Is kung fu harder to learn than karate? I hear there are many different types of kung fu but very hard to learn over karate being more athletics moves like sprinting, jumping, throwing,butterfly kicks,flying kick,fancy hard to do kicks,throwing, flipping and aerodynamic moves and gymnastics moves on steroids. It Takes much longer to learn kung fu.... What type of kung is these base on some of the moves? [ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2ut9G-AXjk"]Greatest Fight Scenes: Fist of Legend - Jet Li vs. Chin Siu-Hou - YouTube[/ame] And this one. [ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2QqG9UFy8Q"]A Girl Called Tigress - é›™é¢å¥³ç…žæ˜Ÿ - 1973 - YouTube[/ame] They both look awesome. I'm not sure how well kung fu would work with fighting boxer,wrestler, Muay Thai, Kickboxing, hood fight or MMA fighter. The moves, striking and blocking may not work so well with those styles. If I was teenager with healthy bones and good joints and good strong muscles I would take those gymnastics moves. A lot of people take kung fu because of those fancy moves.
What style do you have in those movie clips? Movie Fu. Don't base real Kung Fu off of movie fu. Don't sell yourself short in what you can do. I am 49- have knee issues - and find I can do things I never imagined I could do. Once in awhile, my health issues do get in the way. A good instructor can usually find ways to adapt what you learn to your health issues. As far as saying people take kung fu based on those fancy moves? What do you base this statement on?
Yes and no. What you talking about is a lot of fight are ugly and happen very quickly not uniform fighting But is normally what I see on youtube of one skill vs other skill where this is problem. Not so much same skill vs the same skill Two karate people fighting are more uniform fighting when you look at the tournaments. Because there is agreement of rules. No pushing, grabbing or wrestling so on. This is how you strike and this is how you block. But when you type in youtube one skill vs other skill it is more messy,slower and jerky fighting. Or the person is almost in the other person face punching like a mad man or pushing or grabbing the person.Or try to wrestler the person. A boxer fighting a boxer is more uniform. A wrestler fighting a wrestler is more uniform. A ju jitsu fighting a ju jitsu is more uniform a karate vs a karate is more uniform. When you put in one skill vs other skill than it seems less uniform. I think part of that is a person attacking from other skill makes it harder. This style of fighting is different how should I block it , so you get more messy,slower and jerky fighting or one of person in the other person face or on the ground.And it like what do I do. People that have no martial arts just throw random punches,kicks, pushing ,shoving , grabbing,at the person face or combination of this.. It is more dirty fighting. Some try to copy what boxers do So two people fighting the same skill is more uniform. So I think the person training to be karate person or Kung fu person has to be extremely well train and lots of exposure to other fighting styles. Speed of the strikes or speed of blocks come down to the person doing it ( lots of training) and school not the fighting style . If it is McDojo school the person going to be very slow,jerky movement, scared to approach the person, not blocking,getting hit and bad at striking and blocking. But I have seen some really good karate tournament fights and people doing karate for long time there is more speed. Than there are some bad karate fights very slow,jerky movement, scared to approach the person bad at striking and blocking. There good fights and really bad fights . If the fight is less uniform it is slow,jerky movement and messy. But there have been a number of Martial Arts people getting jobs in hollywood. Yes the fights in Hollywood are pre plan. This mad guy gets two hits and he on the ground, this mad guy gets a flying kick and he is on the ground, this mad guy gets 10 hits and he on the ground. One actor will know what the other actor move is like he is going to bring his left arm out so now you block it, than you back up so he can kick you and when he does that you do this and so on. But what I was asking if you could look at every frame in the movie what kung fu is it. The striking, blocking and kicking is it made up or what type of kung fu is it. What kung fu movies are better than other kung fu movies of training show real kung fu moves than Hollywood made up moves.
Have you not seen a hood fight? There no skill or training but hood fight is very big on fast very fast aggressive punches at you face. There is no art to the fight just very aggressive fast punches at you face.They are almost on top of you they are so close Yes how would you block this.
Hood fight = two angry, usually unskilled, butt-people going at each other in YouTube. Honestly there are a hundred ways to skin a cat. Find something you enjoy and train in it.
Seriously you have to ask that? The whole kung fu craze started because of movie fu and fancy moves (see bruce lee and his high kicks) and those of us unlucky enough to have been training when the matrix films can out also remember the sudden influx of students into the class looking to move like Reeves !
