Here is a great video of CLF fighter and MT fighter in the ring. Won't spoil the outcome, but clearly these arts are more alike than not. Just different approaches. I hope some day these "vs" videos cease to be so common, though...99% of them are terrible anyway. [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMrzncWuyJ0"]Choy Lay Fut Vs Muay Thai Take 3! - YouTube[/ame]
I didn't miss the point i just think its wrong and misguided but this is a tired old debate which never gets settled so no point going over it again, best to do as late for dinner says and simply enjoy your training
Sometimes I feel like things got so far away from "martial" that people get overzealous in reclaiming it and forget the "art." Martial art. Both parts are what attract me to doing TCMA. Both parts are important. There are a few techniques I learn for the art of it, and the history. For example -I doubt I would ever attempt to do a two finger eye poke in a fight. Seems like too small of a target and a good way to jam up or break my fingers if I miss. But it is a part of my style and I am happy to do it in my practice. I am much more likely to do a Tiger claw - fingers less likely to get hurt, can miss and claw down the face and still end up in the opponent's eyes.
like i promised some clips from a class mate of gus's, his theories might help explain some of the problems in tcma as well as gus's issues lol [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndBciGzSSGk"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndBciGzSSGk[/ame] [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggVcnbDsPmw"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggVcnbDsPmw[/ame] his students training [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VAufGeqm1I"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VAufGeqm1I[/ame] I think he makes some good points especially about the haphazard way a lot of tcma is taught and the time needed to be invested to become good, in my 20plus years in tcma i have met some good fighters and most of them spent 6 days a week training like ross did, but if you only have 2days a week to train how good will you become?
In general, the answer would be.......... ........better than someone who doesn't train, but not as good as someone who trains 6 days a week. I think you, and others, have trouble reconciling the fact that MA is a hobby to a lot of people. It isn't used to train people for battle, it isn't vital to many people. It isn't about training methods being flawed as much as that many hobby MAists have other things in their lives and have various levels of devotion to their art in this day an age. Take my school for example. I go to a large school. Over 200 students. There are a lot of people not very serious there. Many of them will drop out after a couple of years. Then you have the "hardcore" or "serious" smaller sub group of students within the larger student base. We are the ones there all the time, the ones PRACTICING instead of socializing, the ones who take the combatives classes seriously. It isn't the training method of our school. The same tools are there for everyone. The same tools are encouraged to be used by everyone. But not everyone takes it as seriously. Hey, those students pay the bills that keep a large school like mine open. If they want to pay that money and sit around and talk Kung fu instead of practice it, that is on them. I don't get it, but they pay the bills to keep my large school open for people like me. If people want to go to my school, and look around and say a lot of those people can't fight, well, they would be right. But if they looked harder, they would see that it isn't the training methods, but the lack of seriousness of some students. They would see that the serious students who are there practicing all the time and sparring regularly have a very different look to their fighting skills, and even the look of their forms than the overall student base. Because all the tools and methodology to be good are there for those who want it. I think what I describe above is a big element in martial arts schools nowadays. People pay money, but you can't FORCE them to practice 6 days a week. Because they aren't in the miltary, they are doing it for furn. And some people find it fun to pretend to do MA, while actually not really putting the work in. It is like any hobby. My ex-bos surfed. He said you get a lot of people in shiny expensive wet suits and boards who like to go to the beach and look cool, but can't actually surf to save their lives. Or people who like to pretend they are rock stars, but don't actually sit down and practice the basics of learning their instruments..............
7 days a week. That's gung fu. It shouldn't even be 6 days a week, it should be every waking moment. Taking the stairs instead of the elevator is training your fighting gung fu. It doesn't have to be in the gym, and this is where CMAers and often get things wrong. They expect to be anointed in class with knowledge, those 1-2 hours are the "gung fu". But no, it's really taking that 1-2 hours and expanding it to the rest of the day, or next day that's important in a Chinese martial arts discipline. To look at everything that resists you in nature and find a way of improving your own resistant to that, or how to simply bend around it, is Chinese martial arts, to me. Gung fu is push mowing my lawn, instead of a sitting on a riding mower. This is why all the old ways of saying "Chinese martial arts" (there have been dozens over the history) became commonly associated with "gung fu", something that has many connotations outside MA, and is essentially the Confucian ideal of how to go about perfecting any skill, even gardening. Instead of focusing on the names of styles, tiger, plum fist, martial arts became associated with the quality and integrity of the training involved in learning how to fight, or specific people who were known to be good fighters because they were known duelists. The name of the style or its lineage, even a good one, is only skin deep. It's the internal work to be done that makes it "gung fu", which is why there is a universe of martial arts instructors out there who teach styles but have no actual "gung fu" in them.
