style question concerning my injuries

[Permalost]

Wing chun can cause severe neurological damage. Symptoms include pigeon toes, compulsive arm rubbing (in advanced cases this is known as "chi sau"), the development of a phonic tic involving the words "principles" and "theory", and of course sucking Bruce Lee's cock.

If you suffer any of these symptoms please contact your doctor immediately. Or kill yourself.

Heres an idea, take boxing and stop thinking about wing chung and krotty.

This is hardly constructive.

[Kid Miracleman]

Numchucks!

Seriously though, I would recommend checking out Muay Thai. It's relatively easy on the knees, as MT roundhouse kicks require little to no snapping at the knee. Make sure to stay on the ball of the foot when you throw a roundhouse though, as you can injure your knee if your heel is planted when you follow through with your kick (this happened to me last year). You'll also be wearing handwraps most of the time, which provide a good deal of wrist support.

[Lefty]

I'd agree with the sentiments of do MT or Boxing. Focus on safety. Do weights and some cardio with lots of rest in order to help reduce your risk of injury.

[Squerlli]

This is hardly constructive.

In your opinion maybe, but I persoanlly don't want to see him sign up for the chun.

[DdlR]

If you have injuries to both wrists and one knee, that pretty seriously limits your martial arts options. I'll go along with the crowd and recommend tai chi chuan, mostly because it's relatively low-impact and a good school will teach body mechanics that you should be able to adapt to your physical limitations.

IMO the better tai chi classes are those that include competitive elements such as the "pushing hands"/sparring aspect, rather than just the solo form. Push-hands training may stress your knee, but less than would a harder style that includes dramatically deep stances and/or snapping kicks. Likewise, push-hands shouldn't place overwhelming stress on your wrists because most of the techniques are applied as open-handed pushes and a lot of the contact is with the forearms rather than by flexing the wrists or gripping with/clenching your hands. It's more about tactile sensitivity, timing and positioning than muscular strength.

This clip is a good example of co-operative (training) push-hands exercises -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76GNTdi7NV0

and this one shows the competitive, tournament application, from a critical perspective comparing American and Chinese approaches -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNAV_AurtKI

A bit more informal competition -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YY_fkQXtbjM

Hope this helps.

[drummingman]

thanks everyone for your thoughts so far.
tai chi sounds like it may be cool but i am really looking for something that is more self defense based. from what i know wing chun is close to tai chi right? what all styles do you all think may work for me that is more based on self defense?

[DdlR]

You can use tai chi in self defense, with the appropriate modifications (pushes become strikes, redirections that throw the other guy headfirst into the corner of a table, etc.) but it's kind of rare to find a school that trains those aspects realistically.

Wing chun is "sort of" close to tai chi but it's very unpopular (kind of a running joke) on Bullshido. Personally I wouldn't recommend it in your case simply because it involves a good deal of wrist work (hard flexions, etc. through the wrists are inherent to many techniques) and closed-fist punching, which might aggravate your tendonitis.

It would help if you could describe what your wrists are capable of. Can you grip something tightly, or maintain clenched fists for an extended period of time? Could you punch something like a padded striking target hard and repetitively?

[drummingman]

i can clinch pretty tightly, i really dont have any problems with keeping my fists clichend, i think that i would be able to punch a padded tartget for a period of time.
here is the site for the wing chun place that im looking into. http://www.shaolinkungfucenter.com/ if you go to the FAQ section and look under "what is the difference between fu kien wing chun and other wing chun styles" it talks about differences in this style of wing chun and other styles. like it says things about pararel stance and goat clamped stance. i point this out because i dont know if that means that the stance would work out better for my knee.

[DdlR]

In that case I'd suggest boxing, except that moving from the crouch might aggravate your knee injury.

If you can grip strongly then a grappling style like judo might be an option, but again, I don't want to recommend it because of the stress to the knees, which can also be a risk to training partners (if your knee gives out half-way through a throw, etc.)

Wing chun involves flexing your wrists into extreme positions -



... and exerting force through the wrists while thus flexed. Even if that isn't an issue, it wouldn't be my first recommendation for serious self defense, although I've seen some schools that take a more realistic approach to that type of training than is typical.

[D Dempsey]

If you have knee problems than Tai Chi (Taiji) probably is not something that you should look into. Taiji practice has been linked to a number of serious knee injuries due to the twisting motions of the legs and the lack of qualified instructors. A quick google search will show you what I mean.