Hey guys,

here's a good question!... what do you guys think of wushu as a fighting art?

It's a perfoming art.

It's not much of a fighting art.

Although, it's not a bad way to practice using a staff or spear. It's one of the few connections left to the weapon fighting of ancient China.

Wushu is as Tim said a performing art, athletes are judged the same way as gymnastics. It is interesting to note that previous practice in modern Wushu immediately disqualifies a candidate wishing to join the bodyguard unit of the Chinese Wu Jing.

The Wushu weapons are also not good for someone wishing to increase his/her skill level; these weapons are too light and will not improve anyone's "Kung Fu".

It is however a good way to impress the chicks!

another thing is, they taught pa kua, but not to newbies... is there some kind of performance based pa kua out there? I was thinking of sticking around just to learn ba gua.

Tim do you teach ba gua as a seperate art, or do you just incorporate it into your techniques without isolating it?


i mean, i figured with the amount of conditioning wouldnt it atleast improve your basics? i gotta admit, the first few days were hell, the soreness reminded me of high school wrestling.

"disqualifies candidates" huh? what do you mean, what is the chinese wu jing?

are you guys saying that wushu would be more hurtful than helpful to one's fighting game? a waste of time?

There are military units in China that train based on heir own needs, for instance the Wu Jing which is a unit that train bodyguards in charge of protecting political figures has as one of their requirements that the candidate has not trained Wushu. In my opinion modern Wushu is not useful if you want to be proficient in combat, it is a performing art, which has been stripped off its martial usage. Think about it, would you jump in a 360 degrees kick to head of a thug? Not likely. However if you want to train it as sport knowing that you might never be able to use in a real situation its ok.

In 2003 I believe they included Nandu (movements with a high level of difficulty) which gives a higher score to the practitioner, elevating the risk of injury and making harder for the regular Joe to do those moves, you really need to be a circus guy to do all that stuff. Does this mean they can be good fighters? Maybe, but there are lots of good fighters that cant bend or jump as Wushu players. At the end it is your decision

check this article, I think it has some good points.

http://www.rovere.com/overview.html

interesting article...