The problem with traditional CMA is...

[red5angel]

I can't decide what's more insane, the fact this conversation is still being had, or that some of you guys who've had it billions of times are still having it.

[Fu-Pow]

If your goal is a lifetime of self-defense and a wholesome life, choose a good TCMA school.. if you need 10 years of ego support MMA will do just fine
Be well..

That kicked a$$.

[Mutant]

Mutant,

Are you that Marvin Perry dude? Pretty impressive, I wouldn't want to fight you. Sorry if I offended you about the Wing chun comment. I see that you train in that. But it is true that it's not that well respected in mainland China. That's not my opinion, I'm just saying what I heard.

No I'm not Marvin LOL, I'm one of his business partners at the kung fu school. Yes believe me you really WOULDNT want to fight him. You probably wouldnt want to fight me either though But Marvin is a monster. I train with him almost every day, sparred with him about 8 rounds last night. I feel like a crash-test dummy by the end of it LOL. Now there's a guy that has amazing sensativity and technique. He does not rely on his size and strength believe it or not, but has ability to read your slightest movement or change of balance and capitalize like lightning. I happened to be doing push hands and a drill called 'elephant wrestling' with an excellent tai chi teacher before sparring last night, awesome stuff.... But i can assure you Marvin has the same high level sensativity, balance, root, energy, root and flow as good tai chi does, just on a super-size scale with all that size and strength to boot. And his kicks and throws are un-freakin-real. You know he actually practices chi-gung every day? Well, for health; he already has all the super-powers.

Naaa i don't take much offense to any particular style like wing chun gettng diss'd, i think we're all pretty used to CMA not getting enough respect in general. And the majority of my training is not in wing chun. Mainland wing chun has some very good material thats worth learning though. But oh yeah, you've heard otherwise...I'm sure you've heard a lot of things, but that doesnt make it all true or absolute. wing chun doesnt get much respect anywhere it seems.

I have a suggestion for you: instead of 'saying what you've heard', try and stick with what you know.

[Mutant]

I can't decide what's more insane, the fact this conversation is still being had, or that some of you guys who've had it billions of times are still having it.

good point, red.

maybe the insanity is part of the fun

[BornToKill]

what is elephant wrestling and does Marvin Perry train in anything traditional?

[Oso]

A lots of people are looking for:

- Chi develovement
- Self awareness (I still don't know what does this mean)
- Body coordination
- Mediation
- Get high (without using drugs)

and can't care less about the Taiji application.


see, that's the problem right there...the majority of modern american tai chi schools
think that push hands is all you need to do to learn how to use tai chi for self defense....IF they even think of push hands as a vehicle for that. They've dropped the martial aspect. I suck at 'tai chi' but I know what it did for my 'kung fu' and I think I can pass that on to my kung fu students but I finally figured out after a year and a half that i can't teach JUST those things...to me it's a total package

The first day of one of my Taiji class in local community school, I started basic stances introduction such as horse stance, bow-arrow stance,... One guy just stood up and said, "This is not Taiji" and then walked away.

funny, I had some really fat out of shape guy do the same thing to me. He'd said he had done some Yang Long and I explained that what I taught was a modified version of the Yang Short (modified 3 generations back from me) I was teaching the first posture for us which was taught to me as 'alert palm' (basically a kinda high horse with the palms pushing down and the elbows out and the shoulders down and loose) and was having them drill the transition from there to 'capture ball' and then I started talking about how you could use that to catch a kick...and he was like "TAI CHI doesn't catch kicks" and walked out.

A guy went to someone I know and want to learn Taiji. The instructor draw a dot on the wall and asked him to sit infront of the wall just one foot away and clear his mind, concentrate, and lookr at that dot for 2 hours. I don't know how much Chi that student had developed through that three months training but I could see that he started to wear a glasses after that.

so, i feel like it IS, at least in part, the 'lazy american' work ethic and political correctness of today's society that has impacted martial arts in America.

Everyone want's to feel good about themselves, irregardless of the truth.

Less than qualified people are opening schools and running them based on a $299 marketing plan they purchased from N#@&A that actually advocates charging high prices because of some sort of 'rule of marketing' that actually does work for getting students...for 3 months.

CMA teachers, irregardless of how good they might be, who have a desire to teach, and would like to maybe do it full time...MUST follow the market if they even have a hope of subsisting from that income.

Thus the dumming down of CMA.


RED5, where you been?

and FWIW I think this is actually a slightly different conversation from previous ones.

[Vasquez]

so, i feel like it IS, at least in part, the 'lazy american' work ethic and political correctness of today's society that has impacted martial arts in America.

Everyone want's to feel good about themselves, irregardless of the truth.

Less than qualified people are opening schools and running them based on a $299 marketing plan they purchased from N#@&A that actually advocates charging high prices because of some sort of 'rule of marketing' that actually does work for getting students...for 3 months.

CMA teachers, irregardless of how good they might be, who have a desire to teach, and would like to maybe do it full time...MUST follow the market if they even have a hope of subsisting from that income.

Thus the dumming down of CMA.


RED5, where you been?

and FWIW I think this is actually a slightly different conversation from previous ones.

problem is communication skills in chinese language and lack of understanding of chinese culture. dong ma?

[Ray Pina]

Your right, taiji and bagua aren't really suited for the ring. It takes too long to really get results. most guys would probably be out of their prime.

I hear this a lot but it's not my experience. I've trained with my internal master for three years and I can, will and do fight. Am I the best? That's impossible .... so many guys training hard these days and doing it for real.

But I have skill sets that give me confidence in my defense and also confidence that I can get in and cause some damage.

I have trained in the past and sensitivity from Wing Chun has certianly helped me "feel" what a technique should be like, make some minor adjustments, add the proper mechanics that I've been shown.

