gong fu vs. wushu

[arhat]

most application training I have seen and trained is utterly unrealistic. I consider an application to be any technique requiring more than one step to complete. even people who think they are training applications have willing partners. A resisting partner is another story, and by resisting I mean someone who is not letting you do the tech, and is trying to punch you in the face. I would honestly rather spend my time developing one punch and one kick.

Under those conditions applications that are not instantaneous are just ricockulous. Like half the **** you see in the kung fu books. I will employ Leaping Swallow Dives For Fish against my opponent's Cat Wagging Whiskers at Prancing Rabbit.

In the past, we have many examples of martial artists who had one technique that was invincible.

[doc]

Leaping Swallow Dives For Fish against my opponent's Cat Wagging Whiskers at Prancing Rabbit.

Leaping Swallow Dives is a popular technique here in Las Vegas. Many a goddess has shown great skill against my Prancing Rabbit.

Don't knock it.

[arhat]

well I do have to admit to practicing One Finger Lifting Engorged Veiny Cock alot...probably too much...lol...

[dogchow108]

*gag*

so let me get this straight...it dosent matter what you practice because the fact that form practice makes you very athletic will be enough to make you hit through someone'e technique or make you too fast to stop?

i seriously think some of you guys have just never seen a skilled martial artist fight and win due to technique training.

that explains a lot on this thread.

[zachsan]

i would agree with you that most of us have not seen much of that, because it very rarely happens.

but i don't think the jist of what people are saying is, "don't bother with the rest", as much as, "focus on the basics".

- zach

[goninjago3]

My teacher Shi Xing Peng has been trained in the most traditional techniques and skills. Doesn't matter how skilled of a martial artist you are. If he kicks you in the knee and your leg snaps in half, which it will, what are you you gonna do. Are you telling me you can use leg technique that will keep this from happening? You won't even see the kick! And then after he makes the kick he continue behind you so you back is facing him. Such as in bagua skills, he continues to move forward and around. Not just kick and step back and then kick again. You have no idea of the kind of speed and power I am talking about. You see it and you can't believe a person can do that.

[mortal]

I completely agree with Dogchow108 last post. Most people have never really been taught true kung fu techniques. When most people think applications they picture a 3 step process. the opponent punches you block and then counter with a technique. IN reality it all happens instantaneuosly. The punch is blocked using structure(not strength) and you are hitting at the same time as the block.

I would be willing to demonstrate apps on anyone to prove that they work. Also I would just defend with my techs. Then we will see who could even hit me once, never mind beat me. If you think just kicking someone hard, is good enough to be a great fighter you are very mistaken.

Yan ming doesn't know the applications because they stopped teaching them before his generation. That is why he says I just kick or punch.

Also none of us started young enough or trained hard enough to ever have skills like Lipeng. Why do they train in Iron body if they could just kick or punch you? Because while they are doing that they too could be getting hit. To me the point of training kungfu is to become so agile with great techs that you don't ever get hit. Other wise just go do kickboxing and stand there kicking and punching each other all day. Why study kung fu at all.

I knew how to kick and punch very well before I started kung fu training. The bottom line is I am definitely a much better fighter then I was before I started training.

[fanzi]

"btw, there's plenty of people that don't buy the whole "practice something 1000 times and then you'll figure it out" thing. they're called americans. hehe j/k"

My Sifu's Chinese so, whatever.

Basics are so important. Your kicks, coordination, reflex, they are key. But you (esp. arhat, zachman, and Russbo) are avoiding the obvious point:
Why are you you doing your forms if you don't know the application then?
What intention or purpose there is different from Modern Wushu? Please don't just be reactionary.

Shao Hong Chuan, Da Hong Chuan, Xiao Lohan, Da Lohan chuan have really obscure looking moves there. Yes, moving quickly between gongbu, mabu, dingbu, pubu develops strength and coordination, but how does that help you in a fight (aside from the benefits just mentioned)? You've all agreed that a fight can happen really fast and winning may depend solely on who is fastest or strongest at that moment.
So, how does doing these obscure looking forms benefit you beyond strength and coordination training?

I trained with Shi Yan Ming for six years and did these forms thousands of times. Arhat and Mortal can account for this. As I stated previously in this forum and elsewhere (I wish you'd have gotten my point Arhat) is that it wasn't until someone explained that when these movements are performed at higher stances, they contain practical fighting techniques. Even watching different monks do these forms, aside from obvious stuff like grab and punch, the moves are really peculiar and not easy to visualize.

Forms, as I understand, were originally taught as a way to remember different fighting techniques, not just as a way of cross training between sparring. Such is the case at some schools and seems to be the way they're understood by some on this forum.

