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

[Crushing Step]

Very nice, thank you!

[antman]

good research/find

[nomamao]

nice find. Thanks.

[Eddie Hardon]

Feck, feck, feck, feck....the office system blocked them. B*stard. I'll have to try elsewhere...

Oh, well, and by the way, Very Many Thanks.

Cheers

[It is Fake]

We will make this a .pdf depository.


Here is my contribution by way of someone else.

http://www.freecirclefighting.com/jdbook.pdf

Why?

This is probably one of the best descriptions of xingyi (minus all of the esoteric stuff). Yes, it is boxing.

[Jack Rusher]

Josh Waitzkin, the kid whose story was told in the film Searching for Bobby Fischer, grew up to become a push hands champion after training with William CC Chen, then went on to study BJJ with John Machado (and a bit with Marcelo Garcia). Here are some quotes from an interview at On The Mat:

OTM: You are a two time world champion in Tai Chi Chuan. Many BJJ practitioners write off styles like Tai Chi. Why do you think that is?

JW: I was fortunate enough to be introduced to Tai Chi Chuan by William CC Chen, who is humble, understated, very practical, a true master of body mechanics, and a fabulous teacher. He is well into his seventies and is still a demon in the boxing ring. If grapplers were exposed to William Chen’s Tai Chi, they wouldn’t write it off.

But to answer your question—honestly, a very large percentage of Tai Chi practitioners have their heads in the clouds…and they are the ones who make the most noise, stage the silly fake demonstrations, and create a cultish mindset that a practical fighter can just walk right through. I’d write them off too. Plus the system has little groundwork and most teachers are still closed minded about that element of the martial arts. Frankly, I think this problem is rampant in many traditional martial arts—teachers are terrified of looking bad and losing students so they create a world that denies what they don’t know.

On the other hand, if you travel to Taiwan and China and focus on the top competitors, the Tai Chi scene becomes incredibly dynamic. The rules of International Push Hands comptition are that you are in an 18 foot diameter ring and points are scored for throwing the guy on the floor or out of the ring. No frills. The fighters are superb athletes, training 6 and 8 hours a day since childhood, competing all the time. There is no fancy esoteric language—they just smash you on the floor with a speed and power that is breathtaking. They are open-minded, incredibly subtle, and of a very similar spirit to the top BJJ fighters.

OTM: What benefits from Tai Chi do you bring to BJJ and vice versa?

JW: Well, the learning process begins from different places but arrives, ideally, at a similar feeling. In BJJ, you tend to begin with technique, and through repetition you come to a smooth, efficient, unobstructed body mechanics. In Tai Chi, you begin with body mechanics, get a certain internal feeling over months and years of moving meditative practice, and then you learn the martial application of what you’ve been doing all along.

The essence of Tai Chi is sensitivity to intention. Turning force against itself, overcoming power without meeting it head on. Of course these principles are at the heart Jiu Jitsu as well. In my mind, the arts are completely intertwined and to be honest, the purest Tai Chi I’ve ever felt has been getting my ass handed to me, over and over, by John Machado and Marcelo Garcia.

I had exactly the same reaction to getting beaten up daily by Marcelo Garcia.

[It is Fake]

How dare he say that BJJ and Tai Chi are similar.

Good article.

[twinkie]

Kata and sparring are two entirely different activities. They draw upon different talents, skills , movements, and knowledge. They have different goals. Those who are highly successful in one area are almost never successful in the other.

Forms properly used can train your fundamentals. Stances, body position, etc. They can't teach you how to fight. To me, a well rounded martial artist must be able to be proficient at forms, as well as proficient at fighting. Otherwise, they're just a fighter, or a LARPER. Our full contact fighters are also required to compete in forms divisions, for the purpose of demonstrating the entire package. Those that think forms are stupid and have no use are entitled to thier opinion but I choose to disagree.

Our sets (forms) were there just to get your body to understand movement, that was it, the more you would understand movement the easier it was for you to teach your body to fight correctly.

And the more advanced the form, the more detailed understanding of movement you have. I also like Omega's comment that his sifu didn't teach him how to fight, he taught him how to train. That alone is worth the price of admission.

However, if you followed the parallel historical overview, I would say the contents of the kata syllabus have not been studied in enough detail to develop them. Rather, they have been dumbed down.

There are a couple of things I disagree with in Errants post but this one is spot on. Properly taught, there's a great deal that can be learned from forms. Unfortunately, most people who are taught forms are never taught what the underlying purpose is.

+1 my two cents on the debate of forms/kata... is it wont stop till everyone is blue in the face.

[It is Fake]

I stumbled across a Kata discussion where the article writer said you didn't need to spar.

Of course, I can no longer find the article. While searching, I came across this really good discussion on "to deadly" by Tim Cartmell and Sparring.

This is a very interesting topic, the sparring vs. too deadly to spar dichotomy. My students also get into this discussion with practitioners of other arts that believe they are too lethal to spar. I suppose their is no 'answer' short of no holds barred death matches, but it is important to look at the evidence we do have so that students can make an informed decision, especially students that want to prepare themselves for a real and violent confrontation.