I think you are slightly missing the point, its not whether you are a hobbyist or a serious student (and im always amazed that every single person you meet on forums recognises there nearly everyone in tcma is a hobbyiest that dont train hard and cant fight, but they are never one of them ) or whether you can train 6 or 2 days a week, its that kung fu was taught so inefficiently that you needed to spend almost every hour with your sifu in order to learn how to fight, This was the old way it was brutal, haphazard and largely hit and miss, but the guys that stuck around and trained day in day out got the good stuff along with all the rubbish and became in some cases good fighters Even then it was survival of the fittest if you were tough enough and fit enough you survived (he told stories of how his teacher killed two students back in china when he taught there, of being beaten with sticks etc and rammed up against the wall by his throat for asking a question, of having to drop out of college in order to be able to spend enough time with his master to make it work) This was how he an his fellow students trained, and yet still gus looks like he did Now if your training largely comprises forms, two man static exercises weapons sticky hands as taught in most school and a little sparring, in a commercial school which has public liability and overheads and has to watch the level of contact and how hard they are on the students then will you be able to make kung fu work the same way students of old did Thats his point that the training methods used of old were inefficient and largely ineffective but if you trained hard and long enough you managed to get some good stuff and make it work, and are really inefficient if you try it with students which only train 10 hours or less in a week and wont accept the level of contact they accepted. Of course if you are a hobbyiest not interested in fighting or learning preactical skills this doesnt matter, but if you are in TCMA in order to learn fighting skills then questioning training methods and why there are so few videos of people sparring and fighting hard with their style should be done, we shouldnt blindly follow what has come before especially as times change
What I find ironic is that this is also true for MMA now!! And why more MMA folks need to respect serious, hard-training TMA folks, and vice-versa, because chances are those MMA folks...aren't that great at MMA! You'd think the number of notable MMA folks who still respect TMA would have settled this issue and we could all go train...but we are still beating dead horses like "efficiency" and "what works" in 2014. Machida, Le, Big Country apparently changed very few opinions about TMA. In martial arts....hitting works, kicking works, strangling works, breaking things works...we knew all of this in 1014. A thousand years later, martial arts have not really changed that much. MMA introduced practically nothing to the MA world in terms of technique, etc. It was all added to the rule set from something that came before it. The rear naked choke was probably developed by apes, that's how old it is. EXTREMELY few people take MMA training all the way to proficient fighting skills. Most people who take MMA classes are also hobbyists at best. They don't train that hard or that long. Many will leave MMA completely after their first injuries. Most will spend only a short time training, but then go on to profess how skilled they are because it is MMA!, especially online when speaking with no respect to TMA folks. THESE paper tigers have the toughness of Jell-O pudding pops, even if they learned to throw a jab or a takedown, their skill is typically superficial, and so tend to be their opinions about MA. What I think has happened with MMA, is that because MMA IS modern and efficient, students don't think they have to put the time in. MMA may be modern and efficient (I believe it's a fine system of MA dueling), but it's never been meant as a fast path or shortcut to actual skill. This is why the TMA that are trained properly, with the right intent, are useful..."gung gu" means no shortcuts. You can have Hobby-fu, or the real thing, just like you can be a Mixed Martial Artist, or Mixed Martial Hobbyist.
And what about you? Do you also fit this? Do you consider yourself a person who trains hard and can fight like all the others you are amazed at? If so, aren't you just the same as all those others you are "amazed" at? Do you think MMA is any different nowadays with regards to hobbyists and non professional/ even amateur fighters? Serious students are still hobbyists- the two terms are not synonomous. Unless you fight for a living, incorporate your MA training in a job (like being a police officer, security guard, bouncer, etc.) or teach- you are a hobbyist. But there is a spectrum of hobbyists. If you didn't get that, you really missed my point. That there are various factors into how schools produce "efficient" fighters. Not all have to do with training methods. In a day and age where the VAST majority of MAists (TMA or MMA) do it for reasons other than their career, you are going to get various degrees of dedication within that school. Yes, I consider myself a serious dedicated student who takes "kung fu" into part of my everyday life. Like Wooden hare talking about taking the stairs....incorporating training and outlook into everything you do. Can I fight? Lol? I don't think I am very good, but I am improving. Can I fight like a professional fighter? No. Can I fight better than I could 5 years ago? Absolutely! Can I fight better than I could before I started 10 years ago? For sure, because I didn't even understand any basic principles of anything before I started training. Will I be able to fight better a couple of years from now? I believe so - because I will have that many more years of dedicated training. Will I ever be able to beat some of the 20 something years old young men/ women that teach at my school? No. I seriously doubt it. I would die of shock if I did! But that doesn't mean squat in my journey of self improvement. It doesn't mean I should quit. How efficient does everyone else train? I don't concern myself with that. There are many paths to this. I don't worry about others paths. I like to hear about them, but I don't sit in judgement about it. I respect the Aikido student AND the MMA student.
