So this is going to be a weird thread - kung fu and self defense

First let me apologize for any misconceptions I have or ignorance I reveal. I don't know a lot about kung fu and have never studied it. My exposure to it comes from one of my best friends whom I respect greatly as a fighter, a few of those jerks who try to use their kung fu pressure points during rolling and more significantly kung fu movies.

Like many martial artists, I've spent a lot of all nighters watching bad (and good!) Hong Kong action flicks. In those, it seems like a common trope is that the protagonist or even the villain is a fighter who wants to prove that his style is the best in equal challenge matches against other fighters. Nowadays, it seems like a ton of kung fu emphasizes the self defense side of things, to the exclusion of tournament style fights or challenge matches.

I guess my questions are:
1) Do I have a misconception about the historical emphasis of Kung Fu due to too many kung fu movies? Maybe I should rephrase; I'm sure I have misconceptions about Kung Fu due to too many movies - is my perception of the emphasis on self defense and 'being the best' one of these misconceptions?
2) If not, did a change in emphasis occur? How or why did that happen?
3) When did the tournament style of things die down?
4) If that's true, are we seeing a similar paradigm shift as the importance of San Shou is again stressed?

Sorry if this thread is pointless and is just about correcting my own ignorance. Hopefully some interesting discussion can result from my idiocy. Cheers!

 

I think this a pretty interesting thread with some good questions. I'd be interested to what the real experienced Kung Fu folks say. I'm sort of a Kung fu noob, but doesn't stop me from giving some input here - this is just based on conversations I've had - so keep that in mind.

I know that the school I go to used to have a full contact team and compete in tournaments approx 20 years ago. I have heard that there weren't a lot of these, and they had to travel around a bit to get to them, and they were pretty infrequent.

For whatever reason, I am told the students that were into full contact just sort of tapered off years ago. Maybe the potential students that would have been into that ended up doing MMA? I don't know.

We have sparring class now, but it's not full contact. It's continuous sparring. And people from the school do go to tournaments. I get the feeling there are not a lot of tournaments that feature this type of sparring.

Not sure if that helps any...

 

There is a big tournament coming up in the Eastern US (Maryland) in just a few weeks.

http://usksf.org/wp-content/uploads/pdf/2013_flyer.pdf

As far as movies, let's get specific. I'll start, tell me what you think.

I train like the guy at the beginning.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhFSDu0AvgA"]Cantonen Iron Kung Fu - YouTube[/ame]

 

That is Hung Gar, right?

Do you wear the metal rings? They have these rings stacked up at the school I go to, but I've never actually seen anyone wear them.

 

I am no expert in Kung Fu either so take anything I say with a mountain of salt. I'm laying down what I think I know so I can be corrected as well, but if I'm not dead wrong it might be helpful.

My impression is that the meaning of Kung Fu in mainland china has changed significantly since the cultural revolution.

It used to be about family styles, defending your own village, and to some degree challenge matches I imagine. Then when the government got involved it "officially" split into San Shou and a neutered form of Wushu, which is mostly acrobatics. With the popularity of kung fu flicks the government saw those flashy styles of Wushu as being quite profitable, and has backed it up significantly compared to other forms of training.

So there should be people that still train the (relatively) traditional family styles in rural areas. I known for a fact that a quite pure form of Baji Quan is trained in Mengcun and it's awesome to watch, and yes, they do have their challenge matches, although it's much less impressive than what you'd see in a kung fu movie. Other than that you either get Sanda/San Shou and the gymnastics wushu. I don't think challenge matches make that much sense in either. The former because they're competing anyway so there's no need for another venue to "prove who is best" and in the latter because it's not an art for combat, and they are aware of it.

I mean no offense to Chinese people, but China has a clay-like ability to morph into the shape that better accommodates money from outside. This means that anything that Hollywood portrays is likely to become the truth, as long as it's profitable. Something we tend to forget is that China is very aware of (and fascinated by) American popular culture; the way they train and what they train is strongly affected by both Beijing Opera and American Kung Fu films in an endless feedback loop, and the more secret, obscure and dangerous a system is said to be, the more likely it displays those qualities because it appeals to these film ideals.

