Fighting someone who has no control

[The BB of C]

In addition to what I said earlier; I also have this to say. Don't fight unless you're ready to get hurt. There will always be people who are stronger, faster, and have no control or reguard for rules. It just means you have to train harder to be ready for them. And when you see them; I believe it's better to stand firm and see the fight through than get the opponent in trouble. Unless they're litterally trying to kill or maim you, I see calling an opponent on something is a coward's way out.

I could tell you a good number of stories where I fight/sparred someone who had no control or went over the boundaries and rules. I never called them on it. In fact, 90% of the time it was more fun for me. The other 10% I lost and got hurt because I wasn't good enough. But I feel better about losing and knowing I tried despite they broke the rules than being a tattletale like "Teacher! He's punching too hard!"

[mantis.style]

I guess this is something that is a result in the differences in the styles that we practice. In the ones that I have trained with, one of the key training philsophies has always been "harder". Of course, this doesn't mean free reign to beat down on our partner but what it does do is make you responsible for how you train. If you don't like getting hit then mention to your partner and he will back off. It also comes from having a class that has a mix of age groups and sexes. In that respect, we become responsible for our own progression as well as the progression of others. If I come in at you "hard" then that must mean I think you should be able to handle it. If you can't handle it, then that means it's something you should work at, in which case, I should be coming in harder anyway.

[AikiGuy]

If I come in at you "hard" then that must mean I think you should be able to handle it. If you can't handle it, then that means it's something you should work at, in which case, I should be coming in harder anyway.

If you are in a harder style of fighting like MMA or boxing where the participants want to test themselves under intense circumstances, then you're right. You should be ready to get hit. If not, go home. However, some styles like Karate and TKD are usually non-contact or they start out as non-contact and progress toward full contact as your rank goes up. In these arts, the usual rule is "no contact". If this is the rule, then the person was wrong for hitting too hard. Of course, the rules will vary with each school, but these are the most common I have seen in Karate. It should not matter what a fighter thinks his partner can handle. All that matters is the rules of that school. Someone who breaks those rules because they think the rules should be different is a rebel and should be kicked out of the school.

Just remember, not every person in MA wants intense full contact sparring. Kids, the elderly, disabled persons, and people who just never got into a fight before are all types who would prefer the lighter contact of TKD over full contact Boxing. Would you go into a senior citizen Tai Chi class and knock down a 60 year old grandmother because she should be able to handle it?

[lordtariel]

Would you go into a senior citizen Tai Chi class and knock down a 60 year old grandmother because she should be able to handle it?

I've known some 60 year old Tai Chi people who didn't have any problem knocking me down. But seriously, a higher ranking belt should know the limits of the person they are working with and scale the challenge level down to just slightly above the level of the student they are working with. The trick is to make it challenging without making them feel hopeless.

[mantis.style]

I'm glad you brought up Tai Chi. Tai Chi is supposed to be a martial art. If you are not learning to fight with it as a by product of learning and practicing it, then are you really learning Tai Chi or just doing a dance slowly? If I go into a tai chi class and I am able to knock down a regular student with not much effort, then I'd say they weren't doing Tai Chi and that quite possibly, what that class needs to really test their Tai Chi is some heavy contact.

I know that many classes do not start out with heavy contact but at the same time, too many classes seem to turn a blind eye to uncommited strikes and half hearted movements because of the non-contact element in training. Let's go into Mantis and Wing Chun and White Crane. From the first moment we are put in pairs to do some drill work, we are told to do it like we mean it. Bear in mind that the drills usually work against a partner so that while you aren't aiming to hit him, more usually aiming to work/test their bridge, you do it with intent. A key principle in many chinese styles is to destroy the bridge. Another is that of short bridge power. Add them together and what you end up with is lots of bruising from simple basic drills. In fact, even in beginner level drills, I want my partner to hurt me. In that respect, him going as hard as he can is also a test of whether or not he can maintain form while adding stress.

[AikiGuy]

Tai Chi is supposed to be a martial art. If you are not learning to fight with it as a by product of learning and practicing it, then are you really learning Tai Chi or just doing a dance slowly?

You have a point there. I have always wondered about the validity of Tai Chi as a combat art. A few Tai Chi students have told me that the art can generate a lot of force once you know how. But I can't see how that can be. I assume there is a lot more to it than I have heard, but still it doesn't really make sense to me because they always do things softly and slowly. At least most styles of Karate and TKD eventually lead up to the point where you learn how to hit with full force. That's why I don't mind starting out softly in training.

Then there's your kind of training. The Mantis you mentioned is a lot like Muay Thai (which I tried for a few months). If you don't hit for real, then you're doing it wrong and wasting everyone's time. I can definitely see the benefit of this. It really tests what you have learned. I enjoy this now after almost 2 decades of training but I think it would have scared me away when I first started.

