Awesome Kung Fu Kick used in MMA

[Gerry Seymour]

BJJ does one thing I fear many clubs stopped doing or never did in the first place.

They do rolling/sparring from day one or near enough. It is something they have the possibility of doing.

Some clubs around where I live consider sparring to be competition and to be avoided until you are experienced and trained enough. Now in BJJ you learn from that rolling, realizing that there are always weaknesses in your movements even when you think you got it down well enough. No mystery, just teaching you that learning a technique means more than just doing it over and over in a drill.

That is one thing they do quite well. I've not found a good analog for day-one sparring for my students. We don't do ground work that early, so no rolling at that point. They can't take falls from throws yet, so no standing grappling, and besides, they wouldn't know the throws yet. The strikes they learn early are knees and elbows, and the first block is the "plow", so striking grappling would be problematic. Our early physical instruction is focused on teaching them a few escapes, a few simple techniques (the elbows and knees and plow), and starting them on basics of movement. The closest analog is that they get to fairly quickly accept an attack and give a response - a bit of one-step sparring, perhaps.

I have been working on moving sparring earlier, and even randori ("sparring" for standing grappling) though that's always going to be a bit later, but I've not found a good way to bring it into the first few weeks.

 

[drop bear]

That is one thing they do quite well. I've not found a good analog for day-one sparring for my students. We don't do ground work that early, so no rolling at that point. They can't take falls from throws yet, so no standing grappling, and besides, they wouldn't know the throws yet. The strikes they learn early are knees and elbows, and the first block is the "plow", so striking grappling would be problematic. Our early physical instruction is focused on teaching them a few escapes, a few simple techniques (the elbows and knees and plow), and starting them on basics of movement. The closest analog is that they get to fairly quickly accept an attack and give a response - a bit of one-step sparring, perhaps.

I have been working on moving sparring earlier, and even randori ("sparring" for standing grappling) though that's always going to be a bit later, but I've not found a good way to bring it into the first few weeks.

Fight for each others back. It would even let you apply akido concepts.

 

[drop bear]

Your definition of "resisted" seems to require fighting strength with strength. I rarely resort to that, even in resisted training. I'm reasonably fit, and reasonably strong, but my training is to find where I don't have to do that. In my experience, it's the resistance that requires the strength, not the technique. As I've said before, this is one of those areas where your "resisted training" is actually not as realistic for self-defense as you seem to think it is. It's an effective tool, and one I like to use, but it's not an accurate representation of the resistance that's likely to happen in a self-defense situation.

Not really. In theory you use technique. But it is nieve to think the stronger guy does not have the advantage in a confrontation. The difference for us is that being strong isn't somehow cheating.

 

[JowGaWolf]

If you wanted to learn how to fight, wouldn't you be better off at a MMA, Wrestling, Boxing, Bjj, Muay Thai, Judo, etc. school? In those places you have an ingrained sparring portion, zero katas (for the most part), and a very competitive (i.e. fighting) culture.

I take Jow Ga kung fu because I wanted a self-defense system that also taught weapons use and weapons defense. MMA doesn't teach weapons. Whenever someone comes to Martial Talk and ask which system they want to take. I always respond "Do you want to learn how to use weapons?" Last time I check MMA, Wrestling, Boxing, BJJ, Muay Tai, and Judo schools don't teach how to hit with a staff, or fight with a knife. My school has ingrained sparring every Thursday is dedicated to free sparring where students learn how to use kung fu techniques to fight and defend themselves. I like katas. As for the competitive fighting culture. For Jow Ga (like most martial arts) it's about making myself better at Jow Ga and better at defending myself.

That simply isn't the case in many classical martial arts which spend an inordinate amount of time on forms, exaggerated stances, and other exotic techniques that generally get tossed aside when the poop hits the fan.

When I first looked for a Kung Fu school to attend I had in mind what I would need in order to learn how to fight using Kung Fu. I stayed away from any school that didn't meet the requirement.

Ten years in Bjj you'll more than likely have a black belt, and be very capable of fighting. Ten years in some TMAs and you're still learning how to kick and punch properly.

Students who train to fight by using Jow Ga will be very capable of fighting and defending themselves with at least 3 techniques after the first year, after the first year additional techniques become easier to learn provided that they don't revert back to using what feels comfortable and what they think is their strongest attack. In other words, people who are right handed tend to fight right-handed because they feel that it's their best bet. As a result they don't use their left hand to do much fighting and the left hand decays. This is something that all fighting systems have to deal with, but I try to make sure that students are as balanced as possible. But unfortunately it is ultimately up to the student.