A friend of mine said "the best Kung Fu is the ugly Kung Fu", and (again in my terribly limited experience) I agree; the best practice I found about is from rural areas in which training is done without much ritual, where some of that ruthless survival aspect remains.

 

Mostly, but Cantonese styles share a lot between each other, and there is a lot of overlap. Many Hung ga variants differ from each other as well, but since they share common movements (e.g. footwork patterns) you can usually tell they are "related".

At the beginning of that video are bits of "Taming the Tiger" (a legendary southern Shaolin set), and then parts of the Tiger Crane Double Pattern Fist. Both of those eventually became part of the "standardized" curriculum of Wong Fei Hung. Since then they've seen a lot of variation, but most schools you can visit today contain the same core elements (e.g. combinations like the 1000 Character Fist), even if they have diverged a bit visually.

I wear four per arm (about 5 lbs per arm). The rings have to be added slowly over time. Many hung ga exercises (as opposed to techniques) are dynamic tension endurance exercises and you can plateau with those like any weight training exercises, and so the rings are a gauge of progress. When I Started certain qi gong exercises with 3 rings, I could hold them about 45 seconds. Once I hit 2 minutes with no problem I add a ring and basically start over. Limit 1 ring per year, max (I'm in my 5th year, for the first I didn't use any rings).

 

All martial arts predominantly had this as their emphasis prior to their cultures becoming more civilised/safer. Competitive sport grew out of a desire to test and the need to prepare people for combat better by subjecting them to high pressure competition (jousting in medieval Europe for example).

 

In the Early Republican Period there arose a movement promoting martial arts as a sport/fitness activity as well as a cultural activity (martial arts had been in decline since the Taiping Rebellion due to the increased availability of forearms).

 

Initially in China with the Japanese invasion.
After the war competitions restarted, and when Kung Fu came West there were full contact competitions here (my own Sifu used to compete heavily in full contact competitions in the 70s and 80s). Here's Ron Van Clief competing in HK in the 70s
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QquDpDJTVHU"]RON VAN CLIEF Hong Kong (Fullcontact) FOOTAGE. - YouTube[/ame]
However, across the martial arts world competition changed from the mid 80s onward and became more point scoring orientated and less contact orientated.

 

There have been a couple of different governments, some Communist, some Nationalist, involved in the systemization of San Shou as well as the "splits".

What became the sport of "San Shou/San Da" (capital letters) came from the san shou/san da (lowercase) of various boxing schools, which were essentially the sparring programs of those schools in pre-Communist China.

Back then just as today, some schools had great reputations as hard sparring schools, others didn't. Fighting between schools was common, and the schools with strong "san shou/san da" components tended to win both street fights as well as the more organized lei tai challenges.

Those hard sparring schools and their instructors were what largely contributed to the development of San Shou as we know it today, the roots of which come from the Kuomintang military of pre-Communist China. In fact one of the most famous Hung ga masters, Lam Sai Wing, was the Chief HTH instructor for the southern units of the National Revolutionary Army (NRA) around 1920.

Up until the Communists took over, civilian san shou/san da programs were still very common outside the military. When the communists took over that changed and the civilian schools, particularly a certain Zen Buddhist order, suffered under the Cultural Revolution while military training in those same techniques continued full steam.

The Communists didn't back off civilian schools until the 70's and 80's, when Mao Ze Dong was gone and Kung Fu was becoming popular in the West and China began to realize it needed to join the world economy. Their martial arts were an export with great demand. So today the PRC pimps performance Wushu, Shaolin, San Shou, and their traditional martial arts to the max potential. As the GZA once said: "You need to diversify your bonds".

 

I think among a lot of the "real" Kung Fu schools full contact competition was always an important component. IWF San Shou has given a brand for full contact Kung Fu to attach itself to.

