Maybe kung fu should pivot into being a dance style, like capoeira.
Modern Kung Fu has already 'forked off' a more practical fighting version, Sanda, and there are handful of decent Sanda practitioners in various MMA orgs.
There is Sanshou too, that resemble a more rulebound kickboxing.
And for routines there is a split between the "dancing" for presentation, called "modern wushu", and traditional routines, that are used to practice actual deadly fighting moves.
I used to train traditional routine, but for it to go beyond "dancing" the teacher regularly scheduled sparring session for students to attempt to use in actual combat the moves (the ones we could test... I made the mistake once of wanting to spar with a particularly weird and ugly move, only to almost get a broken shoulder. happily my partner knew enough to make the move against me with just enough force to hurt a lot without damaging me)
This is interesting. With the wave of workout studios like Barry's Bootcamp and Core 40 becoming extremely popular in America, I wonder if Kung Fu could be transformed into a workout class in America, or even in Hong Kong. I wonder if turning Kung Fu into a workout in the ethnic Chinese areas could work.
How is karate holding up in Japan and elsewhere? I know kids in the US take it as an after-school activity. Wushu, too, is now a competitive artform, at least for the Asian-American diaspora anyway.
After the Communist Revolution, kung fu instructors took jobs as dance instructors. A lot of the modern wushu - very gymnastic and often aerial movements - came out of the altered teaching. Much of what you see in modern movies is non-traditional.
There's been a range of opinion in the Chinese martial arts community about modern wushu. My own opinion is that the new teachings, while not being practical, keep to the spirit of the origins of kung fu in chi kung - promotion of health and better control of your body.
So, the short answer is that it did become dance-like.
Before the web, you would pretty much only learn about whatever martial arts were available in your area. There was no objective truth. In the absence of evidence, comparisons between martial arts were done on a subjective level: does it look cool?
Now, anybody can look up kung fu on youtube, and if they do they'll see that it's a bit shit, compared with the others. No sane person is going to dedicate years of their life into learning something that is a bit shit.
In general the world has become a lot more factual in the last 25 years.
The kung fu academy I went had self defense, routines, championship fighting and flashy presentation classes... sadly, little of it is on Internet, I saw amazing stuff there in person that I can't find on YouTube to show to people.
That said, they recently hired a krav-maga teacher too.
I think you are over-selling the internet's contribution. The growth of MMA has been the real driver. UFC1 (and even PRIDE, a bit) was originally billed as a 'meeting of martial arts styles', where different disciplines could compete. The fact that an undersized ji-jitsu master won the first UFC really demonstrated the efficacy of that martial art.
The present ascendency of Muay Thai and BJJ (Brazilian school of ji-jitsu) is a direct product of this sorting of martial arts effectiveness against competing disciplines. Karate and Kung-Fu's substantial drop are also related, as they are essentially unused in modern MMA.
And where does the average young person in Hong Kong go to watch MMA? YouTube.
As a Brit, the only reason I can even comprehend your comment, is because I have read Americans talking about UFC on the internet, and watched some clips on youtube.
> And where does the average young person in Hong Kong go to watch MMA? YouTube.
If they watch MMA at all. I have no idea what the market penetration of MMA is globally but I think it's a stretch to assume that the majority of children interested in martial arts are influenced by it.
> The present ascendency of Muay Thai and BJJ (Brazilian school of ji-jitsu) is a direct product of this sorting of martial arts effectiveness against competing disciplines. Karate and Kung-Fu's substantial drop are also related, as they are essentially unused in modern MMA.
It's important to keep in mind that many of the most effective self defense techniques are illegal in organized fighting competitions. These include eye gouging, throat strikes, biting, joint breaks, stomps, kidney shots, downward elbows, etc. IMO this seriously limits the ability of these competitions to predict how various styles will fare in real life or death self defense situations.
I would say very often. For an example, let's look at the throat strike. Any time you could plausibly punch someone in the face, it could instead be a throat strike. It takes much less force to end a confrontation with a strike to the throat than it does to the face. This seriously changes the dynamics of the confrontation. This same reasoning also applies pretty well to eye gouges.
Now consider hits to the back of the head. If an MMA fighter exposes the back of his head to you, the quickest way to end it would be a palm strike to the base of the skull: lights out. But because that's illegal fighters will be a lot more likely to go for something like a rear naked choke, taking the fight to the ground and artificially inflating the value of grappling.
I don't view the unified MMA rules as demonstrative of a technique's effectiveness. The rules were crafted to preserve the longevity of fighter careers. These are trained fighters on an even playing field.
Pulling off eye gouging and throat strikes are low probability and expose a fighter. Bas Rutten has a bit on these techniques, their effectiveness, and how doing either leaves an opening.
To emphasize trhway's dose of reality, here's Bernard Hopkins explaining proper technique with the chin to avoid getting knocked out.[0] Throat punching is hard to pull off because proper defense doesn't allow for it.
> Any time you could plausibly punch someone in the face, it could instead be a throat strike.
not really. If you look at a good boxer during a fight, you'd not see any opening for a throat strike.
Boxing, being one of the most practically efficient techniques at the "upper floor", is perceived and frequently really is missing at the "ground floor" and this is where Muai Thai comes in - basically extending the boxing for hands with the boxing for legs, as out of the many footwork styles - taekwondo, karate, kung-fu - the Muai Thai's footwork is the most similar to the boxing ideology and style.
That's my impression too. Gouges and the rest can create opening, and they're an edge if you're evenly matched with someone, but in the same way that sharpshooting might. It's a skill, an interesting one, but how often does a fight with pistols come down to really precise aim, rather than hitting the head or center of mass?
I think it's similar in physical combat, although some elements like the dropped elbows and kicking a downed opponent would definitely end a match faster, you have to drop them first.
Those moves were't illegal (except eye gouge I think) in the early days of UFC and I don't think they decided any fights.
Still, I agree with your point that UFC shows us the best mix of skills for that particular set of constraints, not necessarily for self defense in the outside world.
Also, in sports there is always the occasional surprise new technique that dominates for a while until others train to counter it. In the early days of MMA grappling alone could win, as long as you had a finishing move (which is why early on some of the huge greco roman wrestlers could dominate a match and still lose).
Every single one that goes to the ground, so pretty much all of them. If you want to simulate real life, going to the ground is an immediate loss as the guy's buddy will hit you over the head and kill you. So not only do MMA fighters leave openings my grandma could exploit (with a baseball bat from behind), they do so intentionally! I respect the sport, but it is certainly nothing at all like real world fighting.
Add in some sort of romance about how martial arts means you don't have to hurt someone to defend your own life.
People get very uncomfortable if you tell them that in a life and death situation where the attacker is in close and it's too late to run, that you're going straight for the windpipe or a knee. Dude is trying to kill me. I'm not fucking around. How much footage do you have to see of knife attacks before you figure out that if they can walk and breathe nothing else you do is going to dissuade them?
There's another factor: MMA fights are one-on-one in a controlled environment. If you get into a fight in a bar and take your opponent to the ground, his friend is going to kick you in the head and now you have a concussion. MMA fights and the styles that succeed most frequently in MMA are based around this kind of maneuver, and it works because you know you are fighting one dude and nobody else is going to bother you.
3. Glass mugs/Bottles can be broken and used as a weapon
4. There are hard table corners (watch out if you fall!)
5. There are chairs in the way (or maybe they can help you if you like to wield chairs!!)
A football team once picked a fight in a bar with a kung fu school. One of the best Kung Fu student slipped on the floor and his 15 years of kung fu went out of the window very very very quickly :-)
> It's important to keep in mind that many of the most effective self defense techniques are illegal in organized fighting competitions.
Its also important to keep in mind that, while historically most martial arts (including those in which sport competitions involving the unarmed subset have been popular) include training in weapons (in some cases ones which, while purpose built, are intentionally stand-ins for things which might commonly be used as improvised weapons), MMA competitions -- like most full force combat sport competitions, and for good reason -- completely exclude the use of weapons. Both the fact that you won't have or be improvising a weapon and the fact that you don't have to deal with your opponent having or improvising a weapon is a significant difference from conditions in many real-world fights.
And also that MMA competitions take place on a mat enclosed by a cage, an environment which does not simulate the environmental conditions of many real-world fights particularly closely.
MMA competitions are perhaps good at showing which unarmed techniques are optimum for the conditions and rules under which they are held; generalizing from them to which are most useful for real-world fights is, well, pretty much the same error as generalizing from any combat sport to the real world.
Knockdown Karate is still a part of many top fighters' arsenal. K-1 was started by Seidokaikan martial artists.
That's just not the kind of thing folks are learning at their local Tiger Schulman's. Also the political drama surrounding the split of Kyokushin has caused it to virtually disappear in most areas.
I think you are over-selling the internet's contribution.
The growth of MMA has been the real driver.
I think you're talking past the parent comment.
He's saying that the Internet shined a light and exposed "bullshido" martial arts. BJJ, muay thai, wrestling, and kickboxing didn't need an MMA forum to raise doubts. They needed visibility. The Internet makes the social proof easily accessible without having to buy a PPV, rent a DVD, or attend a fight. The exposure has correctly labeled many of these cultish martial arts for what they are -- ineffective combat systems.
The sad part is that for a sizeable minority, it almost takes a Youtube intervention with many videos such as this one [0] to convince them that no amount of aikido training will let them mow through a wave of attackers.
As an avid fencer, I couldn't agree more! My first instinct, trained into me for years with fencing has to do with scoring points on specific areas, in specific ways, not killing or surviving. It might look a little similar to the uninitiated, but it's basically night and day. Never mind that I've trained with little metal foils, sabers and epees, that probably weigh a fraction of a proper steel blade, I just wouldn't know what to do with it to literally save my life.
Yes, the instructor's "school" isn't labeled in the video. That said, you have to admit the opening sequence shows misleading effectiveness much like that of (explicitly labeled) aikido. He's grabbing wrist control from people charging him and using the (similar?) techniques of aikido.
Aikido's heavily criticized [0] for using these attack caricatures both in practice and sales. In real life, you're not catching punches or twirling actors.
Many people tend to forget that Gracies were partly responsible for organizing UFC1 and that self-promotion was very much the goal of their involvement.
> No sane person is going to dedicate years of their life into learning something that is a bit shit.
>
> In general the world has become a lot more factual in the last 25 years.
This statement is sort of absurd. For the sense of learning a military art form for combat yes. But there is a lot more to martial arts than fighting. Why learn Tai Chi or Yoga? If the world is more factual why are people still playing american football? Why do people join a football team when the coach is obviously garbage (after all they can tell from watching on the internet that they are not learning the best football)...
To my knowledge Yoga has never been practiced as a form of combat. Tai Chi is rarely taught as such. To actually answer your question, look at why those things are taught: wellness.
>why are people still playing american football?
If your goal is to get rich playing sports, and you're good at your sport, then football is a great choice to make. It's one of the largest sports in the US, minimum pay is something north of $500k / year. I'm not sure why you even put this in here.
>Why do people join a football team when the coach is obviously garbage?
You've decided to pursue a career in football. Where you live there is one choice. Or, possibly, it's like why would you choose to work at Amazon these days? Short term sacrifice for long term gain (credibility gained from working there).
As a, possibly interesting, anecdote: I practiced Aikido for 10 years. Broadly painted, there are two major schools of thought in Aikido, those who want to pursue it as a traditional Japanese martial art, and those who want it to be more like the modern iteration of Tai Chi (at least as taught in the US). I was in the former camp, and was constantly frustrated with the latter. Stripping out the ideas of martial effectiveness and replacing it with new age philosophy did not result in a better promotion of wellness (not mental wellness and certainly not physical wellness) in my opinion, it just washed out the merits of the art. When you train yourself with a martial attitude, you work harder, you take your training more seriously, you develop focus, discipline, tolerance for pain. You push your limits. As your ability grows you put yourself in conflict with your ego and the nastier sides of yourself. Arrogance is a natural consequence, and you get the opportunity to temper that. It's only through doing that hard work that you can arrive at any sense of internal peace, at least in my opinion. Not just peace when you are laying in a hammock reading, but also peace in conflict.
Take away the desire for martial validity and replace it with New Age philosophy and you have a practice that creates the illusion of personal development while doing very little to actually achieve the aspirations set forth in its ideals. The time that should be spent honing your body and your personality is instead spent on an activity not much more useful than laying in a hammock reading. Fun? Yes. Intellectually stimulating? Sure. But not in line with making progress towards the stated goals.