BTW, what is a "bridge" in your style? I have never heard that term before.

[DWx]

Tai Chi is supposed to be a martial art. If you are not learning to fight with it as a by product of learning and practicing it, then are you really learning Tai Chi or just doing a dance slowly?

You have a point there. I have always wondered about the validity of Tai Chi as a combat art. A few Tai Chi students have told me that the art can generate a lot of force once you know how. But I can't see how that can be. I assume there is a lot more to it than I have heard, but still it doesn't really make sense to me because they always do things softly and slowly. At least most styles of Karate and TKD eventually lead up to the point where you learn how to hit with full force. That's why I don't mind starting out softly in training

...

Tai Chi is more of a deflective way of fighting than compared to most styles. I suppose it is more akin to something like Aikido in which the purpose is not to fight fire with fire but to use your opponents energy against them.

Just because a Tai Chi student will practice slowly, it does not mean that they will perform the technique slowly when they need to. In my experience, Tai Chi is more about how you get to a movement rather than the final product. It is the action itself that is concentrated on not the effects of the action. Therefore practicing the movements slowly and fluidly allows for concentration on each second of the motion instead of flinging the arm or leg out to a target as quickly as possible.

An example from my own experiences:

My Tai Chi teacher is quite a small person (about 5"2 and doesn't weigh very much at all) yet she can move me who is practically twice her weight and height. Last lesson she was explaining an application of a move and managed to fling me across the room and nearly wind me in the process. By concentrating on the movement she needed to do, rather than the end product, she managed to manipulate my body mass and remove a potential attacker. Sure she will practise the technique slow but when it is necessary, the technique should be delivered fast at combat speed and intensity.

[mantis.style]

That depends on how you train. In my experience, the ward-offs in tai chi that I practiced was not much different to some movements in Wing Chun and White Crane and even some proper old school shaolin. The only difference was that like in many wing chun schools, too much emphasis was placed on the game of tui sao instead of tui sao as precursor to fighting. There was a man in a bookshop i had a chat to that was horrified when I showed him how tai chi likes to break limbs instead of hitting the other guy.

There is another increasing problem; too many schools don't have any real pressure test of their form. It's relatively easy to perform a form perfectly and to maintain proper body alignment as they do in tai chi with practice but the lack of more active training means that the practioner usually is not able to adjust their position when real pressure is applied to them. It works in tui sao but step it up and the game is gone. There was a lady here that won a tui sao cahmpionship a few years back by applying wing chun chi sao game principles instead. Make of that what you will.

Of course, knowing the form perfectly is a very good start to learn fighting but I still believe that the two should be parallel not sequential. Going back to what I said earlier, if your tai chi isn't teaching you to fight, are you really practicing tai chi? Don't get me wrong, I'm not attacking the style as I am very aware that it's more a result of the stylistic trends of when the style was formed and developed and it's adoption by the various health groups. I feel that now is a good time remind people that the creators of the various tai chi schools all had a history in martial arts prior to founding their tai chi styles. Again, make of that what you will.

To answer the other questions directly addressed to me. Southern Mantis can be pretty hard core in its training. Everything you read about is stories about hitting buckets of sand/stone and hitting each other is pretty much true. That's not to say that all training is about making it hurt as ultimately, there are the usual small form drills as well much like wing chun's punch-block stuff.

A bridge is best described as the connection between you and your opponent when your arms cross and more accurately refers to the forearms. In chinese, the term for friendly "exchange" is to "cross arms" and most things deal directly with the forearms. Going across the bridge means to cross over where the connection is made. To go under the bridge means to go under the opponents arm, sinking the bridge means to drop their arm etc etc. It also helps to know what we mean by inside gate and outside gate as well. It helps a lot when training with guys from other chinese styles because I can suggest things or ask about things without using names of moves and they'd still get a good idea of what I mean.

[bushido_man96]

The thing about practicing slow is that it really doesn't do anything for your speed. I would think that you would have to practice speeding up at some point, in order to be able to deal with things at actual pace. Demonstrating in class is one thing. Going for real is very different.

[lordtariel]

Again, a big problem in the US is that you have a bunch of different people teaching Tai Chi. You have the people that legitimately knows the martial applications of Tai Chi and trains with them, You have the people who say they know what they're doing but have learned from a video(Yes, even Tai Chi has their McDojos), you have the people who are into it for the health and internal applications, then you have the people who just wave their arms around looking for the "good vibe," bringing that loving kindness energy into their spleens. Seriously, I trained with somebody who told us to send loving kindness energy into your SPLEEN! Unfortunately, finding an instructor that knows the martial applications can be a hard task.