Strangely enough no one went to acting school to learn how to act like him though did they. To answer the original question though is kung fu harder to learn than karate? Totaly depends on the style, the teacher and the student. Impossible to answer that one. Some styles (of both) are probably easier to apply than others but even then that would depend a lot on the individuals in question and how quickly they grasp it and how well they teach it. As far as kung fu having more acrobatic/athletic moves in it I'm sure you can find some pretty simple kung fu and some pretty acrobatic karate. Again the styles within each bracket term and the individuals teaching/practicing will have a huge difference there so it's probably not a comparison that can realy be made. Movie fu is a totaly different kettle of fish. Applying movie fu outside of a film set is going to be almost impossible for even the best trained and most naturaly athletic practitioner. As for 'hood fights' how would I block an angry person swinging wildly at my face? I'd cover up and when an opportunity presented I'd hit him, like realy realy hard somewhere realy hurty (eg kidney, solar plexus, nose or groin). In my experience that seems to work quite well
Hold up there a minute. The classical styles of karate are very similar to classical Chinese martial arts. This shouldn't be much of a surprise as Okinawa was a center of trade and there was influence on karate from Chinese martial arts. While there are some chinese martial arts which are highly acrobatic the classical ones tend not to be. The heavy emphasis on weapons for most classical Chinese styles leads to an emphasis on conservative movement. With the styles as they exist now there are some which are more fanciful than others and as Badger said difficulty of learning and actual effectiveness will be very much based on style and teacher. Wushu And that's all they do. In older Chinese cinema you see much more actual Chinese martial arts. As wushu's fanciful dancing spread that it became more of the basis for movie-fu Highly gymnastic wushu or movie-fu; not so well. Actual kung fu trained with resistance; pretty well.
The quote chuck Norris made about David Carridine when asked about the martial skills of his co star can be applied here, “he is about as good a martial artist as I am an actor” (and uniquely both halves of that statements apply to mr Reeves lol If we have to be serious, karate seems to be more codified and uniform, and have much better international structure and organisation within the different systems, and a much more coherent teaching structure in that sense it is probably easier to learn, allot of kung fu is taught by individuals along family system lines and as such is taught haphazardly and often it’s a case of as and when the teacher see’s fit The two big exceptions and are the large wing chun and tai chi organisations, yet even within these arts what is taught and how can vary hugely
Funnily enough I came to Kung Fu from TKD, so flashy kicking isn't what I was after. It was detailed handwork I was after (and weapons).
define "learn".at what point do you consider a style to have been "learned"? some kung fu styles are extremely complex and hard to learn, others are simple as dirt. karate is more similar to the latter but also varies. even so, all styles will have a certain continuum from simpler to more complex things anyway.
Not focus on blocking each punch, close the gap, get into clinch range, toss them on the pavement and then cuddle with them.
Having done a little of each my opinion is that kung fu is harder to "do" than karate because it is more physical. Just in my experience kung fu requires a lot more time spent on physical conditioning and strength building, whereas karate focused on drilling and applications. I think both in general are not terribly difficult to "learn" in the form of listening and taking notes and etc but comparing the first Shotokan form I can remember to the first Hung gar form: they are not remotely the same. The first Shotokan form I learned was a walk in the park next to the intense physical workouts you get from the "beginner" Hung gar form at least the Dang Fong version I learned. Some Hung gar schools such as the Lam schools have shorter, simpler introduction forms (which I don't know, but have watched). Now obviously not everyone does the forms and if you take those away, karate and kung fu become a lot more similar in terms of the overall "calorie burn" if you will but in general that was the biggest difference in my opinion, that in karate we focused less on body improvement and more on attack/defense and so forth.
Karate not focused on body conditioning? Clearly someone's never done Makiwara training, or any number of hojo undo or kote kitae....
I did not say that I said the kung fu training was more focused on it than karate. I have in fact used a makiwara. As far as hojo undo and kote kitae, those kinds of weight and impact conditioning are part of most martial arts. What I am specifically referring to was that kung fu training seems to put more focus on endurance and in some cases even contortion exercises, whereas karate placed more emphasis on striking and strike defense. As you yourself point out karate contains makiwara and other training similar to what the Chinese refer to as iron body conditioning. If this makes sense, karate seems to focus most of its "conditioning" on striking, whereas kung fu focuses more on the mind-body conditioning. Karate seems thus more straightforward, and thus for me it was easier to "do". Contrasting that it took me two solid years of steady physical training before I could begin and end Taming the Tiger without stopping, or complete it within 5 minutes. I am not claiming karate doesn't also have body exercise and Zen and all that, but there is a notable difference in the focus. Some kung fu forms can contain 200+ movements and cannot be physically performed from start to finish without significant time conditioning the body first. Karate kata whether the ones I learned or anything I watch always seems shorter and less of a physical test as they are just kata, i.e. choreography of techniques.