Interesting, thought I would argue that's not Yoga as a martial art, rather as a component of training. We don't say jogging is a martial art even though most every professional fighter has jogging as part of their regimen.
Tai Chi on the other hand used to be a martial art and essentially moved into the same space as Yoga.
I think the conflation is mostly from a confusion in terms. Old Sanskrit treatises and sketches on hand to hand combat somewhat resemble the techniques in Muay Boran, the ancient precursor to sport Muay Thai, more than Patanjali's yoga sutras that form the basis of what we today think of as "yoga."
But the term "yoga" was historically applied to many sorts of disciplines, both mental and physical. It is likely that Patanjali's sutras were largely general knowledge in ancient India as ways to stay fit and limber, basically like the calisthenics everyone does today.
So it's likely it would have been integrated as part of any physical training regimens that came out of India. So basically, the yoga techniques and postures would be part of the martial arts training in the same way push ups and jumping jacks are.
> It is likely that Patanjali's sutras were largely general knowledge in ancient India as ways to stay fit and limber
You must be referring to the Hatha Yoga Pradipika or Gheranda Samhita since PYS doesnt deal with individual asanas/gymnastic yoga whatsoever?
PYS is split into 4 parts: 1. Details regarding superconscious states (samadhi), 2. The means of practice by which samadhi can be attained, 3. the supernatural powers associated with and attained via samadhi including their dangers and pitfalls, 4. how to transcend all the lower samadhis and attain final and complete liberation.
Asanas are only mentioned in the 2nd part and in that context only really mean how to sit properly to attain deep meditation. Gymnastic yoga is nowhere to be found in the book.
i think most people in high level and professional combat sports community would say the real root cause here is MMA (specifically UFC). the internet has certainly accelerated its influence though, and given it a reach that payperview and video tapes could never have facilitated.
basically, there's only a small handful of martial arts that actually work in applied person-to-person combat without weapons. and they're all largely useless in the real world when faced with multiple opponents and/or weapons. critically, you must know all or most of these skills or else you will get taken advantage of. mma has proven that it's basically western wrestling, BJJ (which draws on judo), muay thai and kickboxing, western boxing, and most importantly, an insanely rigorous cardio and strength training program that will allow you to last even a few seconds in the ring with a real fighter.
and even then... you could get your ass knocked out in literally 2 seconds. see: mcgregor. that isn't to say it won't change in the future, but that's basically where it is now.
> there's only a small handful of martial arts that actually work in applied person-to-person combat
Even MMA, which is billed as a sorting of martial art's effectiveness, has substantial rules that greatly limit the fighters. For instance, no groin strikes, leg stomps or eye gouges: all of which are actions I've heard are the first thing you should do in a real fight!
Not arguing they should be legal (sport is brutal enough as it is), but even MMA, while closer to "real combat", has severe limitations and arbitrary features.
> all largely useless in the real world when faced with multiple opponents
^ This, 1000x. If you get into a fight you were not planning, it is called an ambush. The most logical action is to run the hell away, or at least, use absolutely overwhelming firepower and dirty, dirty attacks. The concept of two folks trading blows is not how real fights actual progress, let alone two kung-fu masters jumping between buildings...
I see a lot of high kicks in MMA too. I've been taught to never do that, because if the person grabs the kick (or just takes the hit) and attacks my back leg, that'll be that.
In other words, the back and forth kind of kickboxing that you see is partially a product of the fighters not being allowed to aim for disabling blows.
It's unclear to me what fights would look like and whether any other arts would rise up if the fighter protections were removed. (and I'm not sure I want to find out)
...eye gouges... the first thing you should do in a real fight!
Eh, if one fears for one's life, that's probably an option, but otherwise it seems like a sure ticket to prison. A good reason to avoid all avoidable "real" fights.
Yeah. One thing you don't learn enough about when you train in martial arts is that you can get royally screwed by the law. If a decent lawyer convinces a judge you're a deadly weapon (and a missing eye might help support that), then it's going to go badly for you. In defense of martial arts training, the general rule is don't ever fight civilians. And of course, the confidence of knowing how to fight leaves you with much less of a feeling of having something to prove.
I worked as a bouncer for awhile, and even though I was the only one who was competent in a fight, I never had to use any of it unless I was cleaning up someone else's mess. They'd all sit there and let things get out of hand before doing something, and then I'd have to go 'fix' it.
Is that from something? I feel like I should recognize it. I always think of ConAir when this comes up. Clearly the best treatment of the issue possible.
It's just the stereotype of the guy who got a black belt from some bullshido trainer: "Oh, I can't fight you, I'm too dangerous, my killer instincts and ninja training means I'd just rip your throat out immediately."
I have always been amazed when I saw friends or acquaintances, who had 10 to 20 years experience of various 'martial' arts, get into bar/street fights. They would exchange never-ending low-kicks and middle-kicks, which were absolutely useless and ineffective, and, after a while, fall or be grabbed and put to the ground.
In comparison, as far as I am concerned, completely untrained (meeting twice a week in a room to hit-on-and-get-hit-by-other-people-but-not-too-much is a concept that feels alien to me), my street/bar fights never lasted more than a few tenths of second. A good old straight punch in the nose/chin with all your body weight, or a good old knee in the balls/liver/ribs/plexus (depends on the size of the bugger, but it always lands somewhere that hurts or incapacitates), or, if in a creative mood, a lift-projection-crash/crush over and under a wall and table. Opponent sleeping, problem solved, can continue heading back home or having another drink, thank you. Oh, yeah, and one very important parameter is to hit first.
I cannot run, so that's not an option and I have to solve problems in a different way (which can include me spending a night in the hospital because the "hit first" thing only works when there is only 1, or perhaps 2 opponents).
This was just to say I have never been convinced by the application of martial arts training in real conditions. Unless people turn themselves into war killing machines, which I do not consider a good thing to do and to be as long as we live in an overall reasonably civilised world.
I've been in a street fight. The guy attacked, I pushed him back, he came again, I tried to hit him over the head with a beer bottle. He parried with his arm, crashing the bottle, then we tangled and rolled around on the ground a bit. Thank God he was just a clueless frat kid, and his ten friends broke us apart, instead of stomping my head in. Lesson learned: Don't leave it on luck for your life and future mobility. Don't get into street fights.
The martial artist expects that a straight punch to the face will be blocked and countered, so they don't do that, even though in a street fight against an amateur, that is the best strategy.
It's similar to beginner's luck in videogames, where an expert player can't predict the beginner's moves because they play badly, so they lose the first time.
Modern martial arts are also a lot about the sport, not the combat. We had this discussion in my office with a few of us who've done various martial arts over the years (varying degrees of skill, dedication). A lot of martial arts are about the points in competitions. If you land a punch, it's a point. It doesn't matter how strong, it matters how quick. In BJJ competitions, the one who might win a street fight won't necessarily win the match, because they put themselves in disadvantaged positions (opponent gets points) to gain a better position for a submission (not guaranteed to happen, but they win if they do, lose if they don't, it's a gambit).
>This was just to say I have never been convinced by the application of martial arts training in real conditions.
With all due respect, though, unless you know hundreds of trained martial artists and have witnessed them get into hundreds of fights, the data set by which you're judging the validity of martial arts training seems a bit small.
Like a lot of people, you seem to be confusing confusing katas with actual fighting. "meeting twice a week in a room to hit-on-and-get-hit-by-other-people-but-not-too-much" isn't about training for actual real-world combat, it's a martial art, meaning there is a study of form, balance, coordination, etc. involved. Not every martial art is even that practical in the real world (i'm looking at you Aikido.)
But everything you mention as seeming more practical and useful than martial arts? Is still martial arts. "kick them in the balls and punch them in the face" is martial arts.
> Even MMA, which is billed as a sorting of martial art's effectiveness, has substantial rules that greatly limit the fighters. For instance, no groin strikes, leg stomps or eye gouges: all of which are actions I've heard are the first thing you should do in a real fight!
So you've heard. How does that prove it would be effective?
- It's very hard to eye gouge. If you miss, you break your finger. If you hit, you most likely just make your opponent look away and grab your hand.
- It's not easy to hit a groin strike, nor any strike, and the pain is not that debilitating in a fight, not more than a broken rib or dislocated chin.
If you don't believe me that dirty tricks don't work, you don't need to take my word on it. Take a look at bullshido.com, where you'll find more than enough evidence. Just as one example, take vale tudo fights in Brazil before they were made in a sport with "no-dirty-tricks" rules.
Dirty attacks won't save you from a single fighter, let alone a group of people.
Which is kind of...ok? I studied ewto wing chun, and in our small "fight club" I always came out pretty well against the boxer/kick boxers if the group. So I'd say there are definitely"effective" styles, based on anecdotal evidence. A lot also depends on what you want to learn. If you want flashy moves, do gymnastics and learn wushu. I wanted a soft, but "effective" style, a friend of mine wanted power and hard hitting, so he went thaiboxing...so people will learn what they want, as always living styles today can be archived and resurrected later, or they can morph and survive
>Another casualty of the internet. Before the web, you would pretty much only learn about whatever martial arts were available in your area. There was no objective truth.
Yeah, thank god for the internet for giving us that.
>In the absence of evidence, comparisons between martial arts were done on a subjective level: does it look cool?
I'm not sure where you lived, but I lived in a peripheral western country in Europe, and even 10 years before the "internet" (www), we had tons of various martial arts schools available, from Kung-Fu to Tae-Kwon-Do to Thai Kick Boxing, Capoeira, Krav Maga, Tai Chi and several more varieties I don't even care about.
Infact, if anything, the golden age of such practices was mostly in the 70s and 80s (with Bruce Lee, Karate Kid, and the pulp action/karate movies).
>In general the world has become a lot more factual in the last 25 years.
Once again, there is no objective truth. The world (you, really) has adopted a new orthodoxy and become convinced it is fact.
Modern MMA was developed to showcase BJJ as developed by the Gracie family; the rules explicitly favor grappling. The idea that we can learn something about the "objective truth" about "effective fighting styles" by watching youtube videos is ridiculous.
In reality, the most effective street fighting style probably involves groin kicks, eye gouges and finger-locks, the attacks on the most vulnerable points in the human body. No one will (1) teach you these styles and (2) showcase them on television.
Furthermore, no matter what, different martial arts will appeal to different people. There are probably hundreds of styles of Chinese martial art that could be called "kung fu", including grappling styles, striking styles, throwing styles, weapon styles, etc. Different people will have differing aptitudes for each of these styles, and they will be appropriate in different situations.
There IS no best fighting style, because there is no single "fight". If someone shows up with a gun or perhaps even a sword, your BJJ or Muay Thai is useless. Similarly, if your opponent is twice your weight and only knows how to crush you with his arms, it doesn't matter that your style is not "a bit shit" like his, he will probably crush you with his arms.
On the street, techniques that rely mostly on inflicting pain aren't so great. This is why chokeholds and debilitating joint locks are preferable. You may not feel the pain (for whatever reason) but your arm is still broken and no longer functional. Or you're unconscious.
The weakness to BJJ is that if there's more than one person, things can get hairy for you, and the training doesn't focus on this much (or at all in most places I think).
>The weakness to BJJ is that if there's more than one person, things can get hairy for you, and the training doesn't focus on this much (or at all in most places I think).
If there is more than one person, things are going to get hairy anyway. Although some boxing/muay thai could help to some extent.
Agreed, but coiling yourself around someone and rolling on the ground is a terrible position to be in when that someone has friends. The reality of most street fights is it's just drunk people being idiots. That usually means friends are around.
I'd say that not having 360 degree vision is a terrible shortcoming when your opponent has friends anyway. But also, bjj does not happen only on the ground, specially if you are talking about drunk people being idiots. Do not underestimate the power of a takedown to the cement, for example.
> I'd say that not having 360 degree vision is a terrible shortcoming
Well now you're just being silly :)
>Do not underestimate the power of a takedown to the cement
I'm aware. I practiced Aikido for 10 years and BJJ for a year. BJJ doesn't really practice throwing with power, rather, it's usually a setup to disabling through grappling techniques. While I would readily admit Aikido is less martially effective overall (fairly tied to the traditional attacks & style of Japanese martial arts, which are often not practical), something that is explicitly trained for is fighting multiple opponents, throwing people into other people and throwing with power.
>> I'd say that not having 360 degree vision is a terrible shortcoming
> Well now you're just being silly :)
Well, I just meant that dealing with more than one opponent is a problem in BJJ as much as it is a problem in any other fighting style. It's not worse in BJJ because it has grappling and ground techniques. If you are exclusively a boxing fighter, for example, having people attack you from behind is also a big deal.
