Origin of Martial Arts?

[JusticeZero]

I have a hard time believing that people EVER fought using zen kutsu dachi (forward stance) or those hard to accomplish kung fu positions....

Well, after fairly extensive breaking down and rethinking of tactics, I have a hard time believing that people EVER fought using high boxing stance.. it seems very impractical and immobile to me, and it has, in fact, been modified into the form now seen due to sporting adaptations which people are now individually trying to work their way back out of after discovering the issues thus created.

Nonetheless, it is a very influential stance in the martial arts today and is commonly replicated verbatim in a very rigorously dictated manner. It's not hard for me to believe that if some people were being very effective using the forward stance or gungfu stances, that others would start rigorously adopting them for similar reasons. Once these people started training hard, using those stances, the superiority of those stances would become in ways self fulfilling. Someone skilled used that stance, people driven to become good copied and worked with it, and then since they trained hard, they had good results and the cycle perpetuated. Currently the people who train hard and research best practice are copying the boxers and derivatives thereof, and most of the people who use the stances you look down on do not do much to prove their abilities with them.

Maybe in a hundred years, it will be just considered common sense that nobody fights using those ridiculous boxing bounces, all REAL fighters fight from some other stance, maybe deep horse or some such, that was popularized by a bunch of fighting pioneers after the MMA/boxing crowd got geriatric and started teaching kindergarteners in no-contact classes.

[tallgeese]

I'm just curious, are we talking about the stance used a bunch today? Feet relitively close togeter, bent knees, athletic posture? Hands up to cover the head, elbow tight to cover the body? The one where you can adopt MT defenses for lower cover?

If it is, I don't see the impracticality or immobility to it. It's certainly far more mobile than training a transitionary posture as a stance. Success does breed imitation, I'll grant you. If that's the case, with the imitation going on, it must have some sembilance of success occuring in testing arenas everywhere. Even sd applications use variation on what we're talking about above as a "core posture" from which to train principle and mental positioning.

Again, if I've read your post wrong I apoligize. I'm just curious on what you're basing the impracticality and immoblility argument.

[Kuma]

Scientific boxing that we know today actually came from fencing. A gent by the name of James Figg popularized linear attacks in fisticuffs in or around 1719, and so the footwork and stances are in fact based off of fencing (Figg was also an accomplished swordsman).

What's interesting too is if you compare the fencing lunge with the falling step of a boxer, the two are very alike. Actually, they both look a bit like zenkutsu dachi Stances can be transitory after all.

[bushido_man96]

Most, but not all of todays' martial arts have their roots in Kung Fu and it is believed that Shao Lin kung fu was the first ordered system of self defense techniques ever taught in a structured environment, though this is sometimes still debated.

I wouldn't say that most of today's MAs are rooted in Shaolin. That tends to be what is propogated the most through the Bodhidarma myth, but I don't think that there is much actual evidence to substantiate it. Although some Karate systems may have adopted some techniques from styles of Kung Fu, they still retain many of their own techniques from the various Te and Tegumi of old.

[JusticeZero]

I'm just curious, are we talking about the stance used a bunch today? Feet relitively close togeter, bent knees, athletic posture? Hands up to cover the head, elbow tight to cover the body? The one where you can adopt MT defenses for lower cover?

If it is, I don't see the impracticality or immobility to it. It's certainly far more mobile than training a transitionary posture as a stance.

Yep, that's the one. It has it's advantages, certainly. It also has a rather short base - good in some applications, bad in others - and without a large structure change, is limited to relatively small steps. The 'float' popularized by boxers has it's cons as well. Boxers get use out of it and are successful, but then again, they also train a lot and originally worked with tightly constrained rules and circumstances.

I use deep stances all the time, generally pegged at feet the same width apart as the length of the extended leg, and I run circles around people with ease. I also keep my elbows in and so on. The boxing stance just sights in as very permeable and immobile to me when i'm sizing up targets and such and working maneuverability.