Which all comes down to students not being dedicated enough to put in the hard work to learn a TMA properly and want to take what they perceive as the easy way out.

I'm glad you mentioned this because I actually had a black student (a teen) try out a class and we decided to go extremely light that day so that he would not be overwhelmed with trying to keep up. During the class he says out loud "Can I go back to doing Karate because it's easier." The amazing part about this comment is that it was said during our warm up exercises. His statement isn't a reflection on Karate, it's a reflection on his training (at the least) and his karate school at the most.

 

[Hanzou]

Which all comes down to students not being dedicated enough to put in the hard work to learn a TMA properly and want to take what they perceive as the easy way out.

Or it comes from the TMA having an unrealistic training regimen. We have various examples of other martial arts producing similar results at a much faster pace.

There are multitudes of reasons for the decline in TMA students and most of them have nothing to do with MMA or the UFC.

Well you're more than free to name some other reasons. In those articles I posted, MMA was mentioned in all of them.

 

[JowGaWolf]

BJJ does one thing I fear many clubs stopped doing or never did in the first place.

They do rolling/sparring from day one or near enough. It is something they have the possibility of doing.

Some clubs around where I live consider sparring to be competition and to be avoided until you are experienced and trained enough. Now in BJJ you learn from that rolling, realizing that there are always weaknesses in your movements even when you think you got it down well enough. No mystery, just teaching you that learning a technique means more than just doing it over and over in a drill.

This is often because not everyone who takes a TMA wants to learn how to fight. If an instructor has an entire school that really doesn't want to learn how to fight then the school will tend to be light on sparring. My sparring class went 6 months of me shadow boxing (kung fu style) and training my wife and son before any of the other students joined. They just didn't care about learning how to fight with Jow Ga to the extend where they had to get hit in order to learn it. The student from China is always reminding me that he's only doing the class to stay in shape.

I try to get people into sparring as soon as I can. If I had another 5 year old then both of them would be sparring. But since I only have 1, she'll have to just settle for pads. The sooner people can feel comfortable with punches coming in, the better they will be able to deal with a real attack on the street. The easier it will be to recognize the signs of an attack, and the sooner they will learn how to draw out attacks. But we are one of the few schools that I know of that take that approach. However with that said. I've seen quite a few schools on youtube with kids as young as 8 doing sparring. As you stated it's just depends on the school and the training. It's not a representation of the art, but the training.

But it is nieve to think the stronger guy does not have the advantage in a confrontation. The difference for us is that being strong isn't somehow cheating.

This is where the value of soft techniques come into play. Soft techniques is admitting that one day you won't be the strongest one or the most powerful one in the fight. To be honest a person can think of BJJ as having some soft techniques, from what I understand the bjj practitioner isn't always exerting more strength sometimes they are just weighting the person down so that the person has to fighting the practitioner's weight and gravity while in inefficient positions.

 

[Hanzou]

That's an exaggeration of how long things take in TMA's. I've never met anyone with 10 years of experience under a decent instructor who couldn't do what they'd been trained to do. If they were trained for fighting, they could do that with some competency.

Well I have met some TMA instructors who had trained for a very long time, and couldn't fight their way out of a paper bag.

Anecdotes aside, I present exhibit A:

And exhibit B:

I do believe exhibit B had been training in Hung Gar for over 30 years....

Now, I will agree that BJJ appears to produce good results quicker than most TMA, which is odd to me because their teaching techniques don't differ that much from TMA's. The TMA schools I've been in (an admittedly small sample) didn't spend all that much time on forms. The forms were one way they ingrained responses ("muscle memory"), like the shrimping drill does (and like that shrimping drill, forms can also help with fitness). The forms showed up, and were used to a greater or lesser extent in various schools, but I can honestly say that in all the times I've visited schools, the only time I've seen a class doing forms is in my primary art.

Well the difference in Bjj is that shrimping for example has a direct application that can be used in a variety of situations. You can use the shrimp escape to get out of just about every bottom situation, and you use it constantly while rolling (sparring). I suppose a better comparison could be what we call the "triple threat", a series where you learn the Kimura (shoulder lock), Guillotine (choke), and the Hip bump (sweep) from the bottom of Guard. However unlike a kata, the application is practical and there is zero exaggeration. A student can learn the triple threat for the first time, and probably pull off a hip bump if someone was on top of him. Additionally, like shrimping, you use the triple threat set up constantly in sparring.