I would argue that it is worse. If you are on someone's back, in a rear naked choke your entire body is set to controlling the person you're choking and you are defenseless against other attacks. Not just attacks from behind; you can be looking right at the second person and be in the position of having to decide whether to let the choke go to cover yourself or to stay committed to the choke. Worse, since the person you're choking has their hands free, you usually need to bury your face to keep them from doing things like gouging your eyes out, meaning you limit your vision. This obviously gets worse if you've pulled somebody into the guard.
Additionally, if someone is coming from behind, your ability to react is much faster if you're not wrapped around somebody else, giving you a better chance of protecting yourself.
I trained in taekwondo and I can say we absolutely were taught the dirty techniques. Most of the class focused on physical training and traditional moves, but often a self defence section would show how to expand the basic moves to take people down and disable them. Eyes and throat were targets we practised with as well as the groin (although I seem to remember most of the likely attacks your face on the street don't really give you time to go for that area)
The term kung fu refers to anything that is acquired through determination and practice. A great artist, dancer, singer, or even a great janitor, all have kung fu. So a measure of kung fu in a society is really a measure of how many people choose to become great at the things they do.
This is more a commentary on martial arts capabilities, which is less relevant in a world where physical danger is increasingly rare. While I strongly advocate for practicing it (I have been a student of Wing Chun for 3 years now), it makes perfect sense why Asian millenials don't find it very important.
I have never heard it referred to that way. Usually I have heard Yoga described as union. As the term applies to the asanas the union between breath and movement.
My quick 30 seconds of googling supports what I had been taught but those old words can really have a broad set of meaning depending on who is using them
I've started hearing that use of the word 'yoga' in the context of yoga instructors as well, but I don't think it's accurate even if it is evocative. The closest meaning of 'yoga' is probably 'control', having the same root as the word 'yoke'. The earliest techniques are about control of the breath, so the idea of the word meaning 'union' doesn't really make sense to me, except in that the goal of yoga, like most activities in the Hindu sphere, may be couched as seeking samadhi/unity with creation. I've always thought of "yoga" as meaning "discipline", as in, "a discipline or practice", or even "school of thought".
Also, even in English the phrase "taking up the yoke" is one of discipline and possibly servitude, as distinct from simply joining together. Also, Googling "one ox yoke" returns around 50/50 split between two-ox and one-ox yokes, so the act of yoking is not necessarily dual in nature, although traditional yokes are not capable of adding additional oxen (and instead are arranged in reins, like with a stagecoach).
When translated into the modern, English-speaking culture, words and ideas of discipline gets distorted. There is usually a meaning-sense of servitude floating around. People see the old kung-fu movies and thinks that is what is about.
A master can refer to a master of an art or a master to your slave. It can be understood like that.
However, a master of an enlightenment vehicle is a master of self. A art can be an enlightenment vehicle, but few in the modern world will see it that way.
This misunderstanding is the generator of a lot of drama :-D
For the ancients, breath was spirit. "Union" refers to "Union with God". This idea was not exclusive to the Indian culture. In English, the roots of words like "inspire", "expire", "respire", "perspire" relate to old root words for spirit and breath.
Modern Yoga inherits the ideas and methods of classical Tantra, though often in a degenerated or distorted way. That is why you have teachers ascribing meanings like that. It means there is a semantic ahift going on, but don't confuse it with it's historical roots.
I expect Chinese martial arts to go into a similar decline. Many of the fighting arts come from either a Buddhist or a Taoist neigong lineage. For example, there is a reason to work on horse stande for a while, but it is non-obvious.
My own teacher in the US was interested in teaching a classical form in a modern way: forms and fighting methods. He was very good at decoding the applications from a form in a flexible way. I ran through the entire cirriculum in about a year. Then I stopped practicing regularly.
It wasn't until years later that I found a neigong method that works with the art. It's something I am undertaking by myself, just myself, my body, and my internal energy. It took two yeara to just get through the preliminaries and shed enough of emotional crap to start integrating things into the movement. Once I started doing thaf, stuff like training in horse stance like the classical teaching method, makes more sense. It's pretty amazing stuff, and even though I am touching the tip of the iceburg, I do feel sad. There are not many who will want to invest the time in this. The payoff takes too long.
Yoga is a Sanskrit word, which means union. It is much broader and deeper than doing physical asanas. The asanas is just the tip of iceberg :)
As you said, when you practice the asanas, your body and breath becomes more controlled. The next level is you control your thoughts - and not vice versa -> union of body, breath and mind. As you become more serene, your meditation starts getting deeper -> union of mind, body, breath and self.
I came across this video recently, where three "genuine" yoga teachers are asking questions about yoga and meditation. The format is initial 10-12 minutes, the yoga teachers talk about their experiences, and then in rest of the video, they ask questions to Sri Sri Ravishankar about deepening mediation with yoga: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7HEmsY29EU
If you are interested in this stuff, check out Christopher Wallis's Tantra Illuminated. It describes the potent View of classical tantra and has a history section tracing it to modern yoga.
It makes sense; but it's still a "too bad" idea. Even crude physical exercise that challenges your limit, your perception of your body, your sense of time under duress, is of great value. Even if you'll never need the physical strength. I wish people kept nurturing the social desire for such sports.
Morpheus replies to Neo, "Show Me". They then enter the para-Matrix and fight. Neo's "Kung Fu" (martial arts) can't beat Morpheus.
Eventually Morpheus convinces Neo that winning the fight has less to do with knowing martial arts than it does with knowing how to bend/break rules. Neo is of course a hacker who has spent countless hours learning to massage and bend computer systems, so he does indeed know the requisite Kung Fu.
Kung Fu means "hard work" so of course it is waning :-)
More seriously, a couple of observations:
1. Most styles of kung fu require dedicating years of practice before one can be called skilled. Compare this to Systema or Krav Maga where one can become a killer very quickly and you can expect people with little time to train to prefer these more modern martial arts. This says nothing about the depth of these martial arts, just the way they are organized and taught. As a concrete example: one of the first block I learned in Flying White Crane Kung Fu is actually very difficult to use in a street fight. Once you're good with it though, the opponent is in a very bad situation. With Krav Maga, the first block you may learn is usually very basic, very effective to block a punch, but you get less counter-attack possibilities.
2. Most of us do not need to fight for our life so of course, martial arts are waning as a whole.
3. MMA is very popular and most Kung Fu styles are not suitable for MMA: again it takes time to become an expert and many techniques cannot be used in a MMA ring (can I put my finger in your eye? what about using pressure points while you are tackling me on the floor? can you hit the neck with a spear hand?).
4. Kung Fu masters are usually very secretive and they sometimes die with most of their knowledge, especially if they do not find someone suitable to transfer that knowledge.
5. Finally, a sibling comment mentioned youtube. Many kung fu schools hesitate to use Youtube and when they do it, they usually do not show the best they are capable of. When I was training, I remember a master asking to only capture the movements of the upper body and hide the footwork :-)
There have been a few successful kung fu practitioners in MMA. Most notably Cung Le (former Strikeforce champion) and Roy "Big Country" Nelson. While Roy is probably better known for being fat and punching hard, his first discipline was Shaolin Kung Fu.
The question is: did they present actual Kung Fu techniques while competing in MMA? Or learned some kikboxing + wrestling?
For example when I see Machida competing in UFS, I clearly see base of Shotokan karate in how he fights. I can't say anything like this about Cung Lee or Roy Nelson.
Yeah, good question. One could probably make an argument about Cung Lee using a Kung Fu style, but probably not Nelson. Nonetheless, it is interesting to think about Nelson starting there, and I do wonder if he would give you a better answer than I.
Is Qi Gong / Tai Chi fading too ? There were discussion in France to use them as "physical" activity in the morning at school. It would be strange if they start to like it while Asia start to dislike it.
There's this joke by one of my Chinese colleague: "When I was at school, we had to choose between swimming and taiqi, but there was no swimmig pool..." So I think a big slice of Chinese people have praticed taiqi or some related "quan", but not many still do it regularly. I still some old guys or ladies practicing in the morning when I bike to work, but again not many. Yoga is kind of fashionable in China among the younger people, however, and anyway local traditions may well revive for some reason.
At some point, it's less about usefulness and more about whole body-mind-emotion integration. At the very least, there may be spontaneous feeling of rightness and perhaps, happiness and joy that arises. This is true of yoga as well.
I am Taiwanese. Unlike my sister, I'm considered an oddball: Most of my friends are not Asian and I practice traditional martial arts. I tried to go and find the teacher myself, however, if I had not been so out of sorts with my mother, I probably would have gotten consistent training when I was young. I would have been the spoiled only grandson (so to speak), it's difficult to find any kid of Chinese ancestry eager for it.
I also went in for all the wrong reasons though I thought I knew why I should get into this stuff. Now, in the middle age, with my body the way it is, I recognize a lot of the motivation I had were fantasies.
My wife is of American descent. Her grandmother, also American, picked up Tai Chi a couple yeara ago. It was suggested to her as a pain management thing, and she did not want to take drugs for pain. She stuck out with it even though there wasn't a result. She said the first result came after a year: the pain went away. She could sleep. She told me she wished someone had told her about this when she was young.
But I think we both knew: if someone told her about this when she was young, it's doubtful she would have listened.
Pain management sounds useful, but the art goes deeper than that. Using a metric like "utility" to describe it's value asks the wrong question.
Sure youth is leaving in its own fantasy world. There's no better time for information. The time you get it is when you get it[1]. If your wife's mom saw results it's all what I was looking for. Thanks.
[1] Sometimes you read the same thing many times for years, only 10 years later you realize the real meaning.
Tai chi teaches balance and efficiency of movement. Young headstrong people (mostly) won't see the the benefits of these qualities. Older people (mostly) will.
Tell us more. I never took Tai Chi lessons. But from sports and music, Tai Chi felt very close to mechanical optimization. Surely there's more, so feel free to reply.
I was sceptical too, then I tried once with a good friend, it was not the "do you feel the qi?" thing, more like "follow my moves". In the evening, my body was so full of some electric shit I couldn't sleep.
This friend went to some other part of the world, I never tried again. I remember it was the "wuxing quan", the "five elements" version.
I apologize for seeming vague. My father was one of the first Westerners to learn Tai chi so I grew up with it. Knowing something so intimately and being able to thoughtfully articulate and teach it are often totally different skills.
It's very close to mechanical optimization. Basically you want to move as efficiently as possible.
Tai chi is a series of movements that alternate balance and weight between your feet. You always end up with your weight on one side or the other, or you are in the process of shifting your weight to one side.
I see many people practicing Tai Chi in the morning on the way to work and in the evening on the way home here in Singapore. There are also modern dance groups etc but I'd say Tai Chi is the most popular.
When I was in Beijing a few years ago, the parks in the morning would inevitably be full of groups of (mostly older) people doing tai chi. Pretty impressive compared to the senior population in the West, I would say.
A decade ago I took Mandarin, and the instructor said where you used to see large groups of people doing Tai Chi in Shanghai parks you now see ballroom dancing.
Some martial arts, modern and unmodern, are not fit for sparring competitions. Live weapons against open hand is usually considered too dangerous to attempt to prove a point of superiority in a system. Same goes with some martial arts techniques that are too dangerous to be used for sport, i.e. knee reaping.
Knee reaping happens a lot in Sambo. Nothing dangerous when practitioners are well educated. Also it is allowed in many of the submission grappling competitions such as EBI and so far in their few shows I haven't seen anyone had an issue with it. Same way as they allow scissor takedown (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hwl4Bk_ZHgc)
The problem with not being able to practice a technique in sparring, or "live" with a resisting opponent is that you don't know how good you are when time comes and you have to apply it.
In a real street fight situation you also don't know if the guy is going to shank you, so most arguments about "which style is best" kind of go out the window at that point.
> In a real street fight situation you also don't know if the guy is going to shank you, so most arguments about "which style is best" kind of go out the window at that point.
Well, appeal to non-lethal sport competitions to settle those arguments go out the window, but martial styles intended for real use (including lots where the unarmed subset has been popular in sport) tend to teach both techniques for dealing with armed opponents and techniques for using weapons (including, often, things that stand in for improvised weapons) -- because that's a pretty big factor in serious fights. Purely unarmed intended-for-use-in-anger martial arts are a rarity.
