Awesome Kung Fu Kick used in MMA

[Gerry Seymour]

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.

That depends upon the training techniques being used, and how familiar someone is with the variations of the technique - it might not look like the form because it's a variant. If I showed you our Classical form for one of our techniques, you could watch for days of application work and maybe not see that form show up in application. But that would be because the attacks and responses simply hadn't led to that version of the technique. I could show you 4 or 5 variants of some of the techniques, and only one of them would be particularly close to Classical - not because of a flaw in Classical, but because we had to pick one variant to use in the form. So, for Arm Bar (a common technique, so easy for discussion), we have 6 variants (breaking over the shoulder, breaking across the body, rollover, wrap-around, reverse, and Classical) plus all the "grey areas" between those variants. If the attacks and responses I receive don't lead me into the Classical variant, you could argue that this is a problem with the form. However, if the next attack makes that variant available, you'd likely see something that looks quite close to the movements in the form.

 

[Steve]

My spidey sense is tingling, my friend. Application of technique should resemble training. If it diesnt, something is awry.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

My spidey sense is tingling, my friend. Application of technique should resemble training. If it diesnt, something is awry.

Agreed. Not every application need resemble the form, though. We train all those different applications, but only one variant makes it into the Classical form. So I teach my students 5 variants of Arm Bar plus Classical, and they train all of them. But the form is only Classical.

 

[JowGaWolf]

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.

The only thing I focus on for beginners without experience is getting them comfortable with hitting someone else. So they may spend up to 2 months just attacking someone who isn't going to hit them back. Sometimes beginners have the assumption that they can hit hard enough to hurt someone. This is rarely true for a person sparring and punching for the first time.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

The only thing I focus on for beginners without experience is getting them comfortable with hitting someone else. So they may spend up to 2 months just attacking someone who isn't going to hit them back. Sometimes beginners have the assumption that they can hit hard enough to hurt someone. This is rarely true for a person sparring and punching for the first time.

Okay, so a one-sided sparring session. The newbie is attacking, and the more experienced person just defends. Sounds like a good intro to striking in a dynamic setting.

 

[JowGaWolf]

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....




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.

And yet none of my videos look like that on and I do hung ga techniques and I have less experience so what is your point. 2 different fighters same system different training.

 

[JowGaWolf]

Okay, so a one-sided sparring session. The newbie is attacking, and the more experienced person just defends. Sounds like a good intro to striking in a dynamic setting.

It works for both as the experienced student has to rely 100% on footwork to evade attacks. For use footwork allows us to counter better. The drill also helps us to focus more on what attacks look like. I try to make students study what comes at them so they can get good enough to exploit attacks, defenses, footing. Etc.

 

[Hanzou]

And yet none of my videos look like that on and I do hung ga techniques and I have less experience so what is your point. 2 different fighters same system different training.

To be fair, your videos showcase free sparring. Those 2 vids showed people actually trying to take each other's heads off.

Regardless, as I said in an earlier post, your school could very well be a very good Kung Fu school. The problem is that there's scores of KF schools that aren't very good. The guy in the second vid runs a huge Hung Gar association in NYC and has taught thousands of students, some of which are instructors themselves these days.

 

[Hanzou]

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).

Frankly, if you can't throw a good kick or punch in combat after 30 years of training, then you never learned how to kick or punch properly.

Nice forms though.

 

[JowGaWolf]

To be fair, your videos showcase free sparring. Those 2 vids showed people actually trying to take each other's heads off.

I don't punch slower or lighter when I increase the intensity of the sparring. My attacks get faster and harder. This is my speed at 40% - 45%, the increase in speed and power is a result of me just relaxing and not trying to kill the guy. You can actually see me still pull punches at this level. You can tell by the sound of the gloves that the punches aren't light. This is what I would consider an intermediate level of sparring. I landed 4 out of 5 strikes. It would have been 5 out of 5 strikes had I not pulled one of my punches that I could clearly see he wasn't going to be able defend against (the one before the kick). Things only get worse when I increase my speed and my power, it doesn't get better. If he couldn't keep up at this level then he's not going to be able to keep up with me at 90%.

I had to stop the sparring for my concern of his safety. I don't need to run you over with my car to know that it'll hurt you. I don't have to punch a person's head off to know that if my punch connects then it will hurt.

Frankly, if you can't throw a good kick or punch in combat after 30 years of training, then you never learned how to kick or punch properly.

The problem isn't throwing a good kick or punch. anyone can do that. The problem is throwing a good kick or punch in the context of fighting which requires a different skill set than what is used when doing forms.

Things like timing and seeing openings and opportunities to use techniques, and then picking the right technique for a specific situation are improved through sparring.

