Have you ever used your kung fu in a real fight? Did it work? Please share

[master-lu]

I am intersested in peoples fighting experiences. Did you find your kung fu practical? did it save you? Are you satisfied with the skills you hade been practicing? There is a lot of talk about the various aspects of kung fu but i have not found a satisfying thread about the practical aspects of kung fu. So i start this one. Have you seen anyone use their kung fu for real? I know that a lot of people have spent their time speculating about these things and some say their master "would do this" and "can do that", but im asking for the realness- what have you seen? Please share all your experiences.
I firmly believe in traditional kung fu because of what it has done for me. What has it done for you?

[tetsumaru]

here's a video of me fighting

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsFmWipioeg

I think i did pretty good. I'm the guy in red. Tell me what you think.

[Rob_Hollett]

Nice Shot there at the end! did he get up after that one?

[tetsumaru]

yeah he got up and beat the shit out me....

In all honesty, I have never had to use Kung-fu in a real fight. A real street fight is far different from any other fight (UFC, sanshou...pride comes close but still). I have been in one really real fight. I blame drunken loud mouth brothers and frat boys for it. It was before I was doing kung fu seriously and I was drunk.

[Maestro]

kung fu isnt anything practical or flowery etc. fighting techs are just that, nothing more or less, they dont make fighters win. a style becomes practical when the fighter thinks and trains practically. the techniques become advanced when the fighter advances. if a technique is to elaborate to apply, it doesnt neccesarily mean it is "flowery" or "unpractical" it means you cannot apply it, but it doesnt mean I cant etc

ive had alot of exp applying my gung fu in many different situations.

you talk about applying gung fu, but what does that mean? a technique that looks cool or a straight punch that has been practiced by me a thousand times everyday?

[Chicken]

Tetsumaru thanks for this posting and your posting on the "Is Taichi a trick" thread... they've both kept me entertained overnight chuckling to myself.

In Dengfeng there are quite a few scraps as the kids become teenagers and the testosterone kicks in. Gangs develop. There are fights Shaolin gets applied at street level. I think once the neighbourhood really starts to go, the schools intervene and send the purpetrators back home.

Also before Hengxuan met me, he was out with a good friend, they were probably being tactile in the way that its perfectly normal for Chinese men to be in China, but completely unacceptable in the UK. I think this is why someone called them queers... anyway Hengxuan dealt with it Shaolin-style.

Hengxuan has a catalogue of incidents of when he's applied Shaolin... at times he's completed amazed at the damage he's done with the Shaolin techniques. I think this actually helps him restrain himself, in that he knows how much damage he can do. He has incidents when teaching when someone comes along and decides to try to take a pop at him. He uses minimum force to deal with the situation, i.e. he gets one of his advanced students to put the individual in his place whilst sparing.

Anyway the key to applying Shaolin? Hengxuan doesn't look the ticket, he's like 65kg, or 145lbs, yet he says that its his speed that is the ultimate weapon.

Chicken

[master splinter]

aside from kung fu style training chi gung and a couple of tai chi classes, ive never trained with a kung fu master.

but the last fight i got into, some guy tried to headlock me and i threw him with sukui nage, he landed on his head and he was thru.

http://www.judoinfo.com/images/animations/blue/sukuinage.htm

well i did sock him a few times after that but i let him up, he tried to run and fell flat on his face, twice, it was pretty funny.

the guy thought he could pick a fight with one of my younger friends, so i told him to pick on someone his own size, then he came at me like a tough guy... he got what he deserved. a friend of his who was a friend of a friend of mine told me that he had a shiner like she had never seen before, she thought that i hit him with a bat.lol DONT MESS WITH MY FRIENDS!

[michabusch]

Stress

Think about what stress will do to you when you land into a fight. All the stuff you learned might be blocked off. You will fall back into very rough movements or in the worsed case you just freeze..
Does anybody know how people used to train this stress-coping in the old days?
I personally think they just developed their spirit to a level where they would not fear anything.

