http://www.mma.tv/TUF/index.cfm?FID=43

Check out this thread over at the U.G. Curious to hear the thoughts from the guys over here, especially because CMA and the intersection with MMA is alive and well.

Doh!

The thread is entitles Chinese Arts One by One. The discussion starts in the later posts.

As much as possible I stick with the movements from the forms that I practice. I try not not to box even when I'm wearing gloves and supposedly boxing. I don't know how to box, why should I box? I know Xing Yi, Ba Gua, and Tai Ji. So, even when we put on the gloves I use the movements I learned from those arts. I just use the energy from the movements and work the angles.

I get tagged like everyone else. I probably get tagged more often than I should because I'm sticking to just using movements/forms from the CIMA. When I spar I play around with the forms. For example, I play at how to use the eagle form. I try to see how I could really use the swallow form. I experiment on how to combine the five elements in attacking, retreating, and countering. etc, etc. If you're going to play and really learn how to use CIMA, you're going to get tagged a lot. The problem is people don't want to get tagged so they go back to boxing or kickboxing. I think if someone is going to do that they should just go learn kickboxing and forget the CIMA.

If you don't move in a real fight as you did in training, you didn't train long and hard enough, or you didn't learn to apply your moves properly. I knew a guy from a local sport karate club who told me about the differences in his moves when he was practicing "traditional" and his bouncing kick-boxing type stuff for sparring. I looked at him like the idiot he was.

I'm sure THAT made him change his idiotic ways.

Ummm......well, no, actually

Kenneth-

I think we need to ask a different question:

Is the training itself accomplishing what it is supposed to?

It may not be training time, or learning the techniques at all.

I was just kidding with bob#2, Hissho, but in response to what you are saying, I thought I would find kindred spirits somewhere on this forum cuz it is filled with intelligent posters such as yourself, however, if I told you how I tested my training, you'd think I was psychotic (no, I'm not a macho-man, and currently, I find my development at a standstill. Also, you seem very socially responsible). Suffice to say, there are still people who take their training very seriously, even in the modern age, and I thank god I didn't actually have to go through my sifu's final test, as I am an animal lover as well as desirous of continuing my life.

Whatever do you mean?

Hissho,

Some martial artists test their skills out on animals (wild or otherwise; one was even made more famous for testing his skills out on a bull; and speaking of gore...); even US special-forces-type medics & corpsmen are tested using animals (and that's the "real" reason why sheep fear them). Yes, folks, animals were harmed in the making/testing of some of your medical & martial-arts heroes. Any feelings on the matter of animal cruelty aside, it's good training (it's a fairly good, relevant test; it builds confidence in those who pass the test; and the actual performance upon humans will closely approximate the training test application -- except one usually doesn't "destroy" the human after patching him up).

I too love animals (especially barbequed). Mm-mm good (brings to mind another application for Xing-Yi Swallow Form, eh, Meynard?).

Well I do remember Robert Smith writing about a guy who could explode chickens with his qi....

Mas Oyama is of course famous for the bulls - and now we have Bluming's account of what really went on.

I would think that the only kind of test like this that would have some relevancy would be against a pit bull or a Rott or something like that, and on attack mode... ...somehow I doubt many martial artists are testing their stuff against that kind of animal.

My sifu's was a pit bull, but chows were preferred, cuz their heavy fur made penetration more difficult. It was supposed to be one phoenix-eye fist to the centerpoint at the top of the skull. The barbaric part is that if the dog wasn't considered vicious enough, it would be subject to a regimen of abuse and fed gunpowder to make it so. In secret triad training halls (depending on that particular clan's customs) this practice is still carried on. Not being chinese, I doubt I would have gotten to that point in my training.

BTW, exploding chickens with their qi? So that's what they call it these days. I worked with a guy who claimed that if you climaxed in a chicken you killed it. He also said he'd put the sheeps' hindfeet into his galoshes to help keep them in position. He admonished against pouring milk on your pecker to entice a calf into sucking it cuz they tended to headbut your balls first. When asked when the last time he had sex was, he responded,"you mean with a woman?"

The Army had stopped using goats for target practice and medic work right before I went through Ft. Sam Houston in 1971. Did they resume the practice?

In 1978 at DLI Monterey, I met an SF medic who told me his final test was to keep alive for 2 or 3 days a badly burned goat. I watched a videotape of a goat with a gasmask on being subject to nerve gas a couple of years later that appeared recent. It opened with an unprotected goat being gassed for comparison.

