what happened to the tradition of fathers teaching their sons to fight, i was trained in boxing by my father, as he was by his, and so on and so forth until as far as we could trace it(the boer and opium wars btw) now is that unusual? the boxing has changed but many principals have been left the same, i am wondering how many other people on here were taught to fight by ther family,formally or otherwise...i am just intrigued, their used to be a long tradition of family training which normally occurs on the day you say your being bullied by the bigger guy at school/work,i know when i have children ill be teaching my son the same boxing, with my other martial arts ill teach him them too, but i will pass on the tradition of boxing ion my family. does anyone here have a tradition of fighting/martial arts in their family? and why is it dying out? i was thinking maybe in this new age where the law will bite you where the sun proverbially does not shine if you fight/cause damadge or even defend yourself, or maybe the more placid peacefull 'lets talk about it' approach of society, i just thing its a shame that family fighting systems are not being followed/taught anymore... also i have a chinese friend who says it is the same within his family and many other chinese families, the arts are dying out as verry few want to learn anymore, his family have practiced choy li fut for generations and now only he out of his 6 siblings want to learn, and even he isnt that interested. any thoughts? (sorry about the spelling, my hand is still bit damadged from taking a good kick from a tkd practitioner so im writing with my right)
Family Fighting! Hi Tommy-2guns... There are quite a few people on the MAP forums who have been taught by their parents/relatives, not entire 'styles' but techniques that have helped them. Pat O'Malley for instance spoke about it on a previous thread and I have trained with an Irish stick-fighter who claims to have been taught the Irish cudgel by his father. I have also read about Gypsy/traveller families passing down their own forms of bare-knuckle boxing. I was taught one fighting technique by my mother that certainly helped me in the 60's-70's which was to rush at your opponent, grab their hair, yank their head towards the floor and kick them in the face! :Angel: Louie
Fighting is frowned up in our modern society. Not only frowned upon, but is considered criminal action.
Not quite illegal Brido but definitely frowned upon. Also where Louie grew up a required skill. The Bear
When I was a boy, my brother and me got boxing gloves for Christmas one year, and our dad taught us to box. It was one of the best presents I got.
If the police caught two people at it they would be arrested I would image. I'm from the same place as Louie
Still happens in M/A. A lot of the kids winning tournaments and fights are trained by their instructor parent. Boxing is just a bit out of fashion at the moment.
Only if they were in public and causing a disturbance. You would be charge with Breach of the Peace. EDIT: Yeah good bloke Louie, He once tried to break off one of my fingers with a wicked finger lock, man did that hurt! The Bear.
Many generations of my family were bare knuckle boxers. The best was probably my grandfather, who was taught by his father. As my grandfather had 11 brothers, there were inevitably many arguments in the house. So, to settle disputes, my great-grandfather would get the boxing gloves, throw the arguing children outside, and let them fight it out. My grandfather taught me a little bit about boxing, but unfortunately died when I was young, so I didn't learn that much from him.
I'm studying a stick fighting style that was passed from father to son, and was unavailable to be studied by anyone outside the family. I don't know if styles die out for this reason, but I'm just glad I have the opportunity to learn it now, and others do as well.
I think the main reason for generation-training is unpopular, is the Pedegree-hyping we get exposet to from "professional" schools. (Autencity, historical correctness, etc.) Schools that requiere paying students to survive doesn't quite promote father/mother to son/daughter-training :woo: In WMA we learn from older practitioners, and we learn from the manuals. When someone on occation come across people that claim to have learnt "longsword", for instance in an unbroken line father to son since the 1400's, we frown upon them, as they have no way of prooving that their claim is true instead of seeing what they do, and wether it works in sparring action
Really? I must be one of the lucky ones Well, if I was to learn from someone and they told me they learnt from a manual, I think that would make me frown. Would you learn karate, or ju jitsu from someone who learned from a manual? I understand the doubt of lineage from the 1400's, but learning from pictures seems just as unnatural. Just my opinion. :Alien:
Books! Hi Capt Keonig.... The classic martial art documentary 'Way of the Warrior' revealed that the founders of Okinawan Karate actually developed & improved their local style by studying an ancient Chinese book on White Crane Kung Fu. This has been backed up by the research done by Patrick MaCarthey in his book 'The Bibushi' (apologies if I've got the spelling wrong!) In a time when there were no videos or mass market of different styles, those who wished to go beyond what they may have learned from their parent/instructor no doubt learn techniques from books. The fact that so many Western MA training manuals from different areas of Europe have survived up to the present time would suggest how important they were up until the advent of mechanized warfare. Louie
You use the "alien" smiley, ant that is fitting. I think we talk a bit past eachother. If I understand you correctly, I quite agree with you; learning from someone who "knows it all" is of course better than learning from someone who knows it all's book or video. But that is not an option in WMA, where the MA's died out 400 years ago. Since video were not invented in the golden age of W(melee)MA (late medieval times and Renissanse), we'll stick to the only fragment left; the manuals that have survivet. I am only trying to reflect and critisize "my" community, that IMHO mabye put a bit too much emphasis on the manuals, and mabye should treat people that claim to know stuff handed down through the generations since the year X. It's just that WMA is spammed with mojoes, ex-hippies and morones that claim things about generation-family-MA that simply is bollocks (one example is a norwegian that have started the MA school "Stav", that he claims to be the Staff-fighting-system used by the vikings, but that really is what little he have picked up from a holiday to japan, mixed with his flirting with the Norse runes and new-age mumbo-jumbo from the 70's :bang: ).
