Asian martial arts

[mrcfo]

Seems like Karate and Taekwondo gets more exposure and glamour than Kung Fu (hell, I dunno why its called this, isnt it more like wu gong???) Kung Fu just means work/effort isnt it??
Anyway...

I think Kung Fu is somewhat lacking exposure and glamour. There are hardly any comeptitions for Kung Fu and it generally semes uncoordinated. Ironically, it is WELL KNOWN in movies thanks to Jet Li, Jacky Chan and co. there is NO equivalent of these guys in the Korean or Japanese forms of Martial Arts (hitherto, MA).

Kung Fu perhaps imho is more applicable to say street fighting. Karate and Taekwondo seem more like a sport than anything. It seems like it was designed more for mass training than anything.

Any thoughts on this?

[SunWuKong]

China made kungfu a national sport a couple of decades ago. it's officially called wu shu, which can be directly translated to "martial arts". i agree, kungfu does not get as much international recognition as it deserves. i don't know much about martial arts, but perhaps China has not campaigned enough for more recognition of it?

[thaite]

I think there are just way too many styles of kung fu that it's very difficult look at with cursory glance and gain any sort of understanding. There's simply too much too examine before somebody can say "Oh yeah, kung fu is the shizzle" Say that, and then the question becomes "What kind of kung fu?" Internal? External? Hard, soft? Northern, southern?

[BigLew]

I know tire iron fu it works quite well. It's all I need for the streets unless I get shot at with a gun.

Then I'd wish I knew kung fu so I could catch a bullet with my teeth like in the Last Dragon.

[nameless]

Any thoughts on this?

Martial arts, a part of our culture, has been bastardized and commercialized by Western/American society to the point that it's a fucking joke and we (Asians) are the butt of it.

Are some styles inherently impractical? Of course. But back in the day, you could physically train to the point where it didn't matter and ascend to a level of fighting skill beyond the given style. And you had to do this, because face was on the line if someone challenged you.

Now, martial is a fucking afterschool activity for little kids and an easy living for asiaphiles. Thanks to society's views on fighting, MA has become a limp dick activity. Nobody feels they need to confirm their skill with a challenge. They just assume they know how to fight because they spent a couple grand on classes and now have a colored belt. Then these blind fools teach other people, who then blindly teach others...to the point where the effectiveness, not to mention the understanding, of a given art is barely a shadow of what it originally was.

So now MA is a joke. People don't respect it, they don't even fear it. Why should they? They've never seen or heard of it used in a lethal manner. All they have seen is a shitty asiaphile's pathetic attempt to teach it. Or maybe they saw some chump get his ass beat by someone who didn't take MA (or took MMA, which people seem to think is the effective anti-thesis MA). In any case, the martial artist, specifically an Asian one, becomes an easy stereotype to be mocked with stupid hand gestures and weird howling. :mad:

[archspeed]

Muay Thai is still respectable....

[nameless]

Muay Thai is an exception. Like MMA, I think Muay Thai's has lasted longer than other styles because of it's low learning curve and easyness to use and teach effectively (note: this isn't meant to be a diss; it's these qualities that I admire). People have and will continue to assume both style's apparent superiority because they see (or are) prime-condition fighters who continue to use/win with these techniques. Moreoever, they remain unchallenged because there are only incompetent and/or less-conditioned martial artists of other styles to fight (once again, I blame Western culture for turning MA into a commercialized hobby).

Muay Thai will only stay respectable (in America) for so long. Health clubs and gyms have all ready started disgracing it...

[ninjah 55]

Martial Arts.... contradiction in terms.... Martial comes from the root word, Mars the god of War...also means chaos...Art means structure or form...

Martial Arts then means either structure of War or form of chaos....Its' supposed to have both the system to study war or warfare and the understanding of chaotic form or energy.....fighting systems and the understanding of energy.... the Art of War meets the I Ching...in the case of Karate and gung fu, spiritual purposes drove the arts to flourish..wherever the Arts existed, it always carried deeper meaning. Until it hit America.....servicemen after WW2 intrigued w/arts started studying w/Asian teachers and got probably the purist energy of the spiritual aspect......from there the 2nd,3rd generations continued the dilution at varying rates....some are still holding out in the old school ways, I'm happy to say....the internal aspects and the healing side always inspired me and I left the fighting....fighting has its limitations...the biggest difference in studying in Asia and the US? Respect and honor vs Disrespect and Ego...part of our American inherited experiment....

