How to use Juujutsu against a Donald Trump handshake
Jokes aside, it is a good wrist lock.
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This morning someone finally showed me the true power of Wing Chun Kung Fu's chain punching. Every other Wing Chun fighter I've sparred with and every video that I've seen shows them simply "shuffle-stepping" forward as they do their chain punches. Fairly easy to counter with sticking/grappling techniques. But the bloke that I sparred with this morning actually pounced forward as he initiated his chain punches!The sheer ferocity made it impossible for me to do my usual sticking or grappling... even if I managed to get a grip it would only last for a fraction of a second as he would quickly break out of it due to the sheer speed and power of the chain punches. The pouncing is of course what sport science refers to as plyometrics, so I tried to use my own plyometric movement in trying to hop out of his centre line and get around him, but it was too easy for him to simply change angle and realign his centre line towards me. I could advance in on him, I couldn't outflank him, and I couldn't draw him in. All I could do was remain on the defensive and keep my distance from him, blocking his shots and ensuring that he didn't get too close to me.
Admittedly this did work and my partner did admit that the downside to the chain punching is that it is physically exhaustive. By maintaining my distance I allowed him to simply wear himself down through over exertion of throwing hundreds of punches, none of which actually landed. So ultimately it was a stalemate, but a very interesting one from my POV as I'd never seen Wing Chun used like that before! The sheer fluidity and power of his attacks were impressive. When I told him that it was unlike any other Wing Chun attack that I'd encountered, he told me that a lot of other schools don't do Wing Chun properly. We often see the stiff and rigid forms and practices, but Wing Chun should be smooth and subtle, much like a whip.
This reminded me of my experience with Gojuryu Karate, where most people were also really stiff and rigid, but one black belt told me that Karate should be smooth and subtle. And both that black belt and my Wing Chun sparring partner used the "whip" analogy: i.e. that your body in a fight should be like a whip. Subtle but with vicious force on the moment of impact, only to immediately soften up again. It's harder to see in Karate because of the baggy long sleeves of the Gi, but the black belt who explained this to me rolled his sleeves up and allowed me to see how his arms moved upon punching. It was a lot more like how traditional Kung Fu operates (not surprisingly since Okinawan Karate is descendant from Fujian Kung Fu).
But this is really how every fighting form should work. The Yin (hard) and the Yang (soft) working together, or as Muhammed Ali said, "float like a butterfly sting like a bee."So many martial artists fall into the trap of doing one or the other, or switching between one or the other (like a light switch), whereas the reality is that you are both hard and soft at the same time - like a whip cracking. Bruce Lee used the analogy of water, which is a good one too as anyone who's ever belly-flopped into a pool will know how freakin' hard water can be. Another analogy is to imagine being flicked really hard by a wet towel. The towel is soft and subtle but boy does it hurt like buggery! It's just such a shame that so few people who practise martial arts actually understand this concept properly. I can't even find videos online of people doing proper Karate or Wing Chun in this way - they all look like the stereotypical way of being far too rigid and using "shuffle stepping" instead of plyometric pouncing. Imagine if a predatory animal shuffle stepped towards their prey... they'd starve!
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What a difference a change in teacher makes. About 2 weeks ago I missed my Tai Chi training because of work and family commitments. But I was feeling frustrated with my training as I felt that I just wasn't learning anything. Each Saturday when I sparred with my Wing Chun fighting partner, I found that I wasn't getting any better. And if I tried to use the new Tai Chi techniques that I'd learnt I was actually fighting worse. A lot worse. Meaning that the only way I could hold my ground was to revert back to my old Tai Chi training... in which case why was I bother to spend $20 a lesson when, in a fight scenario, I can't use any of the new techniques? But I was subconsciously making excuses. I had only been training for 7 months and it really takes about 1.5~2 years of training before you can become competent in fighting in a particular art. But still, even prior to that surely I should've felt some sense of progress. Like say if you were to start learning a language for 1.5~2 years, okay, you may not be totally fluent but you should be able to see some progress (e.g. able to engage in basic conversations etc.).
So because I'd skipped training on that evening, I decided to catch up by going to a Bagua class on another day. Huuuge difference. This Bagua teacher is willing to give up his knowledge freely whereas I often feel like I have to beat knowledge out of my Tai Chi teacher and even then he only gives out snippets. The Tai Chi teacher has also told me on a few occasions that it takes 10 years to become combat proficient. WHAT?!?