Modern self-defence systems like krav maga and systema use a lot of training exercises to learn how to fight under stress and regulate your breathing.
I think just getting into the ring is a good training for this but still it wont be the same as a streetfight.

[master splinter]

you pretty much develop a "gung ho" attitude once you have been in so many fights.

thats how i always saw it. although it can go deeper when certain factors like control, technique, and skill come into play.

[Chicken]

This is why the Shaolin practise gongfu to the point that they respond without thinking. And I think that is why the Shaolin will not fight in competitions... they trance up... I suspect they somehow completely disengage with their active cognition and work entirely from their subconscious. Our subconsciences are supposed to be far more powerful at processing information than our active processing capability. I think this is why Shaolin are reported to have legendary powers of intution. Which they can use in everyday life and in combat.

Also a good proportion of people feed off of stress (appear fearless) and don't go to pieces / get paralysed by it. The racing driver Michael Schumacher is an example.

I watched a documentary on the Waco seige last night where in the middle of the most severe gun battle where 22 people died, David Kouresh had like a 15 minute theology discussion with the sherif who was trying to broker a ceasefire. I think this is another example.

A lot of people who are ADHD are this way... in that most of the time their cognition is not working optimally and when in a stressful situation, the stress hormones make them funciton optimally so they are in their element. It is theorised that this is why ADHD types are more inclined to thrill seeking than the norm.

Its also the case that psychopaths have a vagus nerve response that suppresses arousement, so that in a stressful situation, their blood pressure doesn't rise it actually lowers. This means they can focus all their attention on their outside environment.

If you go to pieces when stressed, I think the only way round it is to overcome your fears so you don't get stressed. Clearly you can do this through training martial arts till you become so achomplished defensively that getting attacked or into fights doesn't concern you anymore.

Chicken

[doc]

I think this is why Shaolin are reported to have legendary powers of intution. Which they can use in everyday life and in combat.

I've yet to see that.

I have seen some legendary powers of ignorance and stupidity, but, we won't get into that.

I watched a documentary on the Waco seige last night where in the middle of the most severe gun battle where 22 people died, David Kouresh had like a 15 minute theology discussion with the sherif who was trying to broker a ceasefire. I think this is another example.

Yes. I think so too.

[michabusch]

Clearly you can do this through training martial arts till you become so achomplished defensively that getting attacked or into fights doesn't concern you anymore.

Chicken

I`m not so sure about that.. I`ve seen guys who had been training for many years(in a safe, controlled environment) and when they got into a fight they just forgot everything.

[onefocus]

ok, you asked for this: as a kid in america i learned that people could be really mean, and i wanted to learn how to fight. i went to the movies and saw a couple of kung fu movies, that's when i knew how i wanted to learn how to fight. I was too young to know any teachers so i started out learning some things (kicks, punches, exercises), from different movies....

somewhere around 13 years old i was introduced to a few books(manuals) and a few years later some practioners. i would learn with them different things from different places. but it wasn't even close to formal training. so i don't know if i have kung fu, but to answer your question: yes i have used it while fighting.

but what i should tell you, is that it was, i guess you could say an intuitive moment.

i'll try to explain: I was fighting,(punching, moving, being punched,ect) then in one of our exchanges I wasn't fighting, it seems as if someting took over. i'd been practising a couple of throwing tehcniques and somehow in our fight he opened that window.

his arm was in the right place and my body just threw him over my shoulder. he seemed light as a feather, until he hit the ground. and he stayed there. I thought he was dead. the fight was over. i was scared of kung fu.

[LeiYunFat]

Oh no, don't you dare. Don't you dare blame kung fu for that...

Fear yourself and your immense power. What are you, some kinda freak? Some kinda Wong Fei Hung reincarnation? Why can't you just flail around like the rest of us?

[onefocus]

scared of kung fu

maybe scared of kung fu is the wrong term. i should say that is when i understood that it is not a game. the full brunt of a single attack, or counter can hurt or kill someone.

i love kung fu. but there is a difference between practising and studying kung fu. truth to tell, i've been practising for years, but it is just recently that i've begun to study.


btw good to see your words.

peace.