MA fraud and whatnot has been around a long time... remember the "dance-masters" in Dobringer's (?) time, making up sword technique to wow the masses, but was in actuality ineffecient nonsense. The nice thing about learning from manuals is that you have a better chance of learning technique that hasn't changed with the ages. The trouble is knowing if you've got it right... there's no master to correct the finer points of technique. When all you've got is a caption and one picture, you've got to test it to exhaustion against resisting opponents, and that's resulted in a "culture" of sparring in WMA that's very healthy, IMO. The success of WMA practicioners, even relative novices, prevailing in sparring against other weapon stylists is a testament to the fact that yes, you CAN learn from a manual. The principles are sound, and once the manual is understood (caption by caption), and the techniques internalized, it really, really works. It's better to have an instructor, we all agree on that, but you're not without hope if you have no access to one. You can do it with a determined group of serious scholars/practicioners. Best regards, -Mark
I never stated that I learned from someone who "knows it all" :Alien: Just that learning from manuals isn't my cup of tea. :Alien: :Alien: Really? 400 years ago? Does everyone agree with that statement? If you do, then I think my time on this forum is fruitless. I think all martial arts have these type of people, yes? So should we all just do away with the instructors and turn the pages of the manuals? If you've had a bad experience, that sucks :Alien: :Alien: :Alien: but why punish the entire team because one player cheated during the game? :Alien: :Alien: :Alien: :Alien: :Alien: :Alien:
I'm sorry I wasn't beeing very precice. Of course not all WMA died out 400 years ago. Boxing, olympic wresteling, some traditonal staff/stick/wresteling/etc-styles + olympic fencing can claim an unbroken line going back as far as we can trace. Theese styles have of course changed a lot over the decades, as the brilliant boxing-thread of Louie's on this subforum is a good example of. It's just that WMA today can be so very much. It could be what street-criminals practice on the streets, it could be what proffesional sportsmen practice in the Olympics, it could be what mad-proffesional sportsmen practice in the K1 (etc.) TV-shows, it could be what NATO practice in Afghanistan theese days and it could be what I do; trying to find out how people fought a long time ago. What I was trying to say is that most weapons-ma's (longsword, rapier, dagger, cudgel, pollaxe, halebard, spear, mounted combat etc) died out 400 years ago (or when it comes to the rapier have changed so much that we're not talking about the same stuff anymore). So when the tradition is dead (or reacently resurrected by amateurs and people with more or less experience from other MA's -often from the east); nobody can really claim to be a 100% polite source of learning the old (ressurected) weapons MA's from medieval/renissanse Europe. Therefore we must allways keep the manuals close, in order to correct us so that we do not end up practicing Karate or Kendo, just calling it WMA. (And I'm not saying that Karate or Kendo is bad, it's just not WMA.) On the other hand, we should allso take a look at what other (living) traditions from other parts of the world are up to, and perhaps pick up stuff there that could explain things, and to give us a better understanding on ceratin things presented two-dimentionally and with cryptic texts in the manuals. I think you think that I'm insinuating that you're bragging about your family stick-tradition. I had no such intent, and I'm sorry if you interpreted me that way. I tried to show my concurrance with your claim that it's better to have an instructor around (who actually knows what he's talking about) than to learn from manuals. It's just that in many WMA-styles that is unfortunately not an option. And it's not my cup of tea to learn MA from someone who might kick ass, but who really don't do histoiriccaly correct WMA, as my main goal is not to kick ass on the street, but to try to get the feel of how men (and women?) fought in europe 400 - 2000 years ago. If your goal is to learn a system you can use in a self-defence-situation next weekend, that is fine by me. But that is not my goal or reason for studying historical WMA. Look, you're barking up the wrong tree here! If you read my posts once more, you'll see that I'm actually makint the same points as you. I'm much more interrested in reading about the origin of your family stick-fighting-system than to cuarrel with you over somthing we more or less agree on. Is it a weastern system (since you're on the WMA-thread)? How old to you think the tradition is whitin your family/area? What's the main principles?
Gotcha! Maybe I was reading it wrong. :bang: I wish I had a family style , but no such luck, but having a blast learning someone elses.