I'll preface my comments by saying I have trained all different ways. I've studied traditional styles of martial arts in which all techniques were supposed to be potentially lethal, and which forbade sparring, as well as traditional arts which allowed contact sparring. I've also practiced several combat 'sports.'

One of the most, if not the most important aspect of success in a fight is mindset, next is experience, then physicality, finally specific technique. Without the will to fight, the greatest fighter in the world will lose to the most mediocre fighter. This is a common sense observation. It is extremely difficult (although probably not impossible) to develop a fighting mindset without some experience approximating a real fight. Like the boxers say, everyone has a plan until they get hit. If you have never been hit hard, crushed under someone's weight or been on the receiving end of a painful and unrelenting attack, how do you know how you will react? You may imagine you will respond appropriately and fight back, but you will never know for sure. Sparring will never be as intense as a real fight, but it is the closest approximation you will find within the bounds of relative safety (although you will be injured on occasion, it's an inevitability of learning to fight).

Getting hit, strangled and thrown hard by a determined and resisting opponent will condition your mind and body for the realities of a fight. Taking out your opponent with the initial attack is obviously the ultimate goal of a fight (and learning how to sucker punch is something I believe should be practiced often), but the reality is one punch knockouts almost never occur. When they do, the fighter doing the knocking out is usually always much bigger and stronger than his opponent. Despite the popular 'deadly martial arts' idea that a fight will be over in seconds with the opponent lying unconscious and broken on the floor, fights often go on for minutes, with both fighters injured as third parties pull the fighters apart.

Contact sparring and grappling are also a 'laboratory' for you to experiment with which techniques YOU can actually apply against a resisting opponent. Just because your teacher or classmates can smash bones with a blow doesn't mean you necessarily can. You will never know what you can really do unless you have really done it. You must also practice sparring in all ranges and situations (striking and wrestling both standing and on the ground).

It is not that the techniques in most martial arts won't work, all legitimate styles have potentially useful techniques. The problem is the method of training. Anyone can make a technique work against a non-resisting partner, and, of course, that is how techniques are learned. The actual execution of a technique is the easy part. The hard part is the set up and entry. The method of learning how to successfully set up and enter a technique for real cannot be learned without a non-cooperative, fully resisting partner. Because that is the situation you will be in in a real fight. In a real fight, your opponent will be doing everything he can to stop you from applying your techniques. If your method doesn't take this into account, it is not realistic. The best fighters in the world use relatively simple techniques, most often the same techniques they learned during their first few months of training. The reason they can actually apply these techniques is that they have learned to set them up against trained, resisting opponents. They have confidence because they have been successful for real.

Physicality is also extremely important in a fight. Size and strength do matter, and, especially if you are smaller than your opponent, superior endurance could save your life. Besides regular conditioning exercises for power and endurance, sparring practice will teach you how to conserve your energy and expend it when it will have the greatest effect. When the adrenaline is pumping, it is very important not to use up all your energy to no effect. Anyone who has ever been in a combat sporting event can tell you that whoever gasses first loses, no matter his or her level of skill.

Another place to look for answers is with men who have a great amount of experience in real fights (street fights). If you read the literature, men like Peyton Quinn and Geoff Thompson (who worked as bouncers in rough places, and who had the 'benefit' of hundreds of real fights) assert that contact sparring and grappling are absolutely essential to preparing martial artists for real fights. Geoff Thompson is especially interesting in that he has liscences to teach over a dozen Asian martial arts. But what he advocates practicing for real fighting ability is Western boxing (combat sport), wrestling (combat sport) and Judo (combat sport). The main focus of training in all three is non-cooperative free sparring.

In my own experience, I feel I developed more practical fighting ability from a year of Xing Yi Quan training in Taiwan (we sparred full contact on a regular basis) than years of training in other styles without non-cooperative sparring. Do I believe Xing Yi Quan is technically so superior to the other styles I studied? No, what made the difference was the method (we sparred).

Finally. I'll leave you with a real world example. Meynard is passionate about this subject because of his background in the martial arts. He spent years studying a 'traditional' martial art (with an excellent teacher) that did not allow sparring practice because of the 'deadly' nature of their techniques. When he first came to study with me we could basically strike, throw and submit him at will (sorry Meynard, the truth hurts sometimes). He has practiced very hard the last few years, and is now one of the best fighters in my school. He's done well in combat sporting events (Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and submissions grappling) as well as a street fight he got into with a gang member a few months ago (two leg kicks and a Pi Quan knocked the guy down. He had had enough and Meynard let him get up and limp away. Like Water Dragon said above, this is how most real fights end up, no reason to kill anybody).

I want to make it clear to my friends that posted above that I respect different methods of training. There is something to be learned from all drills, ancient and modern. What's important is to be honest about why you practice martial arts in the first place (for example, people who practice for health or recreationally don't need to spar) stay open minded and look at all different methods of training to see what works for you."

He makes me want to uproot and move. Also notice the bold not 10 years but one as opposed to YEARS training no contact styles.

[Matt Phillips]

Best. Thread. Eva.