[mrazntre]

I think I'm going to pick up Vovinam one of these days.

the outfits are tight cuz they're light blue, lookin kinda like throw backs.

sometimes I wonder if I shoulda stuck with my m.a. training, but I don't think I really absorbed/learned that much from it.

some history: http://cclib.nsu.ru/projects/satbi/satbi-e/martart/vietnam.html

[Gunz]

I thought I read somewhere that "gung fu" was what it was called. I think it was from one of the Bruce Lee biographies. I heard "kung fu" is just a specialty one has, like a cooking style. I think the Westernized nomenclature of "Kung FU" came from the culturally attached David Carradine shows, and then just came into the modern vernacular. Kung Fu with Yuen Wo Ping "Matrix" flavors really pumped up the whole genre and made the Jet Li stuff come more mainstream from Hong Kong to the US audience.

I like martial arts, but it is such a wide and diverse form of study. They all kick, strike,block, grapple, hold to some level. SOme are a bit more street-effective and brutal than others. I like basic stuff.

The sporting arts of TKD, Karate, Judo, etc. are good for mini-van moms to take their kids after school to keep them exercising, out of drugs (as best as possible), and general routine. I support that role, but the whole thing with color belts and trophies are hokey.

The grand master, monk on the mountain stuff is taking it to the mythical and also hokey extreme.

I really like all elements of Muay Thai kick boxing, Filipino kali/escrima, jiu-jitsu, aiki-jutsu (not just aikido), silat, krav maga (Israeli), Greco-Roman wrestling, Western Boxing, and various un-named practices. All in all, I think the BRuce Lee Jeet-Kun-Do approach (because there is no specific style, but a combination of techniques from various cultures and fighting forms) really captures all I want out of martial arts. Good techniques, practiced regularly, respected and modified for usefulness for the individual practioner will also provide a great source of balance, exercise, understanding, and confidence. Bottom line, I think a lot of martial arts practitioners do not practice enough, get overconfident, and get into a lot of trouble in a real-world brawl/street fight.

[Napoleon Chynamite]

It's all about commercialization. Taekwondo being one of the most mainstreamed. Basically you water down the art or add a sport-based aspect to the training so that it appeals to a greater portion of the masses, and you get more attention and what seems to be "respect". I'm not saying that all taekwondo schools are watered-down money-making establishments. But many are due to the efforts of those who promote the art to the mainstream.

[PropellerheadCP]

*sigh*... same old topics, over and over... Wushu is not effective... blah, blah, blah... muay thai is good... blah, blah, blah...

Look. Fighting arts are fighting arts. Everything's good and none's more effective than another. People often say that muay thai is better, because they learn it faster. That is the beauty of muay thai. It's simple and complex at the same time. That stated, after a few years of training, it all becomes the same.

I personally left all the more popular fighting arts like taekwondo and jiujitsu, to study wushu. I've learned both Northern and Southern styles and I'm currently learning Bah Kwa Zang. I've decided to focus on that, because I feel it's part of my culture.

As for not having a lot of competitions for wushu, well it's because it's not very popular in America. There are more events in Canada and a quite a lot in Europe. China's trying to make it an Olymic sport, as well.

Anyway, I've sparred with muay thai fighters, using my Southern wushu styles. I haven't been beaten, yet. Although I guess it's because they're friendly matches.

[damashii]

I dont think it is possible to compare the different arts. Each of the arts mentioned developed as an off shoot of kung fu to meet the cultural, and nature of warfare of that specific region. And even then kung fu was believed to have been influenced by and Indian form of fighting.

Back in the day MA was developed to kill people. So training was probably a lot more rigorous, and focused than today.

Todays MA is focused more on sport like you guys were saying, and a lot of the lethal moves have been taken out of the different arts. In this sense the Mixed Martial Arts you see today have developed around a non-lethal form of combat, there is no eye gouging, groin shots, etc. So a lot of the flashy precision moves of say kung fu would be obsolete when you are not trying to be lethal. The MMA developed today is still very effective, but considering the times and the focus of fighting today to really gage the different arts would be really difficult.

In the end it depends on the person, his/her conditioning, training level, and mentality.
Thats all superficial though, martial arts should really teach the person practicing character, and perseverance.
imho

[mrazntre]

Bottom line, I think a lot of martial arts practitioners do not practice enough, get overconfident, and get into a lot of trouble in a real-world brawl/street fight.

I agree with that statement. Just had a discussion about it and the overconfidence that some people have just because they've taken a few MA classes is really funny. I'm sure someone that's trained seriously shouldn't have a problem in the unfortunate event of a brawl/street fight, but the newly initiated will most likely forget everything and start throwing punches like popeye.

Back in the day MA was developed to kill people. So training was probably a lot more rigorous, and focused than today.

I didn't know that with all the rhetoric about self-defense.

[warcry111]

I'm going to post this. It will most likely surprise many people and may even tick off some. But I felt like I needed to post this so people can realize the true situation of the Asian martial arts, both in Asia and the West.