Jiu Jitsu is in so far overrated that on the street it has a tremendous disadvantage to take somebody down: His friend will kick you to the head when lying down (source: personal experience in the ground position)
On of the advantages of old style MA like Karate and TKD that "telegraph" a kick: Actually, if you "telegraph" a kick, the advantage is, that you actually can kick over a counter kick as practiced in Wing Tsun or Krav Manga (source: personal experience)
No martial art is useful against multiple opponents, despite what they may claim.
Yeah, someone's friend is going to kick you.
But why wouldn't they kick you if you're standing and not facing them?
I wouldn't say that's a disadvantage of BJJ but rather one of facing multiple opponents. Like facing someone who has a gun. You're at disadvantage no matter how much knowledge you have.
As someone who trains in BJJ (grappling), muay thai and boxing. I don't see much utility in spending time learning a skill that has no basis in reality (Kung Fu). I'm not staying that Kung Fu doesn't have techniques that work in a fight, it does like the side-kick (Google Bruce Lee's sidekick) but most of it is for a lack of better word useless in terms of usefulness in a fight. Even Bruce Lee realized that and created his own art because of this realization.
I agree that Kung Fu like all martial arts add discipline to one's life and is a form of meditation which is its greatest gift but in terms of martial use the world has moved on to more lethal arts.
As someone who trained in kung fu for 20+ years, I don't see much utility in learning to fight when I live in such a safe location and culture. But the strength kung fu gave to my body still serves me well. The experience, as the article mentioned, of your school becoming your community as you all spend your evenings practicing together, was a wonderful one.
Sure, you could kick my ass. I'm OK with that. I've enjoyed a lovely hobby, made good friends, and am satisfied with how I spend my time.
Using sarcasm is one thing, but why not follow it up with points to counter his/her argument? How about giving examples of where it can be useful in real life?
And that response is why most of the skills you mentioned are not arts. They require some memorization but little mental effort. That is why boxers are paid more than MMA fighters there is less technique needed than artistic skill. Martial Arts are more focused on being a path for the whole of a person to interact with their world. And not simply to beat the piss out of it.
One idea behind certain Kung Funstyles is tonallow those who are not as physically adept to still be able to defend themselves. A 70 year old will not be able to throw a Muay Thai roundhouse.
The point of most martial arts is not utility but the practice itself, like meditation which in itself is very passive and non utilitarian in itself but instead gives some sort of clarity afterwards.
I think comparing Kung Fu to MMA (like many comments here have) is missing the point entirely. Few people who have a genuine dedication to the martial arts do so to become killing machines and, to borrow a parlance, most MMA style martial arts have no basis in reality as fights do not play out like they do on TV.
The virtues of King Fu have been expounded upon elsewhere here, but Kung Fu has been around for as long as it has for very good reasons. People today suddenly aren't better and smarter when it comes to martial arts, they just have new preferences and influences for how they think about it. Doesn't mean older ways are suddenly not valid.
Bruce Lee's sidekick isn't from the Kung Fu he originally studied. It was taught to him by a friend studying Tae Kwon Do.
The idea that Bruce Lee discarded everything from Kung Fu as useless is an oft-repeated misunderstanding.
Many of the concepts from Wing Chun remain in JKD today:
- simultaneous attack and defense (why anyone would not want to do these simultaneously I have no idea)
- occupying the centerline
- forward pressure
- wedging and flowing rather than blocking
- using tactile reflexes as opposed to your eyes
Talk to any modern martial arts practitioner and they will agree that the above concepts are sound. BJJ is all about tactile reflexes, that's why you practice rolling all the time. You can't see what the other guy is doing because you're wrapped up like a pretzel on the mat, but you instinctively know what he's trying to do by how he's shifting his weight.
What he was against was restricting oneself to silly stances and not being able to flow freely. Unfortunately Wing Chun has a lot of that.
I find the adduction stance restricts my movement.
It's not hard to find others who feel the same way, including JKDers.
It may work for you, which is fine. That's the whole idea of JKD - use what is working for you.
By pluralizing stances I was referring to karate as well. Much of Bruce Lee's commentary was actually about how the principles of WC were superior to those of karate - deep stances, kata, etc.
this can mainly be attributed to nationalization, the chinese government bringing all traditional elements under a single authorized form of martial arts.
so, real esoteric arts will eventually disappear in favor of state-sanctioned 'wushu', which is still effective, just not as rare and revered, and more of a dance than something readily applicable to fighting or defense.
Kungfu mostly just for show. Karate or taekwondo is more practical in modern age. Have you ever seen any police department taught people kungfu? Have you ever seen kungfu as a competition in the Olympics games?
Sadly, you could also write a very similar article about Japan and Kendo, right down to the "the government promoted it for nationalistic reasons in its heyday, but now it's waning and most of the interest in it is overseas."
In 2006, the Japanese men's team placed 3rd (behind Korea and the US) in the World Kendo Championship, and it was the end of an era. It was the first time in the event's history that those guys didn't come in first.
Japan is still a Kendo powerhouse, but it's not like it was.
Kung Fu has failed to adapt, by which I do not mean MMA, but changing market conditions. The quotes in the article more blame young people than having an idea of what's not working.
I've done many martial arts, but I'm not here to debate whether Kung Fu is effective. It's not, but there is no reason why it cannot be. What makes a martial art effective is simply having a large population of skilled practitioners. It can be institutional support like Judo in Japan, or wrestling in the US. Or it can be effective marketing like BJJ.
Anyone with real fighting skill can tell you that an art's effective has little to do with its techniques. Technique is only a starting point, that practitioners constantly improve upon. What is needed is a large number of highly competitive and athletic bodies to constantly test and improve on. It's brute force algorithm 101. Nothing can replace experience when actually fighting, because you don't have time to think.
Kung Fu will lose every time, unless they get institutional support, because you have practitioners who not only have questionable methods, they know nothing about building athletes either. Step on a wrestling mat or BJJ practice and compare the intensity versus a Kung Fu class. There's your answer right there. There is no 'kung fu' in Kung Fu.
I've got nothing against Kung Fu. I've learned some interesting concepts. But, similar to Aikido's flashy technique, I am able to put them to use from being a master in another art. Whereas its practitioners cannot.
Maybe a "high level" many year practitioner can do it, as they will tell you it takes many years, but that to me just tells me they are doing this the wrong and slow way. Even Olympic martial arts have shown that countries like Japan are far behind modern science in competitions. One can only image how backwards some random Nth generation guy in your neighborhood is.
Again, nothing against Kung Fu in theory, and maybe it had its heydey at some point, but a lot more needs to be done to save any of it. And it won't matter what style or what not - everyone is different even within a style.
Very true this has been happening since the 1950's Kung Fu carries with it eons of dogma. It would truly be a loss to humanity should the art be lost altogether...
It's interesting to see the comments here on HN. It's like a compression of all the various things I've seen people talk about with martial arts. The same arguments, the same assumptions. There isn't really anything insightful. It tells me that as a society, we still have not figured out the role of martial arts.
Uh, no. You took it upon yourself to be some kind of a hero with this and projected meanings that are not there. I don't feel shitty about your sarcasm and contempt, though I understand that you would like it if I somehow feel some suffering here over it. However, argumentation by contempt is not a persuasive rhetorical technique. I asked you why, to see whether you understand your own motivations.
Setting aside the posturing and seriously answering what you asked: I don't have an answer to "what is the role of martial art in modern society". Lots of people have asked that. I see people who have answered "what is the role of martial art in my life" to their satisfaction, but nothing is clear about the role of martial art in the modern society.
I notice when discussion goes around in circles -- the same pattern of arguments that happen across the years over different forums. For example, TMA vs MMA; what is reality-based or evidence-based fighting; whether you really need to be able to fight on the streets. There are also whole swathes of modernist anachronistic views that don't jive with traditional teachings (even if traditional teachings appears out-moded in modern societies).
ghiotion's comments were abusive, but your root comment wasn't great either, since it merely put others down without providing any information.
If you have greater knowledge and want to comment here, it's better to teach us something (e.g. about martial arts) instead of just saying how much we don't know.
@dang it isn't as if I have the answers. I wasn't just referring to how people on the internet don't have this answer. This has been a discussion going on for several centuries (literally; for example, Japanese budo in the 19th century), and no one has really come up with great answers, and I include people that are smarter than me.
As I said: you guys think I am putting people down. I'm not. I'm asking people to step back and really look at how the discourse has been going in circles.
I'd also like to say: while @ghiotion's remarks seems to have violated the customs of of Hacker News, it's on par with the customs on forums specifically for martial arts. It gets crazy, up to and including people deciding to back their arguments by issuing physical challenges (how many of those actually materialize, I don't know). I've also looked through some of @ghiotion's comment history, and the tone of that comment seems like an outlier.
Something about discussing martial arts brings out the aggression in people, worse than flamewars about tech or video games. It's as is to have rhetorical credibility, people feel they have to back it up with their capability for violence. My root comment was as much an observation of my own fatigue of this as anything. And no, I don't have an insight about this either. (Though I kinda wonder if I studied the philosophy of mimetic violence, it would help clarify why this happens).
It's interesting seeing everyone immediately sort themselves by their assumptions and then argue in those clusters.
Are martial arts supposed to be a way to defend yourself? A competitive sport? A way to stay in shape? Some sort of artistry?
These are all valid questions, and different martial arts answer different ones. Capoeira is worse than useless as a fighting technique, but entirely viable as a way to stay in shape and express yourself. Olympic-rules Tae Kwon Do is an excellent competitive sport that doesn't have much in common with versions of Tae Kwon Do taught for self-defense.
But because we're not agreeing on goals here we get the usual debates about whether MMA is the most effective way to hurt someone. Which has always sounded silly to me: we're talking about a sport. Using just your feet isn't the most effective way to get a ball into a net, but soccer is still a better sport than it would be if players picked up the ball and ran.
I kinda wonder if internet discussions around martial arts are the way they are because practitioners (whatever their motivations) tends to posture / step up to challenges more.
Japanese budo went through a similar decline and soul-searching when the samurai went on the decline, and modernization went on the rise. Sure, there was that guy (forgot his name) who wrote this beautiful fiction to try to sell Westerners on the ideas of Japanese culture, only to have it adopted by the emerging nation-state of Japan to drum up nationalist fervor. And then there are works like, _The Demon's Sermon on the Martial Arts_, an awesome book even if it was not written by a practitioner.
A older martial brother put it this way: the idea of the Second Amendment where you can take up arms against a modern, tyrannical government is a dream. Modern technology will overwhelmingly flatten any attempts at that. This is a guy who served in the armed forces, practiced the same Chinese martial arts I do, in addition to Aikido. At one point, he was pitching Aikido to a local Montessori school as a "means for resolving conflict", and he does not mean it in the militaristic fantasizing-being-a-badass way where "resolving conflict" is a euphemism for beating the shit out of someone.
It echoes what Scott Meredith mentions -- martial arts, even MMA, does not work well against modern and near-future weapon technologies. So what's the point of practicing if one is motivated by some fantasy of being able "defend oneself?"
I've been able to answer "what is the role of martial arts in my life." Among the key lessons are things like _grit_, and identifying how violence can be used through words and emotions. One of the martial teachers I respect (he is dead now) wrote about the connection between rhetorics and the deeper teachings of martial arts. Being able to keep cool and skillfully navigate through intense emotions that arises while people are shouting at each other seems more useful in the modern world than fantasizing, or even knowing a practitioner can break someone's bones.
I had been poking around at different philosopher's writings about this. Ken Wilber points to a different philosopher (I forgot the name) about modernity. That view on modernity is a fairly good description of what happens with anything traditional. The modernist (and post-modernist) view tends to deny some of the things learned in the traditions. Some folks have been finding that this is not working out very well for us. We're not a happy society, despite having access to medications, economic prosperity (for some of us), and technological conveniences. Our ancestral traditions are lost, trying to find a new place in our modern world. We need them as much as they need us.
> And its real estate is among the world’s most expensive, making it difficult for training studios to afford soaring rents.
It seems that everyday on HN there are articles showing examples of how cities are becoming increasingly unaffordable - this one makes me feel really sad.
I earned a black belt in Karate last year, have messed around with TKD, Judo, and Kali, and this year got reasonably serious about BJJ by starting in a belted program.
It's impossible to overestimate the role MMA/UFC has had on martial arts in the past 20 years. The internet has allowed that knowledge to spread far and wide, but UFC #1 dramatically changed the face of martial arts forever. Before that, you could argue about which one was the "best". After UFC #1, it was pretty clear how dominant Gracie jiu-jitsu was if you wanted to win a fight.
