Progressive Martial Art Thinkers/Just The Facts... merged

[Jack Rusher]

Another gem from Tim Cartmell:

In addition to only practicing skills you can use at or near full force when sparring, participating in intense combat sports competition is the best way to acquire realistic fighting skills, with mindset and the experience of actually being hit, thrown, joint locked etc. providing the most valuable feedback to one's personal level of skill save an actual life or death fight in the street. Combat sports competition, although necessarily restricted by some rules for safety purposes, will elicit exactly the same chemical cascade as a real confrontation in the street, providing an opportunity to see how you really react and perform under intense stress.

Students should start sparring early, spar with resistance every training session, and, if possible, fight against other trained combat athletes under the intensity of full-contact competition.

People who claim they are developing realistic fighting skills, and yet deny the need to engage in regular contact sparring against fully resisting opponents are, in my opinion, training in the confines of a delusion, or are simply not brave enough to be real martial artists.

Slightly later in the same thread, in answer to the question of whether training hard turns men to bloodhungry beasts:

I believe the discipline of training naturally instils a sense of responsibility. I've trained a lot of men who became very good fighters, and the time, effort, sacrifice and self discipline required caused none of them to become more animal-like. Traditions and cultural trappings are empty and will do nothing to temper a student's personality and level of compassion without facing the hard work and sometimes fear of intense training.

[It is Fake]

We need more CMAers that speak out like this IMO.

[Jack Rusher]

Ayron Howey is an IMA practitioner under Shouyu Liang talking about sanshou as a part of martial training:

I like to think of Sanshou as freestyle application of all martial arts. You take what you have learned, be it Tai Chi, competition Wushu, Hsing Yi, Chin Na, etc., and apply it to a combat situation. No matter why you are learning what you are learning, you should know how to actually use what you have been taught, otherwise you have not learned the full lesson.

Sanshou is but one component of martial arts, a necessary piece of the learning puzzle. For me, Sanshou is a large and important piece. It is currently my focus, as a serious competitor, and I must fight while I am still young and strong. Regardless of the martial arts you practice, I urge everyone to share this ideal while training, so you can recover better and push beyond your physical limits. My age, health, and skill are all factors that I share in common with other fighters, though I believe I have only two more years of competition left. I do not want any permanent injuries that may affect my learning of martial arts, yet I do not want my growth to be stagnant either. And for me to grow personally, I must take my training to the next level and compete against those at my level.

... he became the Canadian national sanshou champion in his weight class, then crosstrained in sub-grappling before winning his first pro MMA fight in 2007. There are some nice training videos at his website.

[hooky]

I'm in heaven....thanks all for this stuff. ^^

[1point2]

YouTube - David Ross of NY San Da

Great piece from NY San Da's David Ross. He talks about "it's not what you train, it's how you train," cross-training, the guest instructors he has, San Da for MMA, etc. I like how he's very simple and down-to-earth about it.

"It was always a fighting gym."

I also have a soft spot for "inclusive" training, which he talks about at the end. Apparently he trains both fighters and grandmothers, as he puts it.

[NJM]

I saw this article posted on the RPC Northern Shaolin Historical Society history forum. It's very interesting and draws on some chinese sources we probably don't get to see every day.

http://wulinmingshi.wordpress.com/20...ai-tournament/

I particularly enjoyed this quote:

Purely from looking at the results, Liu Gaosheng’s gongfu was no match for Cao Yanhai; but Cao Yanhai could not split a brick – how can we explain this result? The reason is, Cao Yanhai often sparred, so he was good at adapting his tactics. Liu, on the other hand, rarely fought: day-to-day practice only involved testing his palm strikes, which of course most normal people could not withstand. In the bout, even though Liu’s palm strikes were devastatingly powerful, he could not hit Cao, instead being knocked down. Thus, one should not mistake hard qigong for combat skill. In a real encounter, the winner will be he who reacts faster, hits harder. Li Jinglin, the Wudang sword master, head of the Central Guoshu Institute and organiser of the 2 Leitai tournaments, once said “If I were to be knocked down, I should respect my opponent’s gongfu: we should recognise that ‘he who can knock me down has gongfu’”.

[DerAuslander]

But I like breaking bricks....

[Rivington]

My fave quote from that article:

The atmosphere during tournament was very tense, but at the end of the first day, more than half of the entrants remained in the competition. This was because of a flaw in the rules: in the event of a draw, the original rules stipulated that both contestants could progress to the next round. At the end of the first day, the judge’s committee changed the rules so that in the event of a draw, both contestants would be out. After that, the competitors didn’t hold back and many people were hurt, mostly with head injuries.

[johnevans]

Really interesting! Who knew that there was an aliveness v. the deadly palm strike debate in 1920s China.

I guess I really should be sparring. Although it does say that no one could withstand Liu Gaosheng's deadly palm strike, so maybe we should all be sparring as well as practicing hitting something hard over and over again.

Wait, doesn't western boxing do that?

[1point2]

That was an awesome article. I loved a lot of different sections.

Interesting how they kept tweaking the rules for passivity, injuries, rest, and draws.

I liked all the quotes above, plus:

One may win by brute force; but one may equally win by fighting ‘cunningly’ (qiao da). In the 7th round, Ma met his kungfu brother Hu Fengshan [both were students of Sun Lutang]. Because the two were kungfu brothers, they had often practiced together and were familiar with each other’s fighting style. Hu eventually won by trapping Ma’s foot and punching him in the face. Perhaps such a tactic is not what us enthusiasts imagine when we think of kungfu. As Zhang Hongjun points out ,this illustrates the variability of real combat: hitting hard & blocking hard can injure your opponent so he cannot go on, whilst fighting ‘cunningly’ can also win. Kungfu fans might think that this kind of ‘cunning’ tactic is underhanded or not very staisfying, but this is what real challenge fights are like.