Chang Quan

[Plastic_Anarchy]

I'm just wondering if this art is really effective or if it's just for show. I'm really looking forward to Bajifan's reply to this and I hope he does. Also Bajifan how long have you done this? Anyways hope to see replies.

[Bajifan]

It really depends a lot on the teacher. It can be effective, but you really have to train right. Do the learning forms, conditioning, hard contact sparring/san shou, etc. like any traditional martial art, and the vast majority of places that teach modern wushu don't teach that sort of stuff anymore. It has stance work, punches, elbows, kicks, sweeps, throws, joint locks, and so on. Also, you have to understand the difference between training forms and competition forms. Training forms are like traditional forms, or could even be traditional forms (like tan tui for example). While competition forms are designed to show off your best traits and entertain. You could study chang quan for quite awhile without touching a flashy competition form if you really wanted too, and your teacher knew it in depth enough, lol.

A pretty big chunk of the technique, and the body work (frame of the style) is from Cha Quan (style of the "founding father" of modern chang quan, Wang Ziping). Many people stopped teaching the applications in public though after the cultural revolution. Wang Ziping himself was even put under house arrest during this time, and many top wushu masters and athletes were chased away, went into hiding, or sent to "re-education camps". Naturally, many weren't exactly too big on showing the martial side of things in public when the government legalized martial arts again. Another problem is now days there's a huge emphasis on incredibly difficult gymnastic maneuvers, often having little to no base in classical wushu technique. If you're serious about competition, so much time has to be spent perfecting these high risk, high scoring maneuvers, you really can't be an all around quality "martial" artist unless you're some kind of phenom who has just the right teacher At least I don't see how. It used to be there was a limit on how many acrobatic techniques you could have in your chang quan form (you could do one) and you had to have certain numbers of each type of chang quan technique, show each of the stances, and so on. Also, at least among some of the better Chinese chang quan people, you would have to study a traditional style in depth with a traditional master after perfecting your basic technique. Then they could incorporate what they knew into their individual competition forms. And even before then, when it was first created, chang quan was a long 8 section chang quan form used to "weed out" lower level competitors. Then in competition they'd use whatever traditional style they knew (this was pre-cultural revolution).

I trained it hard for over 4 years until 2000 before tearing up my knee pretty bad on a jump kick. While landing a tornado kick into a horse stance wasn't too big a problem for me, I wasn't used to practicing on a springboard type stage topped off with puzzle mats (the setup being used at this NASKA tournament) Tore my ACL and Meniscus. Still learned a lot about longfist after that and did some traditional chang quan (mizong quan aka lost track boxing) but gave up on the competitive forms and switched mostly to taiji quan.

[bushido_man96]

Thanks for that information, Bajifan. Lots of good stuff there.

[Plastic_Anarchy]

Thanks for your time and input haha.