First off, I believe that an understanding of what the term "martial art" strictly means is necessary. "Martial" simply means related to war, the armed forces, military, combat, fighting, warrior, no matter if its macroscopic (war, armed forces, military) or individual fighting. etc. "Art" in the "martial art" term is methods or principles. Thus, "martial art" is synonymous with "combat methods"/"fighting principles", etc. Since the thread starter specifically said "Kung Fu", wushu, and karate, we shall consider these so-called martial arts specificially.

Since modern contemporary "Wushu" is absolutely devoid of the fighting/combative aspect of traditional martial arts, we can safely eliminate "Wushu" as a martial art, preferring instead to group it as a modern form of gymnastics/dance unique to modern-day China ever since the 1950's when it was created and totally replaced the traditional Chinese martial arts in China.

As for "Kung Fu" and karate, most modern-day schools that teach the so-called "martial arts" are really teaching combative sports. This is part of the process of making money and maximizing profit for those "masters". In the process, practical self-defense is almost totally forsaken. But strictly speaking, real martial arts are not sports, but developed and effective systems of fighting, with origins in the military of ancient peoples. The chances are, most so-called "martial artists" of today, with the possible exception of Muay Thai fighters, would lose to a street fighter pretty easily. The most elementary requirement for a practitioner of a real martial art is to be able to competently defend himself/herself using the movements/techniques that they learned from their sets/forms/xing/taolu/kata/hyung, and since most so-called "martial artists" of today can't really defend themselves properly at all, even with using boxing and kickboxing skills that they're not too familiar with (much less the movements/techniques that they learned from their xing/taolu/kata/hyung), much of the "Kung Fu" and karate taught today are really not martial arts at all but, in the case of "Kung Fu", a devolved form and incoherent mess that does not fit into any category (definitely not a true martial art, not a combative sport, and also not a form of gymnastics/dance [unlike its cousin, Wushu]) and, in the case of karate, a famous combative sport.

To see how this deformation and devolution of the traditional Asian martial arts came to be, especially regarding the Chinese martial arts, a modern history and understanding of these so-called martial arts is also necessary:

"Kung Fu" and "Wushu" -

Although the term "Wushu" is indeed the literally more correct term for Chinese martial arts (at least much more than the "Kung Fu" ["work skill"] that Westerners have adopted from the Cantonese), I believe the term "Wushu", which really means something like "martial techniques", was a fairly modern term that only came into popular usage due to its official employment by the CCP in the 1950's. Before that, Chinese martial arts was called "Guoshu", or "national techniques", a term created by the GMD, and the term "Guoshu" is still used in Taiwan today to refer to Chinese martial arts, as the GMD fled there after 1949. The "Guoshu" of Taiwan have retained more of the combative aspects of the Chinese martial arts than today's modern Wushu of China, which is really nothing more than a spectator's art, with the so-called "San-shou" employing kickboxing techniques rather than Chinese martial arts techniques, which makes practicing the "tao-lu" of modern Wushu seem rather useless. The most correct term for Chinese martial arts is the ancient pre-12th century term "Wuyi", which literally means "martial/military arts", although that term fell out of usage by the 12th century AD and almost no one uses it today.

Regarding Chinese martial arts, there are very few real masters out there that teach the real, traditional stuff that was combat-efficient. In China itself, the modern demonstrative spectator sport/gymnastics with the controversial name of "Wushu" (controversial in that the name "Wushu" itself literally means "martial techniques" yet there is nothing martial about contemporary Wushu other than the fact that the movements are obviously based off of traditional Chinese martial arts movements) was developed by the Chinese Communists in the 1950's ironically as a form of gymnastics/demonstrative spectator sport, and not as a martial art at all. In fact, the trend started in 1953 (which mistakenly regarded Chinese martial arts as "sports") and the standardized rules for competition set in 1959 as well as the Cultural Revolution pretty much killed most of the traditional martial arts in China as contemporary Wushu took over. Contemporary Wushu is basically all about the performance of routines/forms and totally ignores free-fighting skills, in contrast to traditional Chinese martial arts where combat application and force training were far more important than form, the former two aspects which are totally lacking in contemporary Wushu. In fact, contemporary Wushu is pretty much all about competition, and this "competition" is not like the competitions of combative sports like taekwondo or karate, but nearly identical to a gymnastics competition, in which the degree of perfection in the performance of standardized forms was tested. What prompted the CCP in the 1950's to exterminate the traditional martial arts might have been their mistaken notion that the Chinese martial arts were similar to opera or propaganda team performances or that the traditional Chinese martial arts was seen as a source of "counter-revolutionary" activity. The conflict-free Wushu of the 50's proved unsatisfactory as China opened up to the world in 1979, especially since Wushu practitioners, who are seen by outsiders as representative of Chinese martial arts, could not fight at all, and attempts have been made to emphasize more "free fighting". But these are truely pathetic attempts, such as contemporary Sanshou, which is more like kickboxing than the real free fighting of the traditional Chinese martial arts; in this respect, Wushu seems to be attempting to go in the direction that karate and taekwondo are, ie making it an Olympic combative sport. As for the "kung fu" schools in the West today, some of them are descended from the Communist Wushu/Sanshou lineage while some are descended from a traditional, Wushu-free lineage, but the state of affairs of the traditional lineage schools in the West are basically the same as those of the CCP Wushu/Sanshou lineage or possibly even worse; the traditional lineage schools in the West are also totally ignorant of combat application and force training, but because these schools were obviously not victims of the CCP reorganization of the 50's and the Cultural Revolution, I suspect that this was likely due to the commercialization of sport and conquest by the "McKwoons". Such is the pathetic, deranged and dysfunctional state that the so-called "Chinese martial arts" of today are in right now. Finding a true master of the traditional Chinese martial arts is very rare today, much more so than it was even just 60 years ago.

