what do you ppl think

[dashao]

what i meant to say was do you think your style has gone down in standards as time goes on when compared to when it was created. there would have been more full time fanatical warriors then,then there are now type of thing.

ok hows that

[RubyMoon]

Originally posted by guest(shao)
ok ppl as cma practitioners do you feel i know i do that the art you practice can only be judged properly if it is trained for the right amount of time i say this because we have urban lifestyles and have things to do therefore we practice when we can but the arts we follow were full time in ancient times therefore you cant really judge the art unless you see some full time student/masters practice it which is rare considering any decent cma practitoner is not someone who would fight and since its not a sport like a lot of "effective" sports/arts out there the only people worthy of truly representing the art are probably the masters who also practice less than their former masters? Hmm. I read it twice and I still can't make heads or tails of it.

[nzric]

I have no idea what you just said.

But are you asking if we think people get better with practice?
I know there may be a 'brain drain' now that MA is practiced as part of modern life, not full-time, but there are millions more people into MA than ever before in history, and there are many people around who are the true standard bearers of their particular style, who practice just as much as the old masters.

[inacan]

I think it refers to training times, but I'm really not sure. That and if you read it, it actually contradicts itself as all martial arts requiring immense training not just chinese martial arts.

[dashao]

fair enuff i am pretty tired i will go to sleep and when i get up put it into proper english or i could give it another whack now

[Greg-VT]

Originally posted by guest(shao)
As cma practitioners do you feel (I know I do) that the art you practice can only be judged properly if it is trained for the right amount of time? I say this because we have urban/modern lifestyles and have things to do. Therefore we practice when we can, but the arts we follow were full time in ancient times, so you can't really judge the art unless you see some full time student/masters practicing it. Which is rare considering any decent CMA practitoner is not someone who would fight. And since its not a sport like a lot of "effective" sports/arts out there, the only people worthy of truly representing the art are probably the masters who also practice less than their former masters? In my opinion might not be true, mind you.

What I am trying to say is cma gets a bad rap because the people representing it can't train it to the degree it was meant to be trained. Therefore some other styles which are "realistic" think the cma styles are useless.

But I am also led to believe some arts are not so usefull, if so why are they around? Some must have been used for fighting in the wars that happened throughout history, or some for the beauty of the art. What do you think?


I don't thinks it's only CMA that gets a rap, as you put it, but traditional Martial Arts.

But yes, you have a point. As to the reason why TMA a viewed in such a way, esp. Kung Fu. People see the 'flowery' movements in some Kungfu arts, and sometimes dismiss it as being purely an art of self improvement, excerise, tradition etc. And not really believing that it could have once been a great fighting art.

Maybe it was, maybe it was'nt. We won't really know unless someone is still practising it several hours a day - everyday, in the most traditional ways.

I'm sure there are reasons as to why such kungfu/traditional styles practice the way they do. But those reasons may never be known to us.

It is possible that the current modern martial arts, are simply the inevitable evolution of the traditional styles. It's also possible that that tradtional styles were never a 'surpreme effective art', that some people think they were.


Everything changes. Why not Martial arts? Maybe the modern Martials we see today will be the traditional MAs of the future?

[Ad McG]

From what I could gather, he said
"Do you think cma gets a bad reputation as being a poor or unrealistic defense system, because the people who practise it live in a modernised society that gives distractions and less dedication, and people cannot train full-time as it was intended back when it was started? The masters of the art a long time ago worked at it full-time, but not many people do these days, so does this limit it's potential? "

Something like that. Anyway, I think they get a bad reputation because science and modern living has lead martial arts into the realm of the most efficient and useful realistic fighting systems. Put a CMA fighter in with an equally skilled practitioner of say, BJJ or Jeet Kune Do, and who would win? CMAs look cool and are very good fighting systems that could work in the street, but as for functionality, I think I know who is more likely to win that fight.

[dashao]

in fairness the original message is in some sort of code i type in when i am tired it will all make sense when i wake up tomorrow trust me ;)

[Greg-VT]

I though I already did ? That's not what you were saying?

[God]

let me rephrase:

"cma were made to be practiced full time. we don't practice them full-time now. do you think we suck, and, as a result, do not accurately depict the arts due to this lack of dedication?"

