I think the most likely reason for lack of ground fighting ("submission" grappling) was that most combatants/ fighting men were likely to be significantly armed. Swords, knives, spears , staffs etc. The amount of weoponry in CMA is huge for example. This probably took precadent. The same way today we don't want to hang around on the ground if we can help it (outside of sport) would have been the same back then. in all likelehood you'de get chivved up, bricked or bottled by mates etc etc. same, same. i don't fully buy the chivalry, honour angle. If it's a serious fight, battle - again non sportive - people more often than not did whatever it takes. Then as now people do nasty things to eachother in the heat of battle, war and what have you.
I agree. In a serious fight/battle you would want to get up from the ground as soon as possible therefore ground techniques were not really needed that much. I was not aware that most Kung Fu was weapon based until recently, is this true? Does this mean that most hand forms are recent inventions (a couple of hundred years old)?
Yes. But only in as much as that all forms change over time. It is certainly true that the fist being the main emphasis in KF is quite recent. By recent I mean much less than a couple of hundred years. That is apart from such things as Mongolian wrestling (which fall into my category of ‘stylised tests of strength’).
Hsing Yi as weapon was the staff. Hsing Yi was so known for it staff work it became added in to the frame work of the Chinese governments military. To some extent that is true.
This whole weapon thing makes a lot of sense, explains the lack of groundwork, the large amount of weapons in CMA and perhaps a certain level of ritualisation of hand to hand techniques? I'm thinking of how Shaolin developed, the non-monk residents would have used weapons and known hand to hand techniques, taught these to the monks etc. and what developed what a more ritualistic form of martial arts less focussed on pure combat?
Liokault: don't forget that wrestling/shuai chiao/jujutsu (including groundwork such as pinning) were also important for armed fighting, not just stylised tests of strength. It was much more important than striking for warfare, as armed and armored fighting would often end in a clinch as both sought to negate the weapons of the other. From there if you could throw or trip and pin your opponent, you could dispatch him with minimal fear of his weapons due to your superior positioning. This, at least as much as its conditioning and social display aspects, is why wrestling was so prominent in the Grecian and Roman cultures and why Chiao Ti was so important to the ancient Chinese military and why koryu jujutsu styles had many throws with minimal strikes and elementary pins. A German swordmaster several centuries ago stated that "wrestling is the foundation of swordsmanship". Historically, just about every culture has agreed.
That is an interesting point, striking would be pretty much useless if you and your opponent were fully armoured, such as within a warfare context. And as we know most Kung Fu is striking. Could this not be due to the fact that is has developed to be more hand to hand over the past couple of hundred years? Is there also an underlying difference between martial arts taught to army than to others? Ie did the army learn Shaolin? Perhaps the arts taught to the army had a warfare context in mind whereas other styles of Kung Fu had a more every day self defence context in mind?
I'm fairly sure that Chinese wrestling was a part of army training going quite far back. Not sure of specifics, but I did read that somewhere.
But that dosent mean it was ever expected to be part of practical feild battle nature. Soldiers would have wrestled because it was expected and added to the hierarchy and comaraderie of the army. An officer in the lower ranks would probably be thought socially odd if he couldn't wrestle, in the same was that a Napoleonic officer in charge of a group of cannon would be thought socially odd if he was not well read or couldn't duel with a sword even though it wasn't directly relevant to his ability on the battle feild. A similar situation today exists with boxing. Many soldiers box and are encouraged to do so by their outfits even though it is more or less irrelevant on the battlefield. I have no doubt that in many places a soldier would be thought odd if he had never boxed.
But the Japanese had Sumo for that. The groundwork is an evolution of Ju Jitsu blended with western Catch Wrestling techiniques. That was Chinese armour. I don't understand what makes you think that fighting one on one was unique to Japan? The chinese had personal duels with weapons and lei tai tournaments. There's more, so much more. I only post the tame stuff on family MA forums. I don't think so, because Japanese martial arts were also mostly about weapons until fairly recently. I just don't see what you think was so different about the Japanese. Other countries had high-coverage armour, groundfighting, duels, sport grappling and stuff taught to soldiers for when they were without weapons. I think the question to answer here isn't 'what made the Japanese special' but 'why were the Chinese so apparently disinterested in groundfighting when they had lots of highly developed systems for training soldiers, fighting unarmed tournaments and a similar array of armour and weapons to their neighbours?'
It's not that the ground wasn't incorperated or considered at all in certain kf systems. It is that it was/is of a wholy different nature. Approached completely differently that we commonly see today. I can fully understand why rolling around for five minutes looking for an armbar or choke was given scant consideration compared to the one on sportfight of today.. I've seen bits of "groundfighting" from a substantial bagua system. Yin fu who was a top top bodyguard of his time, certainly had a few tricks up his sleeve. But why anyone would think he would train to be an expert in the <<snipped>> rolling is beyond me..
Where else in history did, prior to a battle, one fully armed man call out another for a one on one? I'm not saying that the Japanese were different. Ground fighting existed in other places at other times, but was only ever niche to say the least, look at Greco-Roman. Historically it didn't last long as the ground fighting blood sport we think of today (and if I'm reading my history right, it was limited to the upper body before the Romans turned it into a circus blood sport to amuse the crowds). The only way that Japanese were ‘special’ is because they still had ground fighting at a time when a wider audience was prepared to accept it. The real question isn’t why the Chinese disregard ground fighting, its why did most of the world disregard submission fighting? Again, for every submission art that you can name, I can give you four forms of grappling that were won by pinning, touching the ground with any part of the body other than the foot , by being thrown onto the back or by being forced from an arbitrary area. Again, the disregard for the ground (or for submission) is not just limited to China.
Not sure on that. Look at my style of TCC for example. We like to think it’s a system based on practicality, with lines directly back to the military. We also spend a lot of our training time grappling (stand up), probably more time is spent grappling by us than by 99% of other styles (ask Cullion how much of Tuesdays class he spent on the mats) and yet we have a totally arbitrary rule that you lose if you so much as touch a finger to the floor! That can surly only happen if the ‘battle’ aspect of TCC (and CMA) was seen as separate to the grappling element, otherwise why have such an arbitrary rule that only limits effectiveness?
No. Grecian wrestling, called "Pales", was not limited to the upper body at all and a round was won by pin, submission, or being forced out of the circle and submissions were heavily emphasized... they used nasty crap like fingerlocks (really just fingerbreaks), the wrestler's guillotine (spinal crank and pin), bent armlocks, and so on. "Greco-Roman" wrestling is based on French carnival wrestling with rules designed to produce crowd-pleasing big throws.
Well I am Greek, and enjoy a good wrestle as much as the next man. But I can't help that, it's these damn dna's!
Hsing Yi was one of the systems taught to the military, and Shuai Jiao, there are a few others can not remember all the others. Even the police and military of China now are taught based of these systems.