Also, Arhat, you gave yourself away here. You wrote that of the application training "you've seen": "I consider an application to be any technique requiring more than one step to complete." I say you need to see better application training. I mean that good application should be one step. It should flow as smoothly and quickly as a fast punch, or a fast kick. You have not seen this. Please don't put down application training when you admit that what you've seen has been overly complicated. There should be no rolodex to draw from in a fight, but an arsenal of methods that flow from you without thought. Training punches, kicks, and applications over and over will eventually become natural. Good application training is flexible too: from different situations, many different techniques may be applied (techniques include punches, kicks, blocks, grabs, etc. not necessarily some comlex arrangement of impractical moves). Also, a training partner will try and surprise their opponent so that the opponent learns to react fast and can then apply a variety of moves without thinking. It should all be very natural. I believe I went into this in depth with you on Shaolin Wolf, or it may have been your brother.

So, why do your forms then? If fighting is so freakin' fast and spontaneous, why practice forms without knowing the application?

[zachsan]

mortal -

dodging around punches and kicks is only a part of gongfu. you can't do this forever. sooner or later, you will get hit. that's why you train in iron body and techniques that do use strength. the old masters thought that you needed a balance of the two principles (soft and hard). it's not that they would use structure and not strength in their techniques. they would use both. counter hard with soft, counter soft with hard, and all that jazz.

gonin -

you're not gonna break someone's leg with a kick, unless a great many factors (not to mention luck) come together in a very specific way. simple untrained human instinct is usually enough to make sure that this doesn't happen. what's more feasible is getting hit so hard that you don't care if your leg's broken or not, because all of a sudden all you can think about is going home to your mommy. but yes, i've seen people kick so fast that it's seemed to be invisible. i think that's where the legend of wong fei hung's "no shadow kick" came from.

- zach

look at me, i'm reduced to disagreeing with people on trivial points just to keep my workday interesting. thank god they give me web access here -

[goninjago3]

"If you think just kicking someone hard, is good enough to be a great fighter you are very mistaken."

If you kick as hard as Li Peng that's all you need. True this skill is hard to develop. You need to practice seriously and not just once in awhile you throw a kick or 2. If you don't kick as hard then you may need to develop other skills such as developed in wing chun practice. I think wing chun works great. But this a shaolin forum and the question is of shaolin fighting technique as in the kind of fighting trained by shaolin disciples.

[arhat]

Fanzi please don't take part of what i say as the whole.

My complete statement was applications training I've seen AND TRAINED. You left out the second part of my statement.

I have a martial arts history before the Temple, from dabbling in Aikido to Muay Thai. I gave my definition of what an application was, as defined by that training. You want to use a different definition fine, tell me my def is wrong, fine I'll shrug and accept that I am wrong and intellectually I am interested in how, and I'll agree training in applications is great for some people then. My problem with application training as I defined it is that it becomes a misleading crutch.

You keep asking me questions which I fully answer, but it's not the answer you want. In some of the monks I see an ideal. And I aspire to that ideal. So that is why I train under them.

Why do you find it so necessary to convince me of the worthiness of application training? Or is it that you think I am wasting my time? Train applications all day long if you want, it's not for me- as far as relying on it to see me through an engagement goes. You know that to me this is not an intellectual pursuit. I would rather have a devastating punch and kick, like Yan Ming's or Li Peng's, as my just in case. Funny how Li Peng says the same thing as Yan Ming. I've knocked people out cold before but now under Yan Ming I better understand the mechanics of the punch. You've felt his punches and kicks. He kicked me once and I felt it against my far ribs through the pad. How many applications are going to defend you against that? It wasn't even full power. So when he tells me you can try all the little tricks you want he will knock you out with one punch I believe him.

I train in Shaolin gong fu (including forms training) for a host of reasons, but I guess for the purposes of this conversation, we can say three reasons. Spiritual development, and to have the physical advantages and benefits at my disposal if god forbid I should ever be in the position that I would need them, and to enhance the living of my life. Training forms lends tremendous benefits to those statements. I call your attention to the Shaolin maxim, Ch'an Chuan Yi Ti.

As far as I am concerned, anyone training to fight or for self defense is living in a fantasy land. If you engage in that fighting lifestyle then one thing is true, eventually someone will hand you your ass, and you take a chance that this could be done in a severe way. The more you fight the more exposure you have to having that happen. And the thing is, I've seen very good fighters have a little bad luck and wind up on the floor getting their face stomped. All it takes is a spilled drink on a bar room floor, and all the years of application training won't do **** for you. And many times fights don't end when you think they do. I've seen plenty of people win a fistfight only to have their vanquished foe go to the car and come back to really finish the fight. Sometimes it was even a few nights later, with friends, in an alley. So your skills and training only go so far if your luck doesn't hold out.