[CKava]

I think part of the problem with trying to compare how people practice now to how they practiced in the past, is that there is always a tendency to romanticise the past (and chinese martial arts might be especially guilty of this). If you even consider in your own style how hard your sifu's sifu is supposed to have trained you will usually find some stories of incredible dedication and perserverance. Now Im not suggesting that all these are false but Im just making the point that people do like to hear about legendary training and who can say whether over time or through second hand accounts whether things have become exaggerated or not?

Personally I think there still is a large amount of people in the world who practice martial arts maybe not in the exact same way they always have been but in the same spirit with the same intensity as the people in the past (because I think its important to remember that even the founder of a style was above all still just a person). But anyway I think it is and always will be the case that the amount of time you practice is directly proportional to your ability to perform whatever the martial art may be... Someone who trains for anything like 8 hours, 6 days a week would not be worth messing with, regardless of the style they practice.

[CKava]

because science and modern living has lead martial arts into the realm of the most efficient and useful realistic fighting systems. Put a CMA fighter in with an equally skilled practitioner of say, BJJ or Jeet Kune Do, and who would win?CMAs look cool and are very good fighting systems that could work in the street, but as for functionality, I think I know who is more likely to win that fight.When you say most efficient and realistic fighting system what are you referring to? As you go on to say that CMA "are very good fighting systems that could work in the street" yet they aren't functional? Seeing as you mention BJJ do you mean functional in the sense that they aren't really that good at being used in sporting martial arts competitions and are not a very marketable form of entertainment? And when you mention a fight between a CMA practitioner and someone from BJJ or JKD what do you mean by "put them in against" do you mean in a ring with rules that are there to make the fight more entertaining and less dangerous? You seem to be making big generalisations about CMA and classifying them all in the wonderfully acrobatic world of Wu Shu, there are unflowery, functional systems as well and just because they dont pop up in UFC reflects nothing except they have a different purpose than tournament fighting...

[musashiblade]

yes, i think there is a general lowering of standards and or amount of time that people put into it. practice brings us as close as possible to perfection. In old days it was feasible for students to be immersed in MA for 12, 14, or even 18 hours a day, 7 days a week. not as possible today, only for instructors, with many students. but you also have to weigh in necessity... monks and warriors and police if any, needed fighting ability... and they still do, not monks so much..but you get the idea. The real qx for joe average is how much time should you invest to learn how to thwart an attacker...how often does it come up? then there is the argument that MA provides much more than physical thwarting ability. Which it does.

[Ad McG]

Originally posted by CKava
When you say most efficient and realistic fighting system what are you referring to? As you go on to say that CMA "are very good fighting systems that could work in the street" yet they aren't functional? Seeing as you mention BJJ do you mean functional in the sense that they aren't really that good at being used in sporting martial arts competitions and are not a very marketable form of entertainment? And when you mention a fight between a CMA practitioner and someone from BJJ or JKD what do you mean by "put them in against" do you mean in a ring with rules that are there to make the fight more entertaining and less dangerous? You seem to be making big generalisations about CMA and classifying them all in the wonderfully acrobatic world of Wu Shu, there are unflowery, functional systems as well and just because they dont pop up in UFC reflects nothing except they have a different purpose than tournament fighting...


Listen, I am DEFINITELY not saying CMA is useless and defunct compared to newer systems, but IMHO, pitting a CMA fighter and an equally skilled Jeet Kune Do practitioner against each other in the street, I think the JKD fighter would win 8 or 9 times out of 10. I do like CMAs and prefer them to many other fighting systems, from the little research I have done, but I just think in this day and age the systems that are developing are far more effective. Their directness, more involvement of tactics and what seems like better research, makes them stand above more traditional styles. Hey, it's all personal preference and whatever works for you, that's martial arts and why people fight in different styles.
I do know enough to see that a lot of CMAs are not like modern Wu Shu or XMA, I nearly joined a CMA club a while back, but the fact that a lot of the worlds best all-out fighting competitions barely ever feature people who study these disciplines does say something, no matter how much you deny it. UFC, Vale Tudo, whatever more "realistic" combat in the ring type event you want to look at, they do say somethig for an art, hence BJJs rise to fame with the reputation as one of the best grappling arts around. Yes, CMAs have a different purpose than tournament fighting, but so do JKD, BJJ etc. and they perform excellenty in and out of the ring.
CMA can be very effective in the right hands, but it is simply not for me. You stick at it, I have no less respect for people of different arts, in fact props to you and good luck with training :D