There is an article in this month's Black Belt Magazine (April 2004) by Antonio Graceffo about training in the Shaolin Temple:

A Glimpse of Shaolin: A No-Holds Barred Look at the Realities of Training in China (Part 2).

In the article, the author states: "Most of the guys at Shaolin possessed incredible form and flexibility. They could bend their bodies in ways I thought only long-term yoga practitioners could. They could do flips, summersaults and aerial cartwheels, and some could even do handstands on their fingertips. But none of them could box. Or fight.
When I would spar with them, I was amazed at how little they knew about fighting. They could kick higher and better than I could, but if I kicked them low and then punched them high, I would catch them every time. If I baited them to throw the same kick twice so I could grab their leg and throw them, they always fell for it. They knew nothing of ring movement or strategy.
I found the main technical aspects of combat that were missing at Shaolin were ground fighting, wrestling and boxing.
They were so convinced that Shaoling kung fu was the best martial art in the world that they could step into a ring and throw the same punches they use in their demonstrations. But real life doesn't work like that. In three rounds of kickboxing, most of them couldn't land a single punch on me."

The author also describes the extremely rigorous training schedule at the temple saying "...they could do forms for eight straight hours when the average Westerner would collapse after five minutes." One would be hard pressed to find any other group of traditional martial artists that trained any harder (at basics and forms) than the students at the Shaolin Temple.

This isn't a criticism of Shaolin Temple martial arts or it's practitioners (the author clearly has nothing but respect for his teachers and training partners), it is another vivid example that exhaustive basic training and repetitive if precise execution of forms are a great foundation, but will do little to help the practitioner learn how to fight for real.

The author's ability to dominate the students at Shaolin when sparring for real stemmed from his background in martial sports (he mentions boxing, no-holds-barred fighting and BJJ). And the hallmark of martial sports training is live sparring on a regular basis.

I have always presumed that those guys were really just entertainers, and primarily just for show to the U.S. audience.

The sifus I met seemed to regard shaolin monks much the same way brits regard the queen: someone to venerate but when it comes to actual leadership, elect a prime minister.

Tim,

Is it safe to say that before the shaolin monks became a kind of commercialized wushu troupe that they were indeed, at one time in history, serious fighters? If that is the case, at what point in history did they start being gymnasts and stopped being martial artists? Under that very assumption and in addition, is there some reality to the monks being just that, monks, and the so-called monks who were the practitioners of martial arts were actually bandits hiding out in monasteries? Just curious.

Richard

I doubt that anyone will ever be able to establish answers to the question of how effective the Shaolin monks were at one time at fighting. I would suspect that the real combat skill probably only existed while the monastery was actually threatened by roving bands of bandits and before the age of guns.

As the article that Tim posted pointed-out, being a conditioned athlete of any kind doesn't guarantee that you can defend yourself -- even if you are learning a martial sport. However, being healthy and strong should certainly be the foundation of any realistic martial system.

Then again, it is also true that even a skilled and conditioned martial fighter can be beaten by someone in worse physical shape if the latter has better combat skills/experience and the former is having a "bad day".

Richard,
I really don't know about the monks abilites in the past. Just like everyone else, I've only read the stories. There is historical evidence that the real fighters in the Temple were originally mostly warriors/revolutionary fighters hiding out there.
The fact remains that if you ask what martial arts training has to do with Chan Buddhism, the answer is "nothing."

I do know that besides the modern "Wushu" forms much of the training the students do at and around the Temple is "traditional," passed down from much earlier practices.

Hung Lo, in regards to your question about whether they are truly monks, bear in mind the abbots are appointed by China's communist government. That should tell you something.

Chan Buddhism which later became Zen buddhism in Japan, is a 'stripped' down version, removing the usual obsessions with dogma and rituals present in most 'conventional' religions. Its focus on experiencing the truth of the living word rather than the dead word, by way of various mental or psychological 'exercises' can engender forms of mental self discipline, clarity, toughness etc which could be seen as useful qualities for a martial artist. Not arguing it is the only source by the way. Likewise the physical discipline of the martial artist would be useful for the ascetic monk in case they wither away. From this standpoint the merging of the two would seem logical, though not a necessity.

As far as the sparring issue goes, i've never come across a half decent CMA or CIMA teacher who doesn't advocate sparring. Any difference arises as to when this should take place. Some at the extremes have it near the end of a pretty rigid sequence, others teach it concurrently from the beginning, then you have all the ones somewhere in between...