All the traditional martial arts have a place. Simply analyzing the phrase "martial art" should give you some indication of its intent: discipline and beauty. Most traditional martial arts schools are on the decline and, for those that aren't, the caliber of student they get is nowhere near as high as it was 25 years ago. Point sparring tournaments are a shell of their former selves.
MMA and, to a lesser extent, BJJ are more a fighting system than a martial art. There's no bowing, there's little formality, there aren't any forms, and it's ruthlessly focused on the practical.
Toward that end, if you want to learn how to fight, study american boxing for punching, muay thai to lean to kick, and BJJ to learn how to grapple.
If you want a "martial art", then you're probably looking for something more traditional. You can learn decent self defense in them, but there's a lot of non-practical stuff you learn as part of the package.
Is Gracie jiu-jitsu really best for winning a fight, or just for the controlled environments in MMA-style competitions? I frequently hear Krav Maga cited as the most effective for real world fighting. Grappling with parties unknown seems dangerous.
It's a really interesting question. Jiu-jitsu unquestionably works in "uncontrolled" environments. I'd wager large money that if more police officers trained in grappling and submission techniques there'd be far fewer shootings.
I don't have specific experience with Krav per se, but the self-defense I learned getting my Karate BB was kravesque. Krav is fine, but I think of it a little like crossfit; it's mostly a marketing thing. In my estimation, krav can be great for self-defense. But anything where you focus on one or two practical defense moves is great for self-defense. Get good at one or two things and drill it 10,000 times.
Not to derail, but the #1 reason cops reach for their weapons is because they fear a suspect has a weapon. Its a split-second, life-or-death choice. No amount of martial arts training will change that.
I once saw a video of some experienced fighters practising some technique on an instructor who had a training knife they don't know about.
With all the excitement and adrenaline, not only did every single student get 'stabbed' - many of them didn't notice until the exercise was over and the instructor pointed out the 'stab wounds'.
I'm not sure there's any amount of BJJ that would make me confident to grapple a guy who could have a concealed knife.
The thing about Krav Maga, Kung fu, or similar stuff that uses "deadly techniques", is that their efficacy is (conveniently?) unprovable. Meanwhile, submission grappling (such as jiu jitsu) and striking techniques (such as boxing & muay thai) are tested constantly from the lowest levels of beginners via sparring, to the highest levels of champions via competition.
Another thing to consider, is take a look at the all-around grappling skills of a top wrestler, judoka, bjj practitioner, etc. Do we really believe that their all-around skills wouldn't enable them to effectively use forbidden techniques such as ball punches or eye gouges or whatever? A skilled grappler is going to win a grappling contest, and a skilled striker will win a striking contest, regardless of the finishing techniques they employ.
Check out Sambo, those guys have been doing that for quite some time. You have several "levels" of Sambo. It includes striking, throws and ground-fight. They were really ahead of it's time, and Fedor shows that, he was undefeated in MMA but was not #1 in Russia's Sambo championships :-)
My MMA instructor did some Sambo before he did BJJ, and it's nice to know a little bit of Sambo, the throws are really simple but quite brutal.
I’ve read some interesting comments on this post: some clearly from practitioners and many not. Here’s a little extra background about Chinese Martial Arts.
They date back thousands of years: some scholars claim 2000 while others claim 4000. In either case, it wasn’t martial arts at that point. It started as health exercises that we now call Chi Kung (Qigong). They developed into martial arts later when people became intrigued by the stronger, healthier bodies and quicker reflexes of the practitioners. In particular, military-minded people saw the potential benefits and contributed greatly to the development of Chinese martial arts.
Another major contributor was the famed monks - both Shaolin and Daoist (Taoist). As they traveled around Asia, they accepted challenges and worked out with martial artists from other cultures. What they learned was incorporated into Chinese martial arts. So, mixed martial arts is nothing new, it’s been happening for hundreds if not thousands of years.
Martial arts competitions were considerably more brutal than they are currently. They didn’t wear gloves and anything went. Deaths occurred and sometimes people were handicapped for life. Even training was much more brutal. My instructor’s master recalled training on a beach in China. When they practiced throws, people landed on rocks periodically: no head gear or padding.
As someone mentioned already, kung fu is a generalized expression meaning any endeavor that requires prolonged, conscious effort to master. So, a skilled software engineer would be said to have “good kung fu”. I’ll keep to the popular use of Kung Fu even though it’s not completely accurate.
Chinese martial arts divide into two major classifications - Internal and External. What we call Kung Fu is a collection External styles. There are thousands of them, many of which are similar. The Internal ones are Bagua, Xing Yi, Tai Chi, and Liu He Ba Fa. Other than Tai Chi, the Internal ones are lesser known, although Jet Li showed elements of Xing Yi and Bagua in his movie “The One”. Again, there are probably hundreds of Internal styles.
In this era when people use their bodies less, what will preserve Chinese martial arts are the health aspects from which they derived, not their application to MMA.
The "X martial art vs Y martial art" thing is quite common, but IMO the best is to just learn several and integrate what you like though sparring and competition.
Kung Fu has a bad reputation, mostly for beeing fake and not effective. Personally I think a lot of instructors _are_ fake, but there are some which really know their stuff. The thing is, most "americanized" kung fu is not nearly as good as "original" kung fu. And even "original" kung fu will lose when sparring with, say, a Muay Thai guy. A lot of videos you see of Kung Fu guys fighting on a ring, they seem to just do Sanda (which is basically chinese Kickboxing). So much for traditional martial arts!
I think the lack of sparring really hurts traditional Kung Fu, you can't just close yourself in your own little work and just do Chi Sau (Wing Chun) or Tuei Shou (Taiji) or whatever your style does. Sure, it's good to practice that, but learning a martial art without sparring with people of different styles is like reading about riding a bicicle and never actually ride it.
I've practiced Taekwondo (both ITF and WTF), MMA (Muay Thai + BJJ), some Wing Chun and now I'm doing Taijiquan (Yang). Out of all of them, MMA is by far the most effective, but it's not like my time with other martial arts was wasted. They give you some tools you can use to adapt to your own style. I think the most valuable thing I learned in MMA was sparring with guys with different backgrounds (Boxing, Karate, Kick Boxing, etc), you learn to be smart and adapt to your opponent, it gives you more tools.
I think devoting your whole life to a single style, it's nice if you want to just use it for health and as hobby, but not effective in a fight. I've never met a guy who practiced a single traditional martial arts style and was able to spar with Muay Thai, Kickboxing or Boxing guy, but I don't live in China, maybe there it's more common. Anyways, my point is that you need to actually fight to be proficient with any martial art, not just Kung Fu.
There's a lot of disinformation about martial arts in any online discussion, especially because people are obsessed with determining which martial arts is "the best". That's a sort of reductionist argument that never takes into context the history of each martial art and why/where it is effective or ineffective.
Let's start with some history: Judo was never heavily practiced historically, because you had a sword. Judo techniques were used as a last resort in case you lost your weapon. In a society where the peacekeepers carry weapons, you are at a serious disadvantage with any kind of unarmed combat, be it BJJ (which I practice, for sport), Muay Thai (which I practiced briefly and is effective in 1:1 situations in a stand-up and clinch), even Krav Maga (I tried this), or Chinese martial arts.
So here's an argument for why certain martial arts are "better" than others, depending on the situation and the era you live in:
Kendo/sword martial arts - you are likely going to war. The Chinese martial arts fall under this category, where you can quickly use certain forms to train thousands of troops at once to be "more ready" in general warfare than your enemy. Your troops will have slightly more conditioning, and practicing forms lets you have a 1:many trainer to student ratio. Even if the martial arts are not the best for close quarter 1:1 combat, or ground fighting, it makes no sense to spend time training your troops for these situations if the odds are VERY stacked against them in a wartime situation.
Krav Maga is a great martial art to teach for modern, urban self defense because the movements are basic. If you might end up in a bar fight, for instance, Krav Maga teaches something called stacking, where your goal when you have to maximize your chances of getting away from multiple attackers is to quickly subdue one attacker, then using head control, using that attacker's body to defend your own while you create space so you can escape. There are more advanced techniques that teach knife or gun defense if you are caught off guard, but it should be noted that you are probably at a disadvantage unless you are highly skilled if someone with a weapon attacks you! Training Krav Maga takes a bad probability of survival and turns it into a less bad probability.
Back to Judo: judo and karate took off as effective when peacekeepers could not carry weapons, and had to learn to effectively do their jobs without weapons. The key here is that society had to chance so that weapons were only carried by the warrior caste.
Filipino martial arts - unarmed, sticks, knives. No swords or spears, because this isn't what they went to war with. Surprisingly effective now, because you are likely to have a cane or umbrella, and you will have a slightly better chance defending yourself against a knife attack, which a modern attacker is more likely to have than a sword or a spear.
Now where does Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, which many people talk about, fit in? Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is an extremely effective martial art for one-on-one, unarmed confrontations. For children, if a bully throws you to the ground and gets on top of you and starts to hit you, you can escape and get away. If ONE PERSON attacks you in public without a weapon and you both go to the ground, you can probably subdue or escape if you have practiced BJJ. If two people attack you, or if it's one group on another group, BJJ is probably not so effective. I saw a version of MMA on TV that was effectively a 5v5 team fight, and it quickly turned into who could tap or KO a another member first, then it became a 5v4, and 5v3, and so on. The effectiveness of BJJ in group fights is greatly diminished - now we are back to martial arts like Krav Maga where you might have learned to group fight or even the Chinese martial arts.
BJJ and Muay Thai have really taken off because of MMA/UFC. The rules used to heavily favor BJJ practitioners, who in that particular environment, thrive. Karate practitioners were n...
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[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 233 ms ] threadModern Kung Fu has already 'forked off' a more practical fighting version, Sanda, and there are handful of decent Sanda practitioners in various MMA orgs.
And for routines there is a split between the "dancing" for presentation, called "modern wushu", and traditional routines, that are used to practice actual deadly fighting moves.
I used to train traditional routine, but for it to go beyond "dancing" the teacher regularly scheduled sparring session for students to attempt to use in actual combat the moves (the ones we could test... I made the mistake once of wanting to spar with a particularly weird and ugly move, only to almost get a broken shoulder. happily my partner knew enough to make the move against me with just enough force to hurt a lot without damaging me)
How is karate holding up in Japan and elsewhere? I know kids in the US take it as an after-school activity. Wushu, too, is now a competitive artform, at least for the Asian-American diaspora anyway.
That ship has already sailed.
There's been a range of opinion in the Chinese martial arts community about modern wushu. My own opinion is that the new teachings, while not being practical, keep to the spirit of the origins of kung fu in chi kung - promotion of health and better control of your body.
So, the short answer is that it did become dance-like.
Before the web, you would pretty much only learn about whatever martial arts were available in your area. There was no objective truth. In the absence of evidence, comparisons between martial arts were done on a subjective level: does it look cool?
Now, anybody can look up kung fu on youtube, and if they do they'll see that it's a bit shit, compared with the others. No sane person is going to dedicate years of their life into learning something that is a bit shit.
In general the world has become a lot more factual in the last 25 years.
The kung fu academy I went had self defense, routines, championship fighting and flashy presentation classes... sadly, little of it is on Internet, I saw amazing stuff there in person that I can't find on YouTube to show to people.
That said, they recently hired a krav-maga teacher too.
The present ascendency of Muay Thai and BJJ (Brazilian school of ji-jitsu) is a direct product of this sorting of martial arts effectiveness against competing disciplines. Karate and Kung-Fu's substantial drop are also related, as they are essentially unused in modern MMA.
As a Brit, the only reason I can even comprehend your comment, is because I have read Americans talking about UFC on the internet, and watched some clips on youtube.
If they watch MMA at all. I have no idea what the market penetration of MMA is globally but I think it's a stretch to assume that the majority of children interested in martial arts are influenced by it.
It's important to keep in mind that many of the most effective self defense techniques are illegal in organized fighting competitions. These include eye gouging, throat strikes, biting, joint breaks, stomps, kidney shots, downward elbows, etc. IMO this seriously limits the ability of these competitions to predict how various styles will fare in real life or death self defense situations.
Now consider hits to the back of the head. If an MMA fighter exposes the back of his head to you, the quickest way to end it would be a palm strike to the base of the skull: lights out. But because that's illegal fighters will be a lot more likely to go for something like a rear naked choke, taking the fight to the ground and artificially inflating the value of grappling.
And that's just three of the many illegal moves.