Everyone I ever knew who I would consider to be a real mutherfuçker is either dead, in jail, or escaped that life. I will give you an example. When I was DJing/Bouncing I had a friend named Buddy. Buddy was huge. A brick wall. He was what I would call a fighter. A fight would break out in the club and Buddy would wade in. You could punch him in the face full force and he'd shrug it off. God help you if he ever got you out the back door. If you pissed him off that's where you'd go and he'd tune you up. Sometimes he would take someone out there just for fun, he was that fuçked up. Sometimes Buddy would fight illegally with another guy who worked security. They'd make a lot of money like that. One night two guys called Buddy a "fuçking nigger." If there was one word that would piss Buddy off it was that one. So Buddy took them outside, and beat the crap out of one of them. It ended up they were both off duty cops, Buddy said many years later that he saw one had a gun and so Buddy ran and got a knife from the trunk of his car and gutted one of them right there in the parking lot. Slit open his belly so his guts dropped out. At the time I was spinning records inside. Buddy used to like to sit up near the DJ booth because I would play Public Enemy for him. One of my friends said the cop was trying to hold his guts in but they kept slipping out. Just telling me about it he nearly threw up. And because this cop was a hard ass and couldn't back down he left a wife and kids widowed and orphaned, nevermind the fact he was a racist prick.

Needless to say, Buddy went away for a looooooonnnng time. While he was on vacation Buddy became a changed man. He came to know fear. He said he was lucky because most of the real bad men, the lifers, the murderers, the rapists, the 'savages' as Buddy called them, they considered him a hero for killing a cop.

Seeing him after he got out, would do way more to make my point than this post.

So to me, learning martial arts to learn how to fight is a dead end road and speaks to one's ego, and to a kind of adolescent fantasy world- which to me training in Shaolin is a tool of ego eradication. In my work in Jamaica, there are rarely if ever fist fights. Jamaicans go right for weapons. Usually it's a baton or one of many different kinds of machettes. And if it's serious, guns. They can't afford dinner but they'll have a glock. Don't get me wrong, I sleep with a machette under my pillow and another stashed where I can get it if some bloodclaats come knocking but you would be hard pressed to find me fighting a fistfight in Jammyland. It's just stupid. My life is worth living.

If you have real concerns about self defense then you have to think about what your ultimate encounter will be and prepare for that. That means learn to shoot and own a gun responsibly.

Next year my business there will be expanding and that is exactly what I will do, although I never liked guns from after I got shot at, now I see they will soon become a necessary tool and I will probably carry from time to time. I've carried once or twice and I guess you get used to it.

[zachsan]

arhat -

but what if you're attacked in a dark alley by 27 ninjas, and you don't have a gun, and there's no way out, and there's a sword on the ground next to you, and you have to use it to defend yourself?

you would like this site: www.nononsenseselfdefense.com

- zach

[mortal]

The point is, is modern shaolin and wushu good for self defense. The answer is no if you never actually practice fighting. So then what is the point? To be in great shape?

If you train kung fu with no thought of ever sticking up for your self. Why not just take African dance. It looks like a great work out.

One minute people say it is not good for fighting and the next they say it helps a little.

I stick up for myself when the situations merit it. Your friend buddy sounds like a phsycho but the bottom line is I wouyld be glad I know wing chun and tradtional kung fu if he ever had me cornered. You don't always fight by choice.

Goninjago You can't compare everything against Lipeng. He is one person. I know your good but you will never be as good as he is. So some things he tells you works for him might not work for you. Or for anyone for that matter.

[zachsan]

i'm getting the strangest sense of deja-vu. arhat, read the thread history.

myself, i take gongfu because it TOTALLY ROCKS, and it has been successfuly in turning me into wild sex machine!. in fact, i'm just like li mu bai from crouching tiger! i can fly over buildings, catch darts in the air with chopsticks and deftly avoid attack while spouting witty philosophical discourse!! i've never tried any of these things, but i'm sure i can do it. the wise man has faith in his own abilities....

- zach

[mortal]

Zachsan

I wouldn't just dodge around punches and kicks. I would also be blocking when appropriate. And yes I could do it all day.

I could break anyones leg in one second with a kick. Why would that be hard. I could also sweep very easily.
Throw a punch and step on someones knee at the same time. Beleive me it will be broken.

The point of being a good fighter is overcoming someones will to not be destroyed. You think by will alone it is hard to take somebody out?