The funny thing is that the Bagua class doesn't even advertise itself as being for self-defence/combat, but it just so happens to be better at teaching practical techniques for fighting simply because it has a competent teacher. This morning I was sparring with my Wing Chun fighting partner - so with just 2 weeks' worth of Bagua training in a class where fighting isn't even the focus, and there was noticeable improvement in my fighting form. Even my partner remarked that my technique had improved and he was finding it more difficult to attack me. So I had learnt more in just two weeks of Bagua under a competent teacher than I had after 7 months' of Tai Chi with an incompetent teacher.
My Bagua teacher also knows the Tai Chi teacher - he also started learning the same form of Chen Style Tai Chi and we were actually in the same class together. Last week he asked me why I'd stopped going to the Tai Chi classes and I told him why. He tried to defend the Tai Chi teacher say that his knowledge of Tai Chi and its applications is amazing. His knowledge of Tai Chi is phenomenal. And I said that while this may be true, that teacher is also hopeless at passing on his phenomenal knowledge, which is what teaching is supposed to be. A person can have exceptional knowledge in a given field, but that doesn't automatically mean that they are capable of passing that knowledge onto others. My Bagua teacher then agreed with me.
This is why I refuse to address martial arts teachers by titles like "Sensei" or "Shifu" etc. These words mean "teacher," and as a teacher myself I feel that it is insulting to refer to someone as "teacher" when they cannot teach. Ironically I find that good martial arts teachers don't care about fancy titles anyway.
P.S.: A minute after posting this a fly flew past my monitor and I just casually caught it with my fingers! #karatekidmoment
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Female runner successfully defends herself from attempted rapist after only 3 weeks of self defence training
This is what proper martial arts training should look like. Each class should teach you something new and you should feel that you are making progress, if not then you're just wasting your time and money (which is what was happening at my previous Tai Chi class). Your training should be preparing you to defend yourself today, not tomorrow.
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Okay, I'm definitely glad that I switched style/classes as this morning my Bagua teacher told me that from next week he wants to start running a "Push Hands club" for Tai Chi & Bagua students, which he describes as being more "rough and tumble" than our standard training.We also did pairwork today, something that never happened in the Tai Chi class, no matter how many times I asked/suggested it.
And the funny thing is that the Tai Chi class is explicitly marketed as teaching self defence whereas the Bagua class isn't, but the Bagua teacher understands that by learning how to use Bagua in real life it just helps the students to understand the movements a whole lot better. Because a lot of other martial arts classes that don't adequately teach apps are more prone to producing students who just don't understand the art properly. At most they can perform it at demonstrations (like memorising moves to a dance) or perhaps use it in restrictive competition fights, but not at the level where they can use it in real life.
Last week I caught up with a friend who I haven't seen in years. He's been doing MMA and he told me that his school solely focus on techniques for real life applications, nothing else, not even competitions. It's the first time that I've heard to an MMA school with such a primary focus on being so practical!
The question that we really should be focusing on isn't so much what style we do, but whether or not we can fight (i.e. defend ourselves) with it. I'd rather have function over form than form over function. Not saying that form isn't important, but the form should be supporting the function of the fight, not vice versa.
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Smart alec bodybuilder gets pwned by female Juujutsu fighter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzXQGMqY8_E
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Navy SEAL on real martial arts
A really interesting video where a Navy SEAL offers his opinion on self defence and martial arts, and I find myself generally agreeing with the core of what he's saying. But just to expand on this...
- He's absolutely right in saying that owning and carrying a gun is more likely to be a better form of self defence than wasting your time and money in martial arts - this was the conclusion reached by Penn & Teller's BS episode debunking martial arts. Having said that, this advice is obviously not applicable in Australia since we (thankfully) don't have a highly armed civilian population and also it is ILLEGAL for us to do so. But I take his point, no amount of martial art skill can ever defeat a gun, it's a machine weapon.
- Yep, totally agree with him about the principal (and principle!) importance of learning about grappling. And I totally agree with his initial preference for an internal martial art (his preferences are Juujutsu and Wrestling), but also augmented with an external martial art (his preferences are Boxing and Muay Thai). Or ideally, finding a martial arts school that teaches BOTH internal and external elements, because that is what traditional martial arts is supposed to be about (the problem is that a lot of schools don't teach it, they tend to go with one or the other). The whole philosophy of Yin and Yang is based on the blending of two opposing concepts - hard and soft, striking and grappling - not one at the exclusion of the other. But if you can't find a school that teaches both, then his advice on learning an internal art first and then later augmenting it with external training is a good one.
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As one person commented, he isn't even trying against the girl.Originally Posted by GoktimusPrime
Just let her climb all over you, roll on the floor and pretend go to sleep. But be gentle
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