Think of how strong their intention must be. Almost total body control.
What would happen if they started to train in total combat YI?
I would think... BADASS

I think they belive they are training in "total combat Yi".
-Chris

Wow-
There's a lot of good questions there. My experience in China was something like this-
My teacher (a "shaolin monk") was a 22 year old kid playing master, but, what I gathered from his limited discussion of his training and past was interesting. The "shaolin" system in China today is just a boarding school for kids, where they go there when they are like 7-10 years old. They then stay there practicing kung fu for 5+ hours a day 6-7 days a week til they are 18 or so. Then they either become teachers or leave. Well, for the first few years, they just do basics, like standing in horse and puching and yelling for like hours, or marching and kicking, but then around years 3-5 they learn forms, the same basics that all students learn, and then after that period they are allowed to speicalize in one area. My Master began training in San Da around 12 or 13 and was a very high level fighter by the age of 16, fighting in friendly exhibition matches with fighters from Korea and Russia. He knows many of then same forms and things that the "Wheel of Life" type performers know, and can do some pretty amzing breakfalls and flips and jumps, but to watch this 140lb guy demonstrate his own version of western boxing, TKD/Muay Thai kicking and Freestyle wrestling was terrifying, and I can only imagine what it was like to see him in a competitive match. Suffice it to say that I am relatively assured that he, and many of the other young "shaolin" trained teachers that he oversaw would hold their own very well in a Kickboxing ring. But NO, they don't train for MMA fighting. What about Shao Lin Chan Buddhism would leave you to beleive that they train for professional fighting? It's all a tradition, and like others said on this bored, a discipline, as a religious pursuit, not prize fighting.

I think that the point being illustrated here is not that monks who train at shaolin will never be able to fight. It's simply that forms by themselves will not make you good at fighting. I belive the key element in your teachers ability to fight was that he did San Da, This means that he actually did allot of sparing and fighting (the key to making someone good at fighting). I believe the point of this thread was to show this: One must spar and fight in order to be good at fighting.

-Chris

Right, Jason's input proves my point. His teacher could do wonderful martial arts gymnastics as a result of his "traditional" Shaolin training, but he could actually fight because he practiced San Da (Chinese kickboxing, a combat sport). I'm willing to bet he would have been just as good a fighter if he had only done San Da, maybe even better if all those childhood years of kicking air and yelling would have been spent sparring.

For the record, San Da includes professional fighting.

Kungfool,
I agree with Chris. According to the author of the article we are discussing, the students at Shaolin really believed they were training in "the best martial art in the world" and that they would be able to actually apply it as learned in free fighting. They had, what they believed to be "total combat Yi."

The problem is you cannot really have combat Yi in training if you have no experience of any type of combat (even if it is only hard, non-cooperative sparring). Without the reality of resistance, you become a master of fantasy fighting, no matter how fierce you pretend to be when doing forms.

Guy's,

What I meant was they are in killer shape with what I would think is some pretty good knowledge of their bodys and how they work. I guess I just typed what I was wondering to myself... "What if these guys started to really train how to fight for real?"... Thats all.

Sorry for the confusion, I haven't been on forums in a long time and I forgot that sometimes things get lost in the translation.

Cheers!

if they started to 'train how to fight for real' they'd have to stop wearing orange bath robes
24-7.

i find wearing ridiculous clothes an excellent segue into confrontations-

and in the case of orange pajamas, well the more ostentatious the better i guess.

I guess my original point got a little lost. The first was that the shaolin schools have changed, and a lot of the guys there are learning wu shu type stuff, and some are doing a LOT of fighting. It's not exactly the picture that David Carradine painted. My other point was that your still supposed to think of them as 'monks' and they are famous not necesarrily for beating people up, but for doing amazing things with their bodies and inventing millions of crazy forms, and training all day. So, while I would expect them to be tougher than the average bear, I don't really expect them to beat a modern MMA fighter in an Octagon. The Specificity of sparring training is important, we all agree, but now we are just beating a dead horse. Train forms, get good at forms. Train fighting, get good at fighting. The people who are already here reading this forum, should probably have already figured that out. That's why i like Tim and his approach, and i just sort of figured that was what everyone else saw. Now mocking some chinese kids for not fighting good enough and wasting all their time on a cultural tradition that's very important to them. It doesn't seem like much of a point. And Tim, I'm sure at least you know this, you won't get the Chinese to stop doing Chinese things, or being Chinese.

I guess your original point was lost because you rambled on and never bothered to start a new paragraph.

I think the author of the article Tim mentioned was explaining that it takes more than being in incredible shape and knowing great forms to learn to fight- if that is the goal.

No one was mocking Chinese kids for learning cultural traditions- nor trying to get the Chinese to stop doing Chinese things- rather they were illustrating, again, the importance of getting comfortable sparring/fighting if indeed the goal is to 'master' a 'martial art'.

Jason,
Like Shane pointed out, no one is mocking the Chinese for practicing forms or anything else in their culture. Personally, I have total respect for their dedication and physical abilities.

I used the information in the article to illustrate a point BECAUSE the students at Shaolin are the best at what they do.

I also agree with Kungfool that students with the background the Shaolin kids have can learn to fight for real very quickly if they learn practical techniques and spar (like Jason's teacher).

I've never said practicing forms is bad, my point is practicing forms exclusively will not prepare practitioners to fight.

fighting is all mental, and even my Muay thai coach used to say that. Some people are born fighters while most are bitches only few are made fighters. You see people in prison and street thugs in some hoods with no fear and fighting cops, multiple opponents, using any weapon without hesitation and they get that way by their attitude and the way they grew up. Most people will hesitate and freeze when confronted with a fight without rules, absence of refeeres etc. You must have no fear and not be afraid of rep[ercutions, and be able to walk the talk to be a real streetfighter. No ammount of training will get you ready only streetfights will. SOme people can be the greatest fighters in the world but become the biggest cowards when walking alone in a dark alley and a thug with prison tatoos and a killer look in their eyes stares them down.