On the other hand, look at the Heian Kata series in Shotokan. The vast majority of those movements will never be used while fighting, and you never see them in the fighting form. However, in Shotokan we spent a lot of time perfecting those forms, and our ability to go up the ranks was based on our perfection of those movements in which we were never going to use. As I've said many times, my eyes were opened wide when I sparred a boxer in my dojo and all that karate training and pretty katas meant nothing.

So on one hand you have extremely applicable movements, and on the other you have a multitude of movements that aren't applicable to anything except getting a new piece of cloth wrapped around your waist. If someone asked me where they would go if they wanted to learn how to fight, it certainly wouldn't be a TMA.

 

[Hanzou]

If I'm a guy who is reasonably fit and thinks he can look like those fighters, I might choose that. If I'm a small person (and most women are smaller), I would be better served looking for an art where it doesn't seem to require being muscular. I don't know enough of the mechanics of MT to judge the art on whether it only works well with strength or not, but if I had to make the choice on that evidence, alone, I'd have to say it likely does, since that's a feature common to all the MT fighters I've ever seen. Not necessarily a valid conclusion, but I hope it makes the point.

And yes, MT boxers do have a good reputation for effectiveness, and that would be a better reason for choosing, rather than choosing because they "look like" fighters. Heck, if someone showed me a kinda fat guy holding his own (even if he loses decisively in the end) to a fit and muscular MT guy, I'd be impressed by the skill that took and would want to take a look at what he studied that got him there.

No disagreement there. I agree with all of that. I was simply pointing out that perception is a very powerful tool for people when looking into something they know little about. A big reason for the explosion of popularity with MMA, MT, and Bjj is the perception of effectiveness. A big reason for the decline of TMAs is the perception of ineffectiveness.

That's a good point, and you may be right, but Judo was an early part of MMA. There were many competitors whose primary art was Judo, so folks have an easier link there. I doubt a single fighter being competitive would shift people's thinking to an art they don't already associate with MMA. Of course, some overwhelming success will always have sway, but I doubt there's much of that left to be found from a single-art person unless we simply find one analogous to Tiger Woods or Michael Jordan.

I can agree with that for the most part. I do think it would require a series of fighters utilizing clear Kung Fu skills in order for those negative perceptions of Kung Fu to be turned around. However, one very impressive fighter lighting the MMA world on fire would definitely speed up the process.

 

[Hanzou]

I take Jow Ga kung fu because I wanted a self-defense system that also taught weapons use and weapons defense. MMA doesn't teach weapons. Whenever someone comes to Martial Talk and ask which system they want to take. I always respond "Do you want to learn how to use weapons?" Last time I check MMA, Wrestling, Boxing, BJJ, Muay Tai, and Judo schools don't teach how to hit with a staff, or fight with a knife. My school has ingrained sparring every Thursday is dedicated to free sparring where students learn how to use kung fu techniques to fight and defend themselves. I like katas. As for the competitive fighting culture. For Jow Ga (like most martial arts) it's about making myself better at Jow Ga and better at defending myself.

Students who train to fight by using Jow Ga will be very capable of fighting and defending themselves with at least 3 techniques after the first year, after the first year additional techniques become easier to learn provided that they don't revert back to using what feels comfortable and what they think is their strongest attack. In other words, people who are right handed tend to fight right-handed because they feel that it's their best bet. As a result they don't use their left hand to do much fighting and the left hand decays. This is something that all fighting systems have to deal with, but I try to make sure that students are as balanced as possible. But unfortunately it is ultimately up to the student.

Yes, but your Jow Ga school is an island within a massive ocean. If a student is looking for a martial art to learn how to fight, and they come across a kung fu school, do you think that that KF school would be anything like your school? We both know that the standards of kung fu training in the US vary like crazy.

On the other hand, if I suggest a Bjj school to a student, the standards aren't going to vary that much. Mainly because the Bjj community has been pretty vigilant in keeping the standards of Bjj at a certain level. The Kung Fu community has no interest in that level of vigilance, and they prefer to live and let live. That attitude has allowed all sorts of frauds to pop up and dillute the effectiveness of the CMAs.