actually my view taken from 10 years in MMA is the opposite, because of he nature of the training methods in MMA i have seen hobbyists who only train twice a week and have no wish to fight in the cage become very good at both striking and ground work, people who have come from a tcma background and who could not fight even with a few years of TMA training behind them They dont become good enough to fight in the UFC obviously but good enough to be able to compete in local grappling comps or amateur MMA if they wished to. It precisely because they are training efficient effective techniques and using efficient training methods which they see used to train the fighters in class as well that allow they to develop those skills in a relatively short period and with only az few training days a week. And the examples you use just prove my point, Machidas father changed how he trained his karate in order to make it work in a modern environment, lots of sparring, clinch work and so on, cung le had a wrestling and TKD background before he started training sanda 6 days a week thats hardly a typical TCMA training method is it, if thats how most people trained their TCMA, pad work, sparring clinch work no forms etc then thats fine but if its not then why use Cung as an example of TCMA training when the vast majority of people dont train like that? Im not saying TCMA folks dont train hard, im saying are the methods they use the most efficient, Lee and Machida would probably agree with me seeing as they both train differently that 90% of TCMA folks
Like the others im amazed at, umm ok Can i fight, well yes i like to think i can, i can hold my own in sparring with guys who have fought pro MMA but can can i fight well who knows its been years since ive had a street fight Could i fight after 10 years of tcma training better than i could after my first year of hard MMA training, honestly no, because the training was that much better at my MMA gym than at my first TCMA school. Can i fight now with the TCMA i know and train now, well yes but how much of that is down to my TCMA coach and how much is down to the 11 years i spent in a very good MMA gym is anyones guess Yes MMA gyms are full of hobbyists but because of the training methods used they become competent students fairly quickly, quicker than in the TCMA classes i have bben in, taught etc
Yang Jwing Ming wrote an article about discussions with older Baihe practitioners. One of the things he learned is that the bulk of them had been small scale farmers. Turns out that non-industrial pre-mechanical farming isn't that time consuming except for planting and harvest. Therefore they pretty much all trained for 6 hours a day. This meant that their training didn't need to be that efficient and they could focus on minutae simply because they did so much of it.
Which is the point I think was being made in that clip and which I was trying to make (you make it much clearer though!) If you can train 40 hours a week then as you say it doesn’t need to be efficient because the law of averages says you will get some good training along with the bad inefficient stuff even if you are taking a scattergun approach to how you learn, and you can afford to look at every little detail, permutation of action and reaction because you also have the time to get the fight training in now if you have a total of 6 hours a week to train (and not 6 hours a day) then the method you use to train and what you train does need some serious thought because since you no longer have the time to train like the old teachers did, should you still be training the same way as them Of course if all you care about is learning the art and all the trappings that’s not an issue,
The problem is if you've seen that guys only san shou fight he wasn't any better than the guy you started this thread about so his opinions on the right and wrong ways to train shouldn't be taken too seriously!
que? Are you referring to the author of the original video? I have never seen what he does but it is quite possible for someone to be a good coach and yet not a spectacular fighter/player/whatever. The proof, as they say, is in the pudding. The guy in the video does not produce fighters that win, the guy complaining does. Maybe that is irrelevant in some ways but it is one measure of the success of a coach/system when their fighters perform well under rigorous conditions. That seems the only reasonable way to look at whether the original author of the video has any right to talk about how people should fight. Just sayin' LFD
I didn't see any proof that either guy has trained any especially good fighters but regardless being able to train somebody in one style doesn't enlighten you to the shortcomings of another. If you're not training people in that style you don't know whether or not that style works.
Ross has I believed produced several national sanda champs, guys that have won golden glove titles in new york and guys that have won in MMA, his gym was one of the 6 original sanda gyms in the states, people like Jason Yee of boston sanda have co promoted with him and have had there’s guys fight his, he might not be a great fighter, but his gym has produced fighters over several decades, Loom up his gym on you tube, or his posts over at kung fu magazine forum, its not hard to see his gym has produced guys that have fought MMA and sanda and done ok, Gus's, well not so much
I know who Ross is. I trained with Jason Yee and I've fought some of his guys and he's had a few good fighters over the years. There's been some scepticism about how much credit he deserves for their records but I'm not here to bash his students or his school or even him for that matter. I'm just pointing out that you started this thread to bash a teacher who couldn't fight but the only time I've ever seen Ross fight he didn't do any better.
I started the thread to bash someone who got caught out in a lie, a lie that had been going on for close to a decade which amazed me in this day and age people could still fall for this kind of rubbish as far as I know David Ross has never been caught out lying about his lineage, where he trained or who with, if you have information different to that please share with us? I never mentioned anywhere Ross’s fighting ability or lack of it, I mentioned him because he changed how he trained his students in order to make it as he saw it a more efficient way to train modern students, and his students fight record seems to bare out his methods,
