Serious Questions About CMA Exercises

**ghosttraingray** · Posted On: 7/31/2011 5:09am

Hi all,

I'm interested in CMA, but I've some serious questions to ask before I pursue my interest any further. Please bear with me if some of the questions are silly, but I think it's important to understand as much as I can at this stage. Anyway, here we go...

Strengthening drills and other exercises. Is there any point to performing strengthening drills such as those in the videos below? At first glance, the exercise in the first video seems horrible for your teeth!

Video 1

Video 2

Patterns/forms. Please have a look at the video below. What is the benefit of this form of training? Is this relevant to CMA as a technique for serious fighting? Does it have a place in today's CMA?

Video 3

Drills and sparring. What should I expect in terms of sparring and application of technique against opponents? I saw some of the Wushu Masters videos, and that seemed like pretty practical stuff - see Video 4 for reference. Video 5 shows a different kind of application and a sort of 'simulated sparring' if that makes sense. Is there any value to the training shown in Video 5? Should I ever bother with a CMA school/instructor who doesn't spar to some degree of contact?

Video 4

Video 5

That about covers my questions for now. Any answers would be very appreciated. Hopefully there's no such thing as a silly question!

- ghosttraingray

**Cullion** · Posted On: 7/31/2011 5:23am

Originally Posted by ghosttraingray

Strengthening drills and other exercises. Is there any point to performing strengthening drills such as those in the videos below? At first glance, the exercise in the first video seems horrible for your teeth!

There is a point in strengthening your neck muscles, but I don't see the point in holding the thing in your teeth like that. Maybe it could cause a problem, as you suggest, but strongmen do demonstrate feets involving a lot more force on their clenched teeth.

[video=youtube;vhb63M-15Wo]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhb63M-15Wo&feature=related

I've never done anything like this exercise. It's going to strengthen up your grip and forearms a bit, and I don't think it's going to do any harm.

Patterns/forms. Please have a look at the video below. What is the benefit of this form of training? Is this relevant to CMA as a technique for serious fighting? Does it have a place in today's CMA?

It has a place as a solo exercise routine that doesn't need any equipment. It's not going to form a big part of your training if you plan on entering serious full contact competition.

Drills and sparring. What should I expect in terms of sparring and application of technique against opponents? I saw some of the Wushu Masters videos, and that seemed like pretty practical stuff - see Video 4 for reference. Video 5 shows a different kind of application and a sort of 'simulated sparring' if that makes sense. Is there any value to the training shown in Video 5? Should I ever bother with a CMA school/instructor who doesn't spar to some degree of contact?

The honest answer is I don't know if the drills shown in video 5 lead on to more realistic sparring, or how helpful they are, because I've never trained or sparred with a Southern Mantis practitioner.

You can't learn to fight without sparring with hard contact.

**ChenPengFi** · Posted On: 7/31/2011 12:39pm

What he said.
Also, your sparring should look more like this:

**judoka_uk** · Posted On: 7/31/2011 12:45pm

Man that black guy was not having a good day, he got knocked out about 3 times.

**doofaloofa** · Posted On: 7/31/2011 3:55pm

That is some cool ****!

**yeeu kui** · Posted On: 8/06/2011 2:01pm

The wrist roller in the second clip is a good exercise to do that will strengthen and build up your forearms. It's best to keep your arms as straight as you can otherwise if you move your arms like the guy in the video your deltoids come into play and it's your forearms you want to be conditioning. It's a very cheap piece of equipment to make using some broom handle with a hole drilled through the middle and some strong string or rope with a weight attached or a brick. Dead easy to make and very beneficial.

**Ming Loyalist** · Posted On: 8/06/2011 4:29pm

Originally Posted by yeeu kui

The wrist roller in the second clip is a good exercise to do that will strengthen and build up your forearms. It's best to keep your arms as straight as you can otherwise if you move your arms like the guy in the video your deltoids come into play and it's your forearms you want to be conditioning. It's a very cheap piece of equipment to make using some broom handle with a hole drilled through the middle and some strong string or rope with a weight attached or a brick. Dead easy to make and very beneficial.

it's also a common training tool for judo.

IMHO a lot of the TCMA training techniques are great, if you have a phenomenal amount of time available for training (i.e. you can train full time) if not, there are more efficient ways to train.

**W. Rabbit** · Posted On: 8/07/2011 11:48am

Originally Posted by Ming Loyalist

it's also a common training tool for judo.

IMHO a lot of the TCMA training techniques are great, if you have a phenomenal amount of time available for training (i.e. you can train full time) if not, there are more efficient ways to train.

I just picked up a translation of a 1934 book called Training Methods of 72 Arts of Shaolin (Tanjin, 1934). This is one of the oldest modern publications on Shaolin I've found and it has a lot of the "CMA exercises" that seem to pop up in various styles.

The wrist rolling technique is identified as shang guan gong ("raising a pot").

Some interesting items on how this was trained (at least in 1934).

- Instruction is to start with about 5kg (~10 lbs, including pot+iron shot).

- Instruction is to perform 30 reps, once in the morning, once at night.

- To progress over time, 0.5 kg shot is added every three months until the overall weight reached 15kg (~33 lbs).

- Facing downward on an incline makes this exercise more effective, because you can use a longer rope.

**It is Fake** · Posted On: 8/07/2011 12:20pm

Oh I am sorry you bought that book.

***Omega Supreme*** · Posted On: 8/07/2011 1:04pm

The bottom line is they made due with what they had. A lot of modern schools of kung fu are turning toward modern training rather than the old style although some of the old exercises are quite useful.