I can understand the medical experiments.

I think the secret triad stuff is frankly a load of crap. A pheonix eye fist to the top of the skull? To a pit bull?

Not to denigrate your sifu, Ken but that is just so much kung foolishness.

Want to talk about difficult penetration, try SHOOTING a pit bull in the skull. Its been shown time and again in police shootings of such dogs that this will often get you no results. Ya gotta hit 'em in the chest.

And you need to find different people to work with....

I can't honestly say I saw the event of course, but I have seen what he could put his knuckle through, so I have no problem believing it. Don't assume I'm stupid to swallow something hook line and sinker. The triad stuff we kinda figured out for ourselves from observation. Southern kung fu styles have very different backgrounds from internal styles. The Asian Journal of Martial Arts had an article a couple of years back about how kung fu schools are usually fronts for triad recruitment (in Taiwon). Trust me, all the big names in KF with chain schools and such have backing from the "less conventional" businesses, some of them I have personally seen hobnobbing. I'll admit my sifu seemed rather credulous when it came to old chinese legends, so it is quite possible there is exaggeration in that respect. Our sifu was, I feel, quite honorable. He taught us freely up to a point, and whenever he adulterated his style with techniques from other systems, he told us. We were expected to open "import/export" businesses for him. That all went down the drain when he had to leave, but although he lived like a pauper, his family lived very well off, he had lots of money whenever he needed it, and the local cops were in awe of him (most were on the "take"). We have often wondered why his teaching was so persuasive. Techniques-wise, it isn't anything we haven't seen before in books or videos, but its like he knew how to realistically apply the stuff just through positioning and timing or something. I grew up doing TKD in Korea in the 60s, practiced Isshinryu and Ninpo Taijutsu in the 80s, but when I met my sifu, all that went down the drain. Since then, I have done Uechiryu, Shotokan, some MMA (JKD, BJJ, and Kali) and now, some shootfighting, but its like none of these have the spirit or intention, like a corpse with the life long gone (except for the Ninpo, but that instructor, good as he was, wasn't quite like the sifu I chose to follow). Since then, I have looked for another opportunity like that, but haven't found anything. There was a definite feeling of learning from someone who had USED the system for real. Sorry if that doesn't sit well with peoples' self-image of their schools or past experiences. I briefly corresponded online with a european Pak Mei practitioner who had similiar experience, but that is it. As for working with different people, Hissho, they are all long gone anyway. Sorry for running on so.

BTW, Hissho, a pitbull's skull slopes. A phoenixeye strike comes straight down from above, not at an angle like a bullet fired at an attacking animal would. The point is to find the "sweetspot" under duress, not bully one's way through. A small target is easier to find using "short power" which I have developed to some degree over the years. Not that I would want to try that test (if it exists, since you feel otherwise), but like you stated in another post, a brutal, initial strike usually wins the fight, and that is what my system is about. This is why I have found groundfighting unnecessary SO FAR. Only losers practice "self-defence". Action is always better than reaction. And please don't tell me about legalities, as it is better to be alive to face them, yes I understand about lawyers and courtrooms. I admit my system isn't the most practical for these times. But there are people who do it the old way (few as they may be)whether you know about them or not.

Ken-

Let's just say I am with you on the credulous part and leave it at that, hao ma?

By no means did I mean that CMA are not triad connected, or even that Chinese people don't tend to be somewhat indifferent to the suffering of animals.

Just that I would be very leery of taking anyone's word that they could put their knuckle through the skull of a pit bull in the first place, and that they had actually done so as some kind of secret kung fu initiation in the second.

By your fellow workers, I of course meant the ones engaging in unnatural congress with barnyard animals, and comfortable enough to freely talk with you about it. ; )

If you say so, I never tried to hit a pitbull, quite honestly, all the ones I ever met were quite affectionate. I've only met mean dalmations, daschunds and chows. As for "knucklepower", he once rather casually (no staging, it was spontaneous) put his knuckle through drywall. As for my co-workers, that was one of many (and nowheres near the worst). Other co-workers: one was imprisoned for butchering his wife alive, another was sent to a nuthouse for several violent rapes, one is an ex-postal worker still pining over his ex-wife 10 years after their divorce, another is a Herman Munster look-alike on anti-depressants, and some I don't even know how to describe here so that you'd believe me. I work security at a nuclear power plant. Be afraid. Be very afraid.