 

The best Kung Fu is not how much that you know "in your head", it's how well that you can do "on your body". I have seen people spent time to train the following skills and nothing else.

- 3 years to train "1 step 3 punches".
- 2 years to train "hip throw".
- 6 month to train "sngle leg".
- 6 months to train "front foot step in, back foot slide and follow" footwork.

In today standard, people will say this kind of training is boring. But if you start this kind of training when you were a kid. you will be benefitted from it for the rest of your life.

 

From my involvement with Gung Fu; an extreme misnomer misused to mean "a martial art", is that many great teachers actually moved out of China to other neighboring Asiatic lands. Very few still remain calling it Chuan/Chuan Fa/Kuyhn/etc

To also mention, some modern schools breaking off tradition and having a color-belt ranking system, instead of a “systematic family-brotherhood” type.

Usually, “open style” tournaments welcome Gung Fu practitioners, but the judges of many of those, still have a Karate biased dogma.

What was refreshing for me some time ago, was a "invite" to attend/observe an actual Tai Chi Tournament

 

Sorry Ben, a bit confused. When you say all martial arts had this as their emphasis, does this refer to self defense or having the best kung fu?

 

Self defence.

 

I got the fibe by looking at those old kung fu movies during my younger years.

But I found out that movie-fu is just an extreme illusion.
I wanted to learn something that worked in a pure self defense situation.

This proved to be more difficult to find then you would think. Most people do martial arts for sport/hobby or put emphasis on other things then fighting.

If you hear the stories of old, you would think that everybody does kung fu for self defense.

In the end I did find someone who learned me some usefull stuff, but I had to ask for it.

If you want to fight in competition, do sanda.
If you want to go full out with elbows, groin shots, head butts, etc... go for self defense...

sanda is easy to find, self defense less.( to my experience )

Kungfu is so divers that it is very difficult to get a good view about what is possible.
Even finding a good teacher that shares the same interest then you is a huge task.

concerning the 'challenges'... I prefer a friendly crossing of hands any day.
Challenges like in the movies is something that is not very common in my part of the world... Severe injuries end up with a visit to the police and such.

 

The concept of kung fu means to do to the best of your ability. So a bus driver who always arrives on time and never has an accident has kung fu.

There is an implication that trying to do your best is a spiritual activity. This idea occurs in many cultures even in western Christianity - hard work is thought of as spiritually redeeming.

To become good at a martial art requires sustained hard work - so in a sense the ability to defend oneself and kung fu go hand in hand.

In many films kungfu is used as a relative measure "e.g my kungfu is stronger than your kungfu" . I don't know whether the chinese ever used the word in this way.

The only time i have ever heard anything like a line from a kung fu movie in real life was when one of my students said to me " Your crane is stronger than my Tiger"

Needless to say I laughed at him mercilessly.

 

I am hoping that the commercial success of the UFC and similar competitions encourage the powers that be promote the likes of Sanshou more. There is currently a motion in place to try to get it entered as an Olympic sport, but apparently as things stand only the Wushu side of things has a chance of getting in, which is pretty epic fail in my own opinion. I can understand the Olympic body's reluctance to bring in Sanshou as there is already TKD and boxing. If I recall correctly not even Karate was in the last Olympics so it must be very hard to get one's sport involved.

My own biased view is that, I do not see why Karate practitioners could not enter Olympic Sanshou and I it is a better spectator sport than TKD's point scoring. Other than the Olympics, I do not see Sanshou flourishing anytime soon to the extent that Boxing and MMA are in the public eye

 

I don't see how the Olympics could justify taking up sanshou while at the same time dropping wrestling.

 

All Kungfu schools that I've visited place emphasis either on self defence or on the artistic side. None of them emphasize on tournament, because in the city I live, Kungfu tournaments/competitions, at least the ones that involve fighting, are very rare. Most Kungfu tournaments/competitions (they're rare to begin with) are on the artistic side (lion dance, wushu empty hands/weapon demo), rather than the fighting side.