And sparring experience from S. Mantis and even karate as a kid help with fight jitters .... don't realy get them.

But my fighting technique, anything that I use, is 100% what my master has taught me the past three years. It's amazing how much you can learn and apply when you don't waist time on form and dancing around.

Learn a principle. Train a principle. Test a principle. Own a principle.

Repeat and keep adding to your arsenal. I'm sure that goes for boxing, MMA, Kung Fu -- any style teaching its practioners how to really use its stuff.

[SevenStar]

Where's shooter when you need him? I'd like him to post how they train at northern lights taiji.

[SevenStar]

My only concern would be, I'm putting 3 hours of my night to develop some martial skill .... I don't want to pay and spend even a 1/3 of that time doing sit ups, pushups, lifting weights, cardio. I could do that on my own at home if you could reasonably explain how my bench press relates to a street fight.

For those 3 hours I want to train martial-specific items.

1. you can do them in conjunction with the workout

2. everyone thinks in the same terms you are thinking. I'm actually referring to things beyond that - bag work, pad drills, etc. These are skill builders that are at the same time increasing attributes such as anaerobic endurance.

[SevenStar]

true, but they are only so many hours in a class and too few people willing to do a 3-4 hour class where you could include all the strength conditioning, forms, drills and live sparring needed to fill it out.

we fit it into a 1.5 hour class. we also have supplementary classes. For example, we have open mat sparring on saturday - no instruction, other than our coaching. On thursday, we focus on conditioning. We do this in the normal classes as well, but focus on it on those days.

Do your coaches watch you every time you shadow box or train the heavy bag?
(no sarcarsm intended)

I actually do watch all of the students shadowboxing. We always have at least two coaches in a normal class, and we will shadowbox at the front of the class, so we are able to see them all. We make corrections when they are needed.

"Here's how you do a pushup"
"Good, that's it. Now, you should do 25 (or whatever) every other day....forever"

"Here's how to do a front kick on a heavy bag."
"Good, that's it. Now, you have 30 minutes after every class and a couple of hours on the weekend...make sure you spend some time on the heavy bag with that front kick"

which is fine and good, really, but not everyone will train outside of class.

eamlined format of boxing and MT allows for a lot of repetitive training.

But, as I said to start with...one of the issues w/ CMA is an overabundance of forms techniques...so the requirements soon become to know the forms but not to know what to do with what's in them.

yeah, that's one of the same issues I had.

[WanderingMonk]

Where's shooter when you need him? I'd like him to post how they train at northern lights taiji.

s*

if you saw any of those workout clips that shooter posted on ef, you will know his formula is simple hard construction work while applying the correct body alignment/skeletal structure. in essence, he is training even when is on the "job".

[SevenStar]

My teacher told me once that he had spent one and half year just learned one technique. Today we want to learn many techniques in one class. One of my teacher's students trained his own son in such a way that his son was only allowed to use one technique in the entire two years period. His son won 3 times national champion in Taiwan by that single technique.

One technique can conquer the world. May be we forget about this old Chinese saying in today's training.

Compromise it - give them more than one technique per class. BUT, constantly repeat those techniques throughout all classes, to they work them A LOT. thai boxing for example has "flashy stuff" but we focus on a core set of techs that re constantly repeat.

[Oso]

we fit it into a 1.5 hour class. we also have supplementary classes. For example, we have open mat sparring on saturday - no instruction, other than our coaching. On thursday, we focus on conditioning. We do this in the normal classes as well, but focus on it on those days.

that's basically what I do. I think i posted my current class format/schedule upthread somewhere.

Pong Lai has a great warmup routine created by SZZ. It's very aerobic and combines what I think are some yogic aspects with stretching. I add jumping jacks, hindus and bootstrappers to the beginning of it and then we move straight into 2-8 minutes of stance training depending on the class and experience of students in it.

the beginners will spar once a month and the intermediates twice a month.
light contact for the beginners and medium contact for the intermediate.
but, still, I don't make somoene spar if that's not what they are there for. But, the 2nd and 4th wed of every month and the last thur of every month is sparring. IF they don't want to spar they are welcome to warm up and then they can have free time in the space we aren't sparring in.

Friday nights is for people that really want to learn how to fight. I have two regulars there...both women. go figure.




I actually do watch all of the students shadowboxing. We always have at least two coaches in a normal class, and we will shadowbox at the front of the class, so we are able to see them all. We make corrections when they are needed.

ok, i stand corrected. but that's still in class...I'm sure your students are encouraged to make their own time to train outside of class and then there aren't any coaches to watch.




which is fine and good, really, but not everyone will train outside of class.

true, and those folks are mostly the hobbyists, right? unless they come to every single class their progress is going to generally be slower then the student that spends significant time outside of class.




yeah, that's one of the same issues I had.

what I'm doing is making sure the hobbyists know the form and know the two person. Other Pong Lai peeps have made it known that that is our hallmark and it is. We train them live enough and I break them down tactically that there is some awareness of how the drills translate to sparring.

we do situational sparring using the drills with some resistance and aiming to keep contact minimal for those that don't want it. then we do some light freesparring for the beginners and medium for the intermediates.

but, I underline the fact that until they want to try and spar at 100% they don't need to think that they will ever be able to use it to fight or defend themselves. I know that I do that in a good way because I have a 90%+ retention rate...I just get too many people in the door and even fewer to enroll after watching.

could be the forearms.....

[SevenStar]

s*

if you saw any of those workout clips that shooter posted on ef, you will know his formula is simple hard construction work while applying the correct body alignment/skeletal structure. in essence, he is training even when is on the "job".

that's cool. I've seen several people doing stuff like that lately - kicking tires, using sledgehammers, etc. But what does he have his students do?