Pulling off eye gouging and throat strikes are low probability and expose a fighter. Bas Rutten has a bit on these techniques, their effectiveness, and how doing either leaves an opening.
A throat strike is no lower probability or more exposing than pulling off a punch to the face. It's just a couple inches away...
To emphasize trhway's dose of reality, here's Bernard Hopkins explaining proper technique with the chin to avoid getting knocked out.[0] Throat punching is hard to pull off because proper defense doesn't allow for it.
[0] https://youtu.be/SHwPBTDDp00?t=3m49s
not really. If you look at a good boxer during a fight, you'd not see any opening for a throat strike.
Boxing, being one of the most practically efficient techniques at the "upper floor", is perceived and frequently really is missing at the "ground floor" and this is where Muai Thai comes in - basically extending the boxing for hands with the boxing for legs, as out of the many footwork styles - taekwondo, karate, kung-fu - the Muai Thai's footwork is the most similar to the boxing ideology and style.
I think it's similar in physical combat, although some elements like the dropped elbows and kicking a downed opponent would definitely end a match faster, you have to drop them first.
Still, I agree with your point that UFC shows us the best mix of skills for that particular set of constraints, not necessarily for self defense in the outside world.
Also, in sports there is always the occasional surprise new technique that dominates for a while until others train to counter it. In the early days of MMA grappling alone could win, as long as you had a finishing move (which is why early on some of the huge greco roman wrestlers could dominate a match and still lose).
People get very uncomfortable if you tell them that in a life and death situation where the attacker is in close and it's too late to run, that you're going straight for the windpipe or a knee. Dude is trying to kill me. I'm not fucking around. How much footage do you have to see of knife attacks before you figure out that if they can walk and breathe nothing else you do is going to dissuade them?
1. The floor is likely slippery.
2. It's dark
3. Glass mugs/Bottles can be broken and used as a weapon
4. There are hard table corners (watch out if you fall!)
5. There are chairs in the way (or maybe they can help you if you like to wield chairs!!)
A football team once picked a fight in a bar with a kung fu school. One of the best Kung Fu student slipped on the floor and his 15 years of kung fu went out of the window very very very quickly :-)
Its also important to keep in mind that, while historically most martial arts (including those in which sport competitions involving the unarmed subset have been popular) include training in weapons (in some cases ones which, while purpose built, are intentionally stand-ins for things which might commonly be used as improvised weapons), MMA competitions -- like most full force combat sport competitions, and for good reason -- completely exclude the use of weapons. Both the fact that you won't have or be improvising a weapon and the fact that you don't have to deal with your opponent having or improvising a weapon is a significant difference from conditions in many real-world fights.
And also that MMA competitions take place on a mat enclosed by a cage, an environment which does not simulate the environmental conditions of many real-world fights particularly closely.
MMA competitions are perhaps good at showing which unarmed techniques are optimum for the conditions and rules under which they are held; generalizing from them to which are most useful for real-world fights is, well, pretty much the same error as generalizing from any combat sport to the real world.
How are you determining what is "most effective"? Keep in mind that if a hypothesis can't be tested, it's pseudoscience.
That's just not the kind of thing folks are learning at their local Tiger Schulman's. Also the political drama surrounding the split of Kyokushin has caused it to virtually disappear in most areas.
He's saying that the Internet shined a light and exposed "bullshido" martial arts. BJJ, muay thai, wrestling, and kickboxing didn't need an MMA forum to raise doubts. They needed visibility. The Internet makes the social proof easily accessible without having to buy a PPV, rent a DVD, or attend a fight. The exposure has correctly labeled many of these cultish martial arts for what they are -- ineffective combat systems.
The sad part is that for a sizeable minority, it almost takes a Youtube intervention with many videos such as this one [0] to convince them that no amount of aikido training will let them mow through a wave of attackers.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEDaCIDvj6I
Full weight steel swords aren't all that heavy, especially if well balanced, but they have inertia and aren't whippy and flexible.
Aikido's heavily criticized [0] for using these attack caricatures both in practice and sales. In real life, you're not catching punches or twirling actors.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aikido#Criticisms
To my knowledge Yoga has never been practiced as a form of combat. Tai Chi is rarely taught as such. To actually answer your question, look at why those things are taught: wellness.
>why are people still playing american football?
If your goal is to get rich playing sports, and you're good at your sport, then football is a great choice to make. It's one of the largest sports in the US, minimum pay is something north of $500k / year. I'm not sure why you even put this in here.
>Why do people join a football team when the coach is obviously garbage?
You've decided to pursue a career in football. Where you live there is one choice. Or, possibly, it's like why would you choose to work at Amazon these days? Short term sacrifice for long term gain (credibility gained from working there).
As a, possibly interesting, anecdote: I practiced Aikido for 10 years. Broadly painted, there are two major schools of thought in Aikido, those who want to pursue it as a traditional Japanese martial art, and those who want it to be more like the modern iteration of Tai Chi (at least as taught in the US). I was in the former camp, and was constantly frustrated with the latter. Stripping out the ideas of martial effectiveness and replacing it with new age philosophy did not result in a better promotion of wellness (not mental wellness and certainly not physical wellness) in my opinion, it just washed out the merits of the art. When you train yourself with a martial attitude, you work harder, you take your training more seriously, you develop focus, discipline, tolerance for pain. You push your limits. As your ability grows you put yourself in conflict with your ego and the nastier sides of yourself. Arrogance is a natural consequence, and you get the opportunity to temper that. It's only through doing that hard work that you can arrive at any sense of internal peace, at least in my opinion. Not just peace when you are laying in a hammock reading, but also peace in conflict.
Take away the desire for martial validity and replace it with New Age philosophy and you have a practice that creates the illusion of personal development while doing very little to actually achieve the aspirations set forth in its ideals. The time that should be spent honing your body and your personality is instead spent on an activity not much more useful than laying in a hammock reading. Fun? Yes. Intellectually stimulating? Sure. But not in line with making progress towards the stated goals.
An ancient Indian martial art that includes yoga: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalaripayattu
"The foundation of modern Asian martial arts is likely a blend of early Chinese and Indian martial arts." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martial_arts#Historical_martia...
Tai Chi on the other hand used to be a martial art and essentially moved into the same space as Yoga.
But the term "yoga" was historically applied to many sorts of disciplines, both mental and physical. It is likely that Patanjali's sutras were largely general knowledge in ancient India as ways to stay fit and limber, basically like the calisthenics everyone does today.
So it's likely it would have been integrated as part of any physical training regimens that came out of India. So basically, the yoga techniques and postures would be part of the martial arts training in the same way push ups and jumping jacks are.
You must be referring to the Hatha Yoga Pradipika or Gheranda Samhita since PYS doesnt deal with individual asanas/gymnastic yoga whatsoever?
PYS is split into 4 parts: 1. Details regarding superconscious states (samadhi), 2. The means of practice by which samadhi can be attained, 3. the supernatural powers associated with and attained via samadhi including their dangers and pitfalls, 4. how to transcend all the lower samadhis and attain final and complete liberation.
Asanas are only mentioned in the 2nd part and in that context only really mean how to sit properly to attain deep meditation. Gymnastic yoga is nowhere to be found in the book.
basically, there's only a small handful of martial arts that actually work in applied person-to-person combat without weapons. and they're all largely useless in the real world when faced with multiple opponents and/or weapons. critically, you must know all or most of these skills or else you will get taken advantage of. mma has proven that it's basically western wrestling, BJJ (which draws on judo), muay thai and kickboxing, western boxing, and most importantly, an insanely rigorous cardio and strength training program that will allow you to last even a few seconds in the ring with a real fighter.
and even then... you could get your ass knocked out in literally 2 seconds. see: mcgregor. that isn't to say it won't change in the future, but that's basically where it is now.
> there's only a small handful of martial arts that actually work in applied person-to-person combat
Even MMA, which is billed as a sorting of martial art's effectiveness, has substantial rules that greatly limit the fighters. For instance, no groin strikes, leg stomps or eye gouges: all of which are actions I've heard are the first thing you should do in a real fight!
Not arguing they should be legal (sport is brutal enough as it is), but even MMA, while closer to "real combat", has severe limitations and arbitrary features.
> all largely useless in the real world when faced with multiple opponents
^ This, 1000x. If you get into a fight you were not planning, it is called an ambush. The most logical action is to run the hell away, or at least, use absolutely overwhelming firepower and dirty, dirty attacks. The concept of two folks trading blows is not how real fights actual progress, let alone two kung-fu masters jumping between buildings...
I see a lot of high kicks in MMA too. I've been taught to never do that, because if the person grabs the kick (or just takes the hit) and attacks my back leg, that'll be that.
In other words, the back and forth kind of kickboxing that you see is partially a product of the fighters not being allowed to aim for disabling blows.
It's unclear to me what fights would look like and whether any other arts would rise up if the fighter protections were removed. (and I'm not sure I want to find out)
Eh, if one fears for one's life, that's probably an option, but otherwise it seems like a sure ticket to prison. A good reason to avoid all avoidable "real" fights.
I worked as a bouncer for awhile, and even though I was the only one who was competent in a fight, I never had to use any of it unless I was cleaning up someone else's mess. They'd all sit there and let things get out of hand before doing something, and then I'd have to go 'fix' it.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...
Going for the knees should be safe :)
In comparison, as far as I am concerned, completely untrained (meeting twice a week in a room to hit-on-and-get-hit-by-other-people-but-not-too-much is a concept that feels alien to me), my street/bar fights never lasted more than a few tenths of second. A good old straight punch in the nose/chin with all your body weight, or a good old knee in the balls/liver/ribs/plexus (depends on the size of the bugger, but it always lands somewhere that hurts or incapacitates), or, if in a creative mood, a lift-projection-crash/crush over and under a wall and table. Opponent sleeping, problem solved, can continue heading back home or having another drink, thank you. Oh, yeah, and one very important parameter is to hit first.
I cannot run, so that's not an option and I have to solve problems in a different way (which can include me spending a night in the hospital because the "hit first" thing only works when there is only 1, or perhaps 2 opponents).
This was just to say I have never been convinced by the application of martial arts training in real conditions. Unless people turn themselves into war killing machines, which I do not consider a good thing to do and to be as long as we live in an overall reasonably civilised world.
The martial artist expects that a straight punch to the face will be blocked and countered, so they don't do that, even though in a street fight against an amateur, that is the best strategy.
It's similar to beginner's luck in videogames, where an expert player can't predict the beginner's moves because they play badly, so they lose the first time.
With all due respect, though, unless you know hundreds of trained martial artists and have witnessed them get into hundreds of fights, the data set by which you're judging the validity of martial arts training seems a bit small.
Like a lot of people, you seem to be confusing confusing katas with actual fighting. "meeting twice a week in a room to hit-on-and-get-hit-by-other-people-but-not-too-much" isn't about training for actual real-world combat, it's a martial art, meaning there is a study of form, balance, coordination, etc. involved. Not every martial art is even that practical in the real world (i'm looking at you Aikido.)
But everything you mention as seeming more practical and useful than martial arts? Is still martial arts. "kick them in the balls and punch them in the face" is martial arts.
So you've heard. How does that prove it would be effective? - It's very hard to eye gouge. If you miss, you break your finger. If you hit, you most likely just make your opponent look away and grab your hand. - It's not easy to hit a groin strike, nor any strike, and the pain is not that debilitating in a fight, not more than a broken rib or dislocated chin.
If you don't believe me that dirty tricks don't work, you don't need to take my word on it. Take a look at bullshido.com, where you'll find more than enough evidence. Just as one example, take vale tudo fights in Brazil before they were made in a sport with "no-dirty-tricks" rules.
Dirty attacks won't save you from a single fighter, let alone a group of people.
Yeah, thank god for the internet for giving us that.
>In the absence of evidence, comparisons between martial arts were done on a subjective level: does it look cool?
I'm not sure where you lived, but I lived in a peripheral western country in Europe, and even 10 years before the "internet" (www), we had tons of various martial arts schools available, from Kung-Fu to Tae-Kwon-Do to Thai Kick Boxing, Capoeira, Krav Maga, Tai Chi and several more varieties I don't even care about.
Infact, if anything, the golden age of such practices was mostly in the 70s and 80s (with Bruce Lee, Karate Kid, and the pulp action/karate movies).
Once again, there is no objective truth. The world (you, really) has adopted a new orthodoxy and become convinced it is fact.
Modern MMA was developed to showcase BJJ as developed by the Gracie family; the rules explicitly favor grappling. The idea that we can learn something about the "objective truth" about "effective fighting styles" by watching youtube videos is ridiculous.