 

[Steve]

Well said and I don't believe many mma practioners understand that experience in traditional arts, teach exactly these concepts.

It is also interesting to note, that Hanzou, is pointing out a subject that exist in all arts, techniques never look the same in combat as they do in practice yet doesn't seem to understand that mma, is quilty of this as well.

I think it brings up the point, that it always depends on the individual and not the art.

bolded part isn't true. They do look the same, if trained well. But it's important to distinguish between drills and technique. Jumping rope isn't a technique in boxing, but a jab is. And the jab in application, whether a street fight or a boxing ring, looks like a jab in training.

A scissor sweep is a basic technique in BJJ which looks the same in application as in training.

This idea of techniques looking different in application only comes up when the training stops short of application.

 

[RTKDCMB]

Or it comes from the TMA having an unrealistic training regimen. We have various examples of other martial arts producing similar results at a much faster pace.

Maybe in your limited experience. It only takes about three months to have tangible self defense benefits in a properly run martial art. One of our white belt children a couple of weeks ago was able to use a block to prevent another kid from punching him and he had only been training for a few weeks,

Well you're more than free to name some other reasons. In those articles I posted, MMA was mentioned in all of them.

Laziness for one. Too many people are more interested in playing computer games and using social media (a problem that didn't exist in the mid 90's) to actually get off their butts and learn a martial art. People wanting instant gratification and not wanting to invest their time in a TMA. Students who quit when they don't get promoted quickly enough. etc.

Well I have met some TMA instructors who had trained for a very long time, and couldn't fight their way out of a paper bag.

And none of the instructors from any of the schools I have attended fit into that category.

As I've said many times, my eyes were opened wide when I sparred a boxer in my dojo and all that karate training and pretty katas meant nothing.

Which is due more to your own inadequacies rather those of TMA as a whole.

And just for interest if you notice the trend below can be explained like so; MMA was a fairly new concept almost unheard of 20-30 years ago, and with all new things there is initially a lot of interest. But after about 2009 the curve flattens out to be essentially constant from then on. How do you think the trend would look for, say, TKD if Google had been around in the mid 50's?.

 

[Hanzou]

Maybe in your limited experience. It only takes about three months to have tangible self defense benefits in a properly run martial art. One of our white belt children a couple of weeks ago was able to use a block to prevent another kid from punching him and he had only been training for a few weeks,



Laziness for one. Too many people are more interested in playing computer games and using social media (a problem that didn't exist in the mid 90's) to actually get off their butts and learn a martial art. People wanting instant gratification and not wanting to invest their time in a TMA. Students who quit when they don't get promoted quickly enough. etc.

I'm pretty sure that TKD produces more child black belts than any other MA, and the average time to reach black belt is about 2 years depending on the number of belts they added to the belt factory. That culture is textbook instant gratification.


I must say, it produces some great kickers.

Which is due more to your own inadequacies rather those of TMA as a whole.

An inadequacy that I've seen repeated in a variety of TMA practicioners.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

Fight for each others back. It would even let you apply akido concepts.

I'm familiar with that term for groundwork, I think, but I'm not familiar with it for standing work. As for working with aiki concepts, I don't get into that in the first few weeks. I work first to build a base of some simple movements.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

Not really. In theory you use technique. But it is nieve to think the stronger guy does not have the advantage in a confrontation. The difference for us is that being strong isn't somehow cheating.

I never said the stronger guy doesn't have the advantage. Strength, reach, and weight are always an advantage. I'm not sure where you get the idea that using those advantages is "cheating" in any art. In arts working to reduce that advantage (for the opponent), they take that advantage away during training my requiring students to work without applying strength. If you can apply the technique without strength, then you have your strength held in reserve as a "fix" when things don't go according to plan.

The difference is that some techniques require that you be stronger to make them work in any reasonable fashion, and others do not. This, in my experience, exists as a range within most styles. What I was pointing out was that participants being uniformly fit and muscular does not give any indication that someone who isn't muscular can do what they do. A style where some participants are effective in spite of not being in top physical condition gives more likelihood of that.

That's not a shot against those arts where the participants are particularly fit. If the art doesn't actually require that fitness level to be effective, then they've built a very handy reserve to draw upon.

 

[RTKDCMB]

I'm pretty sure that TKD produces more child black belts than any other MA, and the average time to reach black belt is about 2 years depending on the number of belts they added to the belt factory.

