says if you want to take 2 lessons a week, it'll cost you 100 dollars a month. Is this odd?

[Scand]

if you do not want to know alot in great detail you can find things on the internet and teach yourself from them.

 

I wouldn't count on the internet too much. You know, some things you see in internet are full and utter bogus. Even if the information you come up to isn't bullshitting, there lies a good chance that it's partly correct/false "I think" stuff.

 

I practise shaolin kung-fu by the way, but I really can't tell you anything about it, as I'm only a novice in this art. From what I've seen (and I haven't heard much) this art has great potential even among the more modern and street-wise arts. It's quite sad though that we only have two 1,5h lessons per week.

 

With this being said, I'm very sad that I can't practice this particular art for longer than two-three years, before I move off the town and be consripted into the army for a year or so.

 

CapitalKarate, I pay 75 euros for two months = 8 classes. It's costy (as the art I used to go to billed me about the same amount in six months) but I like the art, so...

 

But we don't have any school systems here, so I don't know your local standards.