Sanda

**Omar** · Posted On: 11/09/2004 8:03am

I've bumped up against the comment that Sanda is just Muay Thai + throws on several forums now and gotten pretty tired of either retyping up the whole history or searching for old threads. I just realized I put up probably my most thourough summary on the "Sanda Anyone" thread that exploded to 50+pages a little while ago and thought, what the heck. I would like to have the info readily accesable in the history section. Especialy because there were a couple small details I think I left out or got wrong and it would be cool to have the holes filled in. So here it is:

Modern Wushu was more or less founded right at the end of the Qing dynatsty. The official curriculum in 1918 was divided into the following sections:

Shuai Jiao
"boxing" (Chinese style. ie. stand up striking)
Staff
Sword

There were a total of 24 indiviidual courses at the time.

In 1909 Huo Yuan Jia established the Jing Wu school that was featured in "Return of The Dragon" where Bruce Lee plays his most famous student, Chen Zhen. The school went through some structural changes and in 1916 became the model for the government supported martial arts training in China that happened later in 1928.

The styles at Jing Wu included Gong Li Quan (aka Gung Lek Kuen), Tan Tui (a northern style with lots of kicking.) and included over 20 different styles in all. The kicks you see in modern wushu can be traced back to Tan Tui and Northern Shaolin NOT TKD.

There were also weapons taught at the time, a half dozen or so single weapons and then over 15 different "vs." types of training.

The next big step in the evolution of modern day Sanda was the establishment of the Nanjing Martial Arts acadamy in 1928. The exams included full contact fights. The Nanjing acadamy tried to bring Shaolin and Wudang styles together under the same roof. They taught Taijiquan, Baguazhan, Xing Yi and also various Shaolin styles. Unfortunately the alliance was not smooth and the school became pretty factionalized.

The style that were taught and which subsequently became the base for the Sanda we see today were as follows:

Xing Yi
Taiji
Baji
Cha Quan
The "new" Wushu that had been created for the earlier schools back in 1909.
Lian Bu Quan
Za Quan
Pigua
Xing Quan

And a few others of lesser note.

Other courses included:

sword
sabre
staff
spear
whip and other weapons.
qi gong
BOXING (western style)
Japanese style sword fighting
SANDA

So Sanda, the sport fighting, has been an official staple of the Chinese government supported martial arts since at least 1928. TKD wasn't even created untill several decades later and even then was never much of an influence. Pigua Quan, Cha Quan and Norrthern Shaolin are heavy kicking arts. Boxing has been part of the Chinese curriculum since the beggining but never caught on big probably because no boxer ever won a Sanda tournament. The biggest setback was the Japanese invasion in the 30's. When that happened the government stopped all funding for these schools and the inter-provincial championship tournaments and Chinese wushu took a giant step backwards. The Nanjing Acadamy and it's affilited schools were founded by the KMT. Chang Kai Shek put his man Zhang Zhi Jiang in charge

I'll say straight up that I am not to clear on what happened from the 50's to the 70's but the main thing that has changed recently is that, especially in the early 80's, the training became more specialized. The same athelete will train both performance Wushu and Sanda but there is no longer any real link between the 2 courses. The sanda fighters still use a lot of traditional conditioning methods from northern Shaolin and from Tan Tui but the forms have evolved so much in the past 20 years that they no longer have any real bearing on the fighting.

**Ronin** · Posted On: 11/09/2004 8:26am

Omar,
I feel your pain bro, but the most popular MA will always be the one that other MA will be compared to.
Fact is, MAYBE Thai Boxing is nothing than Sanda without the throws, still Thai boxing become popular before Sanda and as such, Sanda will be comapred to it, not the other way around.

Note: I thought the Bruce Lee movie was " the chinese connection".
Return of the dragon ( or way of the dragon) was the one in Rome with Chuck Norris.

**Bang!** · Posted On: 11/09/2004 8:34am

Fists of Fury AKA The Chinese Connection, remade into Fist of Legend.

**Ronin** · Posted On: 11/09/2004 8:50am

Thanks RM, I couldn't remember the "chinese" name for that movie.

**Omar** · Posted On: 11/09/2004 8:54am

Technically the movie was called, "Jing Wu Men". It get's difficult to pin down the English titles because Honk Kong movies are often released under differnt titles at different times. Anyways, you all obviously know which movie I am referring to.

And it doesn't bother me at all to compare Sanda to MT. I do it myself all the time. I have had the pleasure of training in both of them. An objective comparison is great. What bothers me is the presumption that one was based on the other. It's just not true. Different arts. Different histories. Both mainly striking styles designed for the ring. How can they not be similar. Add to the confusion that fact that there is American Sanda (essentially just a rule set) and Chinese Sanda, an actual professional sport with an official government supprted circuit and a system of schools that are basically colleges to act as a talent farm.

The Chinese version has become fairly standardized while the American version has people from all sorts of different styles and backgrounds competing with each other.

I gots to go for the night but I hope to add more to this later.

**Bang!** · Posted On: 11/09/2004 9:03am

It's a very interesting point--comparing sanda the ruleset to sanda the sport. Is this like comparing boxing rules undertaken by different stylists to people who box and train for boxing exclusively? Or is there more to this?

**Jenfucius** · Posted On: 11/09/2004 7:45pm

what's wrong with MT with throws? that sounds awesome

**Omar** · Posted On: 11/09/2004 9:06pm

Originally Posted by Repulsive Monkey

It's a very interesting point--comparing sanda the ruleset to sanda the sport. Is this like comparing boxing rules undertaken by different stylists to people who box and train for boxing exclusively? Or is there more to this?

Someone else may say there's more to it but your analogy sounds about right for my purposes. However, Sanda is evolving as a sport on it's own in the States but so far I don't think it has reached the kind of status as a full fledged professional sport with people training just to compete Sanda and not as a kind of arena to test their training in other stuff. Maybe in a few years this will change but right now....the boxing analogy fits.

Jen,

Nothing wrong with that at all. I think it's awsome too. It's just not what Sanda is.