Karate and Taekwondo -

The majority of today's so-called "karate" and "taekwondo" schools are combative sports, not fighting arts. Combative sports are not the same as real fighting and being proficient in a combative sport does not at all suppose that you could fight well in real life. The fact is, taekwondo is not even a martial art at all; it was created by the South Korean General Choi Hong-hi and developed by the military dictators of the 60's-70's (especially Kim Un-yong who pushed for Taekwondo to be recognized as an Olympic sport) into a combative sport, primarily for nationalistic reasons, like making taekwondo a uniquely Korean sport or intending Taekwondo to be an international Olympic sport. However, Taekwondo's roots do lay in the traditional martial arts, largely the karate taught in Japanese university karate clubs during the 1st half of the 20th century, and primarily the Shotokan, Shudokan, and $hito-ryu styles. Taekwondo was as much a tool for ROK nationalism as it was a combative sport. Taekwondo, unlike contemporary Wushu, is a both a combative as well as a spectator sport while contemporary Wushu is strictly a spectator sport. Given this background, modern karate and taekwondo players will usually beat Wushu/Sanshou or Western "kung fu" players in the ring since taekwondo and karate players have far more experience in this type of haphazard sparring and mock fighting competition than the Wushu Sanshou people who've only begun to take this approach more recently.

In the case of taekwondo, it is usually the taekwondo developed by the military dictators of the 60's-70's (especially Kim Un-yong who pushed for Taekwondo to be recognized as an Olympic sport) which turned taekwondo into a full-blown combative sport as well as the McDojang bull$hit; but even before that time, some of taekwondo's sources/roots were flawed to begin with, ie Japanese karate styles such as Shotokan (which underwent "sanitization" as well as "improvement" to make up for the incomplete and flawed teachings that Funakoshi inherited from Itosu, teachings which seriously lacked bunkai [combat application of the kata movements/techniques]). In the case of karate, it is also like taekwondo, ie it is the combative sport, tournament-oriented fighting stuff as well as the McDojo bull$hit.

Key Points -

The main point is that finding a true master of the traditional Asian martial arts is rare today. For traditional Chinese martial arts, it is even more rare, much more so than it was even just 60 years ago. Don't fool yourself into thinking that "Asia" (by that, I reckon you mean East Asia, ie China, Korea, Japan) is a hub full of great, mystical, martial arts masters who have knowledge of some secret invincible powerful techniques that make you into a superhuman wuxia character and who live as hermits in some high mountains sheltering themselves from society or something. Such people don't exist nowadays and never did. At least in China, the last true real great martial arts masters ceased to exist for whatever reason (death, immigration, forgotten their martial arts due to government prohibition on practicing them, etc.) about 60 years ago, during the Cultural Revolution. There are only a very tiny handful of real Chinese martial arts masters out there today, but they are extremely rare today, you'll need lots of luck to find them, and they can be anywhere in the world, not just in China. For Okinawa/Japan, true combat-effective tote that has all the aspects of traditional tote (bunkai/combat application, traditional weight training, body conditioning, etc.) ceased to exist starting when the name "tote" was officially changed and recognized as "karate" and underwent "Japanization" under the lead of Gichin Funakoshi in the late 19th - early 20th century. For Korea, traditional Korean martial arts ceased to exist when Japan conquered Korea in the early 20th century and prohibited the practice of martial arts in Korea.

[Atealtha]

It's all about the Bas Rutten DVD right now.

[tripostrophe]

MMA OWNZ j00 4LLL!!!11

[Azn Retribution]

MMA OWNZ j00 4LLL!!!11

l0lz

lay n pray?
or butt scoot style?

kinda like aikido's "grab my wrist"