So I was listening to a podcast last night that was talking about breaking down origin myths in Martial arts. It isn't a martial arts podcast overall. That was just the topic for one series. And a guest, who is a podcaster and a martial artist (who is/ was both traditional and a MMA fighter) mentioned in passing that Kung Fu San Soo has all these origin myths, but in reality was derived from Choy Li Fut. Well, that caught my attention, not only because I do CLF, but because my sister used to do San Soo, and it seemed at first glance to not be very similar at all. I did a little googling and it seems that that is a common theory out there by some practitioners of San Soo. I saw things saying it was derived from it, but that they took out forms and animal techniques. Which in my lineage are big parts of CLF. Of course it is contested. CLF has less mysterious origins than some other styles of TCMA's. But even then there is fierce (and silly IMO) infighting between different lineages of CLF. So, I don't really care and I don't get into the infighting about origins of this or that martial art. But I did find this interesting. And I do geek out about stuff like this, while at the same time not taking it too seriously. Below is one site I googled that talks about it. Has anyone else ever heard of this? Finding Our Roots | Kung Fu San Soo: History & Myths
I remember reading something along these lines years ago. Like you, I find this stuff fascinating, but over all I don't pay too much attention to it.
If I remember rightly the story was Jimmy Woo stripped out the forms and animals as he wanted to concentrate on the fighting side of things, then as most styles do for marketing purposes the lineage became shrouded in mystery. people tend to gravitate towards styles with ancient mysterious histories rather than ones with relatively new lineages which can be attributed directly to the man teaching them.
I sometimes wonder what it is about these ancient almost mystical ideas that draws us to things, though I guess religion works the same way. Perhaps we aren't so different than bees, doing what we've always done because those who came before us did the same? I've dabbled in some systems just to see what they're like, but always come back to the principle that human bodies only move in so many ways and it's more choreography of forms that differentiate styles. That's not even a 'one lineage to another' comparison. A lot of what I've found seperates karate that had southern style influences from those southern styles is their forms and the lower percentage techniques because when it comes to punches and kicks, the highly reliable bread and butters have a lot more in common than what seperates them. Same with grappling, thats usually just ruleset and if there's a jacket (and if said jacket has sleeves or not) that seperates them.
I just read the Wikipedia page on San Soo, hadn't heard of it before. One of the worst pages I've ever read, full of unsourced commentary and self promotion, but my favorite was the part about how the art is just too deadly for competition, which I find amusing since starting my Tai Chi Chuan journey. What is it with some kung fu styles having no problem with full contact training, and other styles literally bragging that they are so deadly, so exotic...you can't practice them. I also found the "we fight like men, not animals" comment interesting, because as I understand it the animal motifs in Chinese arts are only meant to be metaphorical, not literal. Human is a type of animal, after all. One that can actually use its knowledge to adapt any other animals natural methods. TCC after all has all sorts of animal themes embedded. Parting Horses Man, Grasping Sparrows Tail, Repulse Monkey. None of these mimic thr actual animals....
Tim Cartmell one of the most experienced internal fighters to come out of the states holds either a 6th or 8th degree blackbelt in san soo (depending on the interview you read) and saw benefit in it and it's fighting abilities when he was younger.... Saying you were orientated towards street self defense wasn't unusual for fighting styles back in the 80s and 90s Stripping out forms and movements that weren't as he saw it combat effective was unusual and ahead of his time I would suggest