In reality, the most effective street fighting style probably involves groin kicks, eye gouges and finger-locks, the attacks on the most vulnerable points in the human body. No one will (1) teach you these styles and (2) showcase them on television.
Furthermore, no matter what, different martial arts will appeal to different people. There are probably hundreds of styles of Chinese martial art that could be called "kung fu", including grappling styles, striking styles, throwing styles, weapon styles, etc. Different people will have differing aptitudes for each of these styles, and they will be appropriate in different situations.
There IS no best fighting style, because there is no single "fight". If someone shows up with a gun or perhaps even a sword, your BJJ or Muay Thai is useless. Similarly, if your opponent is twice your weight and only knows how to crush you with his arms, it doesn't matter that your style is not "a bit shit" like his, he will probably crush you with his arms.
The weakness to BJJ is that if there's more than one person, things can get hairy for you, and the training doesn't focus on this much (or at all in most places I think).
If there is more than one person, things are going to get hairy anyway. Although some boxing/muay thai could help to some extent.
Well now you're just being silly :)
>Do not underestimate the power of a takedown to the cement
I'm aware. I practiced Aikido for 10 years and BJJ for a year. BJJ doesn't really practice throwing with power, rather, it's usually a setup to disabling through grappling techniques. While I would readily admit Aikido is less martially effective overall (fairly tied to the traditional attacks & style of Japanese martial arts, which are often not practical), something that is explicitly trained for is fighting multiple opponents, throwing people into other people and throwing with power.
> Well now you're just being silly :)
Well, I just meant that dealing with more than one opponent is a problem in BJJ as much as it is a problem in any other fighting style. It's not worse in BJJ because it has grappling and ground techniques. If you are exclusively a boxing fighter, for example, having people attack you from behind is also a big deal.
Additionally, if someone is coming from behind, your ability to react is much faster if you're not wrapped around somebody else, giving you a better chance of protecting yourself.
*edit to add eye gouging into the equation.
This is more a commentary on martial arts capabilities, which is less relevant in a world where physical danger is increasingly rare. While I strongly advocate for practicing it (I have been a student of Wing Chun for 3 years now), it makes perfect sense why Asian millenials don't find it very important.
My quick 30 seconds of googling supports what I had been taught but those old words can really have a broad set of meaning depending on who is using them
A master can refer to a master of an art or a master to your slave. It can be understood like that.
However, a master of an enlightenment vehicle is a master of self. A art can be an enlightenment vehicle, but few in the modern world will see it that way.
This misunderstanding is the generator of a lot of drama :-D
Modern Yoga inherits the ideas and methods of classical Tantra, though often in a degenerated or distorted way. That is why you have teachers ascribing meanings like that. It means there is a semantic ahift going on, but don't confuse it with it's historical roots.
I expect Chinese martial arts to go into a similar decline. Many of the fighting arts come from either a Buddhist or a Taoist neigong lineage. For example, there is a reason to work on horse stande for a while, but it is non-obvious.
My own teacher in the US was interested in teaching a classical form in a modern way: forms and fighting methods. He was very good at decoding the applications from a form in a flexible way. I ran through the entire cirriculum in about a year. Then I stopped practicing regularly.
It wasn't until years later that I found a neigong method that works with the art. It's something I am undertaking by myself, just myself, my body, and my internal energy. It took two yeara to just get through the preliminaries and shed enough of emotional crap to start integrating things into the movement. Once I started doing thaf, stuff like training in horse stance like the classical teaching method, makes more sense. It's pretty amazing stuff, and even though I am touching the tip of the iceburg, I do feel sad. There are not many who will want to invest the time in this. The payoff takes too long.
That's ok. All things come and go.
I came across this video recently, where three "genuine" yoga teachers are asking questions about yoga and meditation. The format is initial 10-12 minutes, the yoga teachers talk about their experiences, and then in rest of the video, they ask questions to Sri Sri Ravishankar about deepening mediation with yoga: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7HEmsY29EU
In Netflix's Marco Polo, there is an excellent scene that conveys this very idea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIieUmp0aZ0
Morpheus replies to Neo, "Show Me". They then enter the para-Matrix and fight. Neo's "Kung Fu" (martial arts) can't beat Morpheus.
Eventually Morpheus convinces Neo that winning the fight has less to do with knowing martial arts than it does with knowing how to bend/break rules. Neo is of course a hacker who has spent countless hours learning to massage and bend computer systems, so he does indeed know the requisite Kung Fu.
More seriously, a couple of observations:
1. Most styles of kung fu require dedicating years of practice before one can be called skilled. Compare this to Systema or Krav Maga where one can become a killer very quickly and you can expect people with little time to train to prefer these more modern martial arts. This says nothing about the depth of these martial arts, just the way they are organized and taught. As a concrete example: one of the first block I learned in Flying White Crane Kung Fu is actually very difficult to use in a street fight. Once you're good with it though, the opponent is in a very bad situation. With Krav Maga, the first block you may learn is usually very basic, very effective to block a punch, but you get less counter-attack possibilities.
2. Most of us do not need to fight for our life so of course, martial arts are waning as a whole.
3. MMA is very popular and most Kung Fu styles are not suitable for MMA: again it takes time to become an expert and many techniques cannot be used in a MMA ring (can I put my finger in your eye? what about using pressure points while you are tackling me on the floor? can you hit the neck with a spear hand?).
4. Kung Fu masters are usually very secretive and they sometimes die with most of their knowledge, especially if they do not find someone suitable to transfer that knowledge.
5. Finally, a sibling comment mentioned youtube. Many kung fu schools hesitate to use Youtube and when they do it, they usually do not show the best they are capable of. When I was training, I remember a master asking to only capture the movements of the upper body and hide the footwork :-)
For example when I see Machida competing in UFS, I clearly see base of Shotokan karate in how he fights. I can't say anything like this about Cung Lee or Roy Nelson.
Edit: vague pronouns
I am Taiwanese. Unlike my sister, I'm considered an oddball: Most of my friends are not Asian and I practice traditional martial arts. I tried to go and find the teacher myself, however, if I had not been so out of sorts with my mother, I probably would have gotten consistent training when I was young. I would have been the spoiled only grandson (so to speak), it's difficult to find any kid of Chinese ancestry eager for it.
I also went in for all the wrong reasons though I thought I knew why I should get into this stuff. Now, in the middle age, with my body the way it is, I recognize a lot of the motivation I had were fantasies.
My wife is of American descent. Her grandmother, also American, picked up Tai Chi a couple yeara ago. It was suggested to her as a pain management thing, and she did not want to take drugs for pain. She stuck out with it even though there wasn't a result. She said the first result came after a year: the pain went away. She could sleep. She told me she wished someone had told her about this when she was young.
But I think we both knew: if someone told her about this when she was young, it's doubtful she would have listened.
Pain management sounds useful, but the art goes deeper than that. Using a metric like "utility" to describe it's value asks the wrong question.
[1] Sometimes you read the same thing many times for years, only 10 years later you realize the real meaning.
This friend went to some other part of the world, I never tried again. I remember it was the "wuxing quan", the "five elements" version.
Tai chi is a series of movements that alternate balance and weight between your feet. You always end up with your weight on one side or the other, or you are in the process of shifting your weight to one side.
You learn to "relax and listen"
BTW, Grace always agreed to any "yes but no rules" challenges from voodoo Kung Fu masters. Where are they now?
The problem with not being able to practice a technique in sparring, or "live" with a resisting opponent is that you don't know how good you are when time comes and you have to apply it.
Well, appeal to non-lethal sport competitions to settle those arguments go out the window, but martial styles intended for real use (including lots where the unarmed subset has been popular in sport) tend to teach both techniques for dealing with armed opponents and techniques for using weapons (including, often, things that stand in for improvised weapons) -- because that's a pretty big factor in serious fights. Purely unarmed intended-for-use-in-anger martial arts are a rarity.
On of the advantages of old style MA like Karate and TKD that "telegraph" a kick: Actually, if you "telegraph" a kick, the advantage is, that you actually can kick over a counter kick as practiced in Wing Tsun or Krav Manga (source: personal experience)
Yeah, someone's friend is going to kick you. But why wouldn't they kick you if you're standing and not facing them?
I wouldn't say that's a disadvantage of BJJ but rather one of facing multiple opponents. Like facing someone who has a gun. You're at disadvantage no matter how much knowledge you have.
They actually trained under Masutatsu Oyama with can be seen in some ways as precursor of MMA.
I have also seen Boxers pulling this off to be fair. But any ground martial arts like is not suited to this.
This is an excuse and well disproved in Gracies' books.
I agree that Kung Fu like all martial arts add discipline to one's life and is a form of meditation which is its greatest gift but in terms of martial use the world has moved on to more lethal arts.
Sure, you could kick my ass. I'm OK with that. I've enjoyed a lovely hobby, made good friends, and am satisfied with how I spend my time.
As judged from events on TV and random videos uploaded by BJJ practitioners to YouTube?
edit: BJJ tends to be the most creative and intellectual thing I do on a given day. I'm a software engineer
The virtues of King Fu have been expounded upon elsewhere here, but Kung Fu has been around for as long as it has for very good reasons. People today suddenly aren't better and smarter when it comes to martial arts, they just have new preferences and influences for how they think about it. Doesn't mean older ways are suddenly not valid.
The idea that Bruce Lee discarded everything from Kung Fu as useless is an oft-repeated misunderstanding.
Many of the concepts from Wing Chun remain in JKD today:
- simultaneous attack and defense (why anyone would not want to do these simultaneously I have no idea)
- occupying the centerline
- forward pressure
- wedging and flowing rather than blocking
- using tactile reflexes as opposed to your eyes
Talk to any modern martial arts practitioner and they will agree that the above concepts are sound. BJJ is all about tactile reflexes, that's why you practice rolling all the time. You can't see what the other guy is doing because you're wrapped up like a pretzel on the mat, but you instinctively know what he's trying to do by how he's shifting his weight.
What he was against was restricting oneself to silly stances and not being able to flow freely. Unfortunately Wing Chun has a lot of that.
It's not hard to find others who feel the same way, including JKDers.
It may work for you, which is fine. That's the whole idea of JKD - use what is working for you.
By pluralizing stances I was referring to karate as well. Much of Bruce Lee's commentary was actually about how the principles of WC were superior to those of karate - deep stances, kata, etc.
Gosh darn it. Millenials are killing kung fu, too, aren't they?
In 2006, the Japanese men's team placed 3rd (behind Korea and the US) in the World Kendo Championship, and it was the end of an era. It was the first time in the event's history that those guys didn't come in first.
Japan is still a Kendo powerhouse, but it's not like it was.
I've done many martial arts, but I'm not here to debate whether Kung Fu is effective. It's not, but there is no reason why it cannot be. What makes a martial art effective is simply having a large population of skilled practitioners. It can be institutional support like Judo in Japan, or wrestling in the US. Or it can be effective marketing like BJJ.
Anyone with real fighting skill can tell you that an art's effective has little to do with its techniques. Technique is only a starting point, that practitioners constantly improve upon. What is needed is a large number of highly competitive and athletic bodies to constantly test and improve on. It's brute force algorithm 101. Nothing can replace experience when actually fighting, because you don't have time to think.
Kung Fu will lose every time, unless they get institutional support, because you have practitioners who not only have questionable methods, they know nothing about building athletes either. Step on a wrestling mat or BJJ practice and compare the intensity versus a Kung Fu class. There's your answer right there. There is no 'kung fu' in Kung Fu.
I've got nothing against Kung Fu. I've learned some interesting concepts. But, similar to Aikido's flashy technique, I am able to put them to use from being a master in another art. Whereas its practitioners cannot.
Maybe a "high level" many year practitioner can do it, as they will tell you it takes many years, but that to me just tells me they are doing this the wrong and slow way. Even Olympic martial arts have shown that countries like Japan are far behind modern science in competitions. One can only image how backwards some random Nth generation guy in your neighborhood is.
Again, nothing against Kung Fu in theory, and maybe it had its heydey at some point, but a lot more needs to be done to save any of it. And it won't matter what style or what not - everyone is different even within a style.
Setting aside the posturing and seriously answering what you asked: I don't have an answer to "what is the role of martial art in modern society". Lots of people have asked that. I see people who have answered "what is the role of martial art in my life" to their satisfaction, but nothing is clear about the role of martial art in the modern society.