That is more the result of individual schools and organizations lowering their standards to gain more students than TKD as a whole.

 

[Hanzou]

That is more the result of individual schools and organizations lowering their standards to gain more students than TKD as a whole.

LoL!

Of course, it's never YOUR school is it?

 

[RTKDCMB]

LoL!

Of course, it's never YOUR school is it?

Of course not, I am in a good school. If it wasn't i wouldn't be in it.

 

[Hanzou]

Of course not, I am in a good school. If it wasn't i wouldn't be in it.

Just because they have kid black belts and a fast track to a black belt doesn't make it a bad school.

It just makes it a good business model (a mcdojo). There's a reason TKD is the most popular MA in the world. The kiddies love kicking high and bossing adults around...

 

[Gerry Seymour]

Well I have met some TMA instructors who had trained for a very long time, and couldn't fight their way out of a paper bag.

Anecdotes aside, I present exhibit A:

And exhibit B:

I do believe exhibit B had been training in Hung Gar for over 30 years....

There certainly are folks who aren't capable of fighting. Assuming that's what they trained for, they didn't succeed. I was speaking to your assertion that in 10 years someone wouldn't know how to throw a kick. If they've never thrown it under heavy pressure, they may not be able to during a fight like that, but that's a different assertion (and a problem that should be solved by aggressive sparring at some points in training).

Well the difference in Bjj is that shrimping for example has a direct application that can be used in a variety of situations. You can use the shrimp escape to get out of just about every bottom situation, and you use it constantly while rolling (sparring). I suppose a better comparison could be what we call the "triple threat", a series where you learn the Kimura (shoulder lock), Guillotine (choke), and the Hip bump (sweep) from the bottom of Guard. However unlike a kata, the application is practical and there is zero exaggeration. A student can learn the triple threat for the first time, and probably pull off a hip bump if someone was on top of him. Additionally, like shrimping, you use the triple threat set up constantly in sparring.

No argument with any of that. The hip bump, as an example, is one of those nice bits that can be put to use pretty easily, and as they progress they'll get better with it every year. They'll likely think they "got it" after a few months, and will figure out how it really works much later and will understand why the black belt's hip bump is so much more effective, though he seems to be doing less.

On the other hand, look at the Heian Kata series in Shotokan. The vast majority of those movements will never be used while fighting, and you never see them in the fighting form. However, in Shotokan we spent a lot of time perfecting those forms, and our ability to go up the ranks was based on our perfection of those movements in which we were never going to use. As I've said many times, my eyes were opened wide when I sparred a boxer in my dojo and all that karate training and pretty katas meant nothing.

I can't speak to Shotokan katas. In my two brief forays into Karate (one Shotokan, the other maybe Shotokan - the instructor never used that term or any other style term that I recall), I had limited exposure to forms. They were there, and I remember more advanced folks practicing them, but I never got to them. From your experience, I'd certainly have drawn the same conclusion.

So on one hand you have extremely applicable movements, and on the other you have a multitude of movements that aren't applicable to anything except getting a new piece of cloth wrapped around your waist. If someone asked me where they would go if they wanted to learn how to fight, it certainly wouldn't be a TMA.

Used properly, forms should be about ingraining neural pathways ("muscle memory"). Movements should only be slightly exaggerated where that exaggeration causes most students to actually use the entire movement (many shorten the movements they are taught, so some kata overdo the movement to correct for that). Kata used improperly are probably a waste of time.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

Yes, but your Jow Ga school is an island within a massive ocean. If a student is looking for a martial art to learn how to fight, and they come across a kung fu school, do you think that that KF school would be anything like your school? We both know that the standards of kung fu training in the US vary like crazy.

On the other hand, if I suggest a Bjj school to a student, the standards aren't going to vary that much. Mainly because the Bjj community has been pretty vigilant in keeping the standards of Bjj at a certain level. The Kung Fu community has no interest in that level of vigilance, and they prefer to live and let live. That attitude has allowed all sorts of frauds to pop up and dillute the effectiveness of the CMAs.

This is a distinct advantage of styles that have consistent, resistive competition, as you have said before. It's difficult to last for long as a poor BJJ instructor. There are some out there (outside associations) that seem to be getting by, but that's certainly nothing unique to BJJ, and competition seems to keep them to a very low number. Those that do last are almost certainly not competing.