I notice when discussion goes around in circles -- the same pattern of arguments that happen across the years over different forums. For example, TMA vs MMA; what is reality-based or evidence-based fighting; whether you really need to be able to fight on the streets. There are also whole swathes of modernist anachronistic views that don't jive with traditional teachings (even if traditional teachings appears out-moded in modern societies).
If you have greater knowledge and want to comment here, it's better to teach us something (e.g. about martial arts) instead of just saying how much we don't know.
See my discussion with @jtolmar at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12354286 if you want to see something more productive.
As I said: you guys think I am putting people down. I'm not. I'm asking people to step back and really look at how the discourse has been going in circles.
I'd also like to say: while @ghiotion's remarks seems to have violated the customs of of Hacker News, it's on par with the customs on forums specifically for martial arts. It gets crazy, up to and including people deciding to back their arguments by issuing physical challenges (how many of those actually materialize, I don't know). I've also looked through some of @ghiotion's comment history, and the tone of that comment seems like an outlier.
Something about discussing martial arts brings out the aggression in people, worse than flamewars about tech or video games. It's as is to have rhetorical credibility, people feel they have to back it up with their capability for violence. My root comment was as much an observation of my own fatigue of this as anything. And no, I don't have an insight about this either. (Though I kinda wonder if I studied the philosophy of mimetic violence, it would help clarify why this happens).
Are martial arts supposed to be a way to defend yourself? A competitive sport? A way to stay in shape? Some sort of artistry?
These are all valid questions, and different martial arts answer different ones. Capoeira is worse than useless as a fighting technique, but entirely viable as a way to stay in shape and express yourself. Olympic-rules Tae Kwon Do is an excellent competitive sport that doesn't have much in common with versions of Tae Kwon Do taught for self-defense.
But because we're not agreeing on goals here we get the usual debates about whether MMA is the most effective way to hurt someone. Which has always sounded silly to me: we're talking about a sport. Using just your feet isn't the most effective way to get a ball into a net, but soccer is still a better sport than it would be if players picked up the ball and ran.
Japanese budo went through a similar decline and soul-searching when the samurai went on the decline, and modernization went on the rise. Sure, there was that guy (forgot his name) who wrote this beautiful fiction to try to sell Westerners on the ideas of Japanese culture, only to have it adopted by the emerging nation-state of Japan to drum up nationalist fervor. And then there are works like, _The Demon's Sermon on the Martial Arts_, an awesome book even if it was not written by a practitioner.
A older martial brother put it this way: the idea of the Second Amendment where you can take up arms against a modern, tyrannical government is a dream. Modern technology will overwhelmingly flatten any attempts at that. This is a guy who served in the armed forces, practiced the same Chinese martial arts I do, in addition to Aikido. At one point, he was pitching Aikido to a local Montessori school as a "means for resolving conflict", and he does not mean it in the militaristic fantasizing-being-a-badass way where "resolving conflict" is a euphemism for beating the shit out of someone.
It echoes what Scott Meredith mentions -- martial arts, even MMA, does not work well against modern and near-future weapon technologies. So what's the point of practicing if one is motivated by some fantasy of being able "defend oneself?"
I've been able to answer "what is the role of martial arts in my life." Among the key lessons are things like _grit_, and identifying how violence can be used through words and emotions. One of the martial teachers I respect (he is dead now) wrote about the connection between rhetorics and the deeper teachings of martial arts. Being able to keep cool and skillfully navigate through intense emotions that arises while people are shouting at each other seems more useful in the modern world than fantasizing, or even knowing a practitioner can break someone's bones.
I had been poking around at different philosopher's writings about this. Ken Wilber points to a different philosopher (I forgot the name) about modernity. That view on modernity is a fairly good description of what happens with anything traditional. The modernist (and post-modernist) view tends to deny some of the things learned in the traditions. Some folks have been finding that this is not working out very well for us. We're not a happy society, despite having access to medications, economic prosperity (for some of us), and technological conveniences. Our ancestral traditions are lost, trying to find a new place in our modern world. We need them as much as they need us.
It seems that everyday on HN there are articles showing examples of how cities are becoming increasingly unaffordable - this one makes me feel really sad.
It's impossible to overestimate the role MMA/UFC has had on martial arts in the past 20 years. The internet has allowed that knowledge to spread far and wide, but UFC #1 dramatically changed the face of martial arts forever. Before that, you could argue about which one was the "best". After UFC #1, it was pretty clear how dominant Gracie jiu-jitsu was if you wanted to win a fight.
All the traditional martial arts have a place. Simply analyzing the phrase "martial art" should give you some indication of its intent: discipline and beauty. Most traditional martial arts schools are on the decline and, for those that aren't, the caliber of student they get is nowhere near as high as it was 25 years ago. Point sparring tournaments are a shell of their former selves.
MMA and, to a lesser extent, BJJ are more a fighting system than a martial art. There's no bowing, there's little formality, there aren't any forms, and it's ruthlessly focused on the practical.
Toward that end, if you want to learn how to fight, study american boxing for punching, muay thai to lean to kick, and BJJ to learn how to grapple.
If you want a "martial art", then you're probably looking for something more traditional. You can learn decent self defense in them, but there's a lot of non-practical stuff you learn as part of the package.
I don't have specific experience with Krav per se, but the self-defense I learned getting my Karate BB was kravesque. Krav is fine, but I think of it a little like crossfit; it's mostly a marketing thing. In my estimation, krav can be great for self-defense. But anything where you focus on one or two practical defense moves is great for self-defense. Get good at one or two things and drill it 10,000 times.
With all the excitement and adrenaline, not only did every single student get 'stabbed' - many of them didn't notice until the exercise was over and the instructor pointed out the 'stab wounds'.
I'm not sure there's any amount of BJJ that would make me confident to grapple a guy who could have a concealed knife.
Another thing to consider, is take a look at the all-around grappling skills of a top wrestler, judoka, bjj practitioner, etc. Do we really believe that their all-around skills wouldn't enable them to effectively use forbidden techniques such as ball punches or eye gouges or whatever? A skilled grappler is going to win a grappling contest, and a skilled striker will win a striking contest, regardless of the finishing techniques they employ.
I would throw in wrestling for takedowns.
Traditional martial arts seem to be moving even more towards "Discipline and goals for kids" rather than "Teaching adults to fight."
In MMA, many fighters say "I started in TKD" but only a very small handful still train in them.
My MMA instructor did some Sambo before he did BJJ, and it's nice to know a little bit of Sambo, the throws are really simple but quite brutal.
They date back thousands of years: some scholars claim 2000 while others claim 4000. In either case, it wasn’t martial arts at that point. It started as health exercises that we now call Chi Kung (Qigong). They developed into martial arts later when people became intrigued by the stronger, healthier bodies and quicker reflexes of the practitioners. In particular, military-minded people saw the potential benefits and contributed greatly to the development of Chinese martial arts.
Another major contributor was the famed monks - both Shaolin and Daoist (Taoist). As they traveled around Asia, they accepted challenges and worked out with martial artists from other cultures. What they learned was incorporated into Chinese martial arts. So, mixed martial arts is nothing new, it’s been happening for hundreds if not thousands of years.
Martial arts competitions were considerably more brutal than they are currently. They didn’t wear gloves and anything went. Deaths occurred and sometimes people were handicapped for life. Even training was much more brutal. My instructor’s master recalled training on a beach in China. When they practiced throws, people landed on rocks periodically: no head gear or padding.
As someone mentioned already, kung fu is a generalized expression meaning any endeavor that requires prolonged, conscious effort to master. So, a skilled software engineer would be said to have “good kung fu”. I’ll keep to the popular use of Kung Fu even though it’s not completely accurate.
Chinese martial arts divide into two major classifications - Internal and External. What we call Kung Fu is a collection External styles. There are thousands of them, many of which are similar. The Internal ones are Bagua, Xing Yi, Tai Chi, and Liu He Ba Fa. Other than Tai Chi, the Internal ones are lesser known, although Jet Li showed elements of Xing Yi and Bagua in his movie “The One”. Again, there are probably hundreds of Internal styles.
In this era when people use their bodies less, what will preserve Chinese martial arts are the health aspects from which they derived, not their application to MMA.
Kung Fu has a bad reputation, mostly for beeing fake and not effective. Personally I think a lot of instructors _are_ fake, but there are some which really know their stuff. The thing is, most "americanized" kung fu is not nearly as good as "original" kung fu. And even "original" kung fu will lose when sparring with, say, a Muay Thai guy. A lot of videos you see of Kung Fu guys fighting on a ring, they seem to just do Sanda (which is basically chinese Kickboxing). So much for traditional martial arts!
I think the lack of sparring really hurts traditional Kung Fu, you can't just close yourself in your own little work and just do Chi Sau (Wing Chun) or Tuei Shou (Taiji) or whatever your style does. Sure, it's good to practice that, but learning a martial art without sparring with people of different styles is like reading about riding a bicicle and never actually ride it.
I've practiced Taekwondo (both ITF and WTF), MMA (Muay Thai + BJJ), some Wing Chun and now I'm doing Taijiquan (Yang). Out of all of them, MMA is by far the most effective, but it's not like my time with other martial arts was wasted. They give you some tools you can use to adapt to your own style. I think the most valuable thing I learned in MMA was sparring with guys with different backgrounds (Boxing, Karate, Kick Boxing, etc), you learn to be smart and adapt to your opponent, it gives you more tools.
I think devoting your whole life to a single style, it's nice if you want to just use it for health and as hobby, but not effective in a fight. I've never met a guy who practiced a single traditional martial arts style and was able to spar with Muay Thai, Kickboxing or Boxing guy, but I don't live in China, maybe there it's more common. Anyways, my point is that you need to actually fight to be proficient with any martial art, not just Kung Fu.
Let's start with some history: Judo was never heavily practiced historically, because you had a sword. Judo techniques were used as a last resort in case you lost your weapon. In a society where the peacekeepers carry weapons, you are at a serious disadvantage with any kind of unarmed combat, be it BJJ (which I practice, for sport), Muay Thai (which I practiced briefly and is effective in 1:1 situations in a stand-up and clinch), even Krav Maga (I tried this), or Chinese martial arts.
So here's an argument for why certain martial arts are "better" than others, depending on the situation and the era you live in:
Kendo/sword martial arts - you are likely going to war. The Chinese martial arts fall under this category, where you can quickly use certain forms to train thousands of troops at once to be "more ready" in general warfare than your enemy. Your troops will have slightly more conditioning, and practicing forms lets you have a 1:many trainer to student ratio. Even if the martial arts are not the best for close quarter 1:1 combat, or ground fighting, it makes no sense to spend time training your troops for these situations if the odds are VERY stacked against them in a wartime situation.
Krav Maga is a great martial art to teach for modern, urban self defense because the movements are basic. If you might end up in a bar fight, for instance, Krav Maga teaches something called stacking, where your goal when you have to maximize your chances of getting away from multiple attackers is to quickly subdue one attacker, then using head control, using that attacker's body to defend your own while you create space so you can escape. There are more advanced techniques that teach knife or gun defense if you are caught off guard, but it should be noted that you are probably at a disadvantage unless you are highly skilled if someone with a weapon attacks you! Training Krav Maga takes a bad probability of survival and turns it into a less bad probability.
Back to Judo: judo and karate took off as effective when peacekeepers could not carry weapons, and had to learn to effectively do their jobs without weapons. The key here is that society had to chance so that weapons were only carried by the warrior caste.
Filipino martial arts - unarmed, sticks, knives. No swords or spears, because this isn't what they went to war with. Surprisingly effective now, because you are likely to have a cane or umbrella, and you will have a slightly better chance defending yourself against a knife attack, which a modern attacker is more likely to have than a sword or a spear.
Now where does Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, which many people talk about, fit in? Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is an extremely effective martial art for one-on-one, unarmed confrontations. For children, if a bully throws you to the ground and gets on top of you and starts to hit you, you can escape and get away. If ONE PERSON attacks you in public without a weapon and you both go to the ground, you can probably subdue or escape if you have practiced BJJ. If two people attack you, or if it's one group on another group, BJJ is probably not so effective. I saw a version of MMA on TV that was effectively a 5v5 team fight, and it quickly turned into who could tap or KO a another member first, then it became a 5v4, and 5v3, and so on. The effectiveness of BJJ in group fights is greatly diminished - now we are back to martial arts like Krav Maga where you might have learned to group fight or even the Chinese martial arts.
BJJ and Muay Thai have really taken off because of MMA/UFC. The rules used to heavily favor BJJ practitioners, who in that particular environment, thrive. Karate practitioners were n...