 

[Hanzou]

I don't punch slower or lighter when I increase the intensity of the sparring. My attacks get faster and harder. This is my speed at 40% - 45%, the increase in speed and power is a result of me just relaxing and not trying to kill the guy. You can actually see me still pull punches at this level. You can tell by the sound of the gloves that the punches aren't light. This is what I would consider an intermediate level of sparring. I landed 4 out of 5 strikes. It would have been 5 out of 5 strikes had I not pulled one of my punches that I could clearly see he wasn't going to be able defend against (the one before the kick). Things only get worse when I increase my speed and my power, it doesn't get better. If he couldn't keep up at this level then he's not going to be able to keep up with me at 90%.

I'm surprised you're not getting my point here; Sparring isn't actually fighting. Sparring is a training exercise that imitates fighting.
Not saying that you couldn't pull off what you do in those sparring videos in an actual confrontation. I'm simply saying that comparing your sparring videos to two people actually fighting is a bit silly.

The problem isn't throwing a good kick or punch. anyone can do that. The problem is throwing a good kick or punch in the context of fighting which requires a different skill set than what is used when doing forms.

Things like timing and seeing openings and opportunities to use techniques, and then picking the right technique for a specific situation are improved through sparring.

And the Hung Gar sifu's training clearly favored forms over fighting. Thus, over the course of 30 years he developed excellent forms, but poor fighting ability.

That's the point. I highly doubt someone with 30 years of Bjj, Judo, or Muay Thai experience would fight like the HG sifu did in that confrontation.

 

[JowGaWolf]

That's the point. I highly doubt someone with 30 years of Bjj, Judo, or Muay Thai experience would fight like Mr. Bey did in that confrontation

Anyone with decent continuous sparring or even just a self-defense training wouldn't fight like he id in that confrontation. In comparison to someone who isn't trained this is what the footwork looks like

Their stances were better than what he had. The movement was better My personal thoughts is that ego got in Bey's way thinking he greatly out-skilled the person he was sparring against, and he paid the price for it.

I lecture students when their ego causes them to think they are better than someone else in fighting. Even if we know that we are, the rule is to understand that the person can still hurt us if we aren't careful.

 

[Hanzou]

Anyone with decent continuous sparring or even just a self-defense training wouldn't fight like he id in that confrontation. In comparison to someone who isn't trained this is what the footwork looks like

Their stances were better than what he had. The movement was better My personal thoughts is that ego got in Bey's way thinking he greatly out-skilled the person he was sparring against, and he paid the price for it.

I lecture students when their ego causes them to think they are better than someone else in fighting. Even if we know that we are, the rule is to understand that the person can still hurt us if we aren't careful.

Unfortunate that the boy with his shirt off didn't know Bjj, he could have ended that fight at the 1:35 mark.

Nonetheless, I disagree that it was ego, it was the simple fact that he couldn't fight. When you spend the vast majority of your training time doing ancient Asian dance routines, that tends to happen.

 

[JowGaWolf]

That depends upon the training techniques being used, and how familiar someone is with the variations of the technique - it might not look like the form because it's a variant. If I showed you our Classical form for one of our techniques, you could watch for days of application work and maybe not see that form show up in application. But that would be because the attacks and responses simply hadn't led to that version of the technique. I could show you 4 or 5 variants of some of the techniques, and only one of them would be particularly close to Classical - not because of a flaw in Classical, but because we had to pick one variant to use in the form. So, for Arm Bar (a common technique, so easy for discussion), we have 6 variants (breaking over the shoulder, breaking across the body, rollover, wrap-around, reverse, and Classical) plus all the "grey areas" between those variants. If the attacks and responses I receive don't lead me into the Classical variant, you could argue that this is a problem with the form. However, if the next attack makes that variant available, you'd likely see something that looks quite close to the movements in the form.

This causes a lot of confusion for many people. I showed the students a technique we called #1. It's one of the basic techniques that beginners first learn. This one technique is made of 3 movements that are actually separate techniques. Students used to think that we are supposed to do all 3 movements in order to "do the #1 technique. Then I showed them that it could be broken down where the components can be done separately, or to an extend in a different order. They didn't realize that it's acceptable to use variations of the techniques.

I've literally sparred against several people only using variations and segments from #1. and it provided enough variation for me to be effective even if I didn't use all of the variations

 

[JowGaWolf]

Unfortunate that the boy with his shirt off didn't know Bjj, he could have ended that fight at the 1:35 mark.

Nonetheless, I disagree that it was ego, it was the simple fact that he couldn't fight. When you spend the vast majority of your training time doing ancient Asian dance routines, that tends to happen.

This is why I think it was EGO. Here are his students. If they know not to fight with the feet close together then why doesn't he know? Skip to 13:00

 

[Hanzou]

This is why I think it was EGO. Here are his students. If they know not to fight with the feet close together then why doesn't he know? Skip to 13:00

Because he never fought someone trying to take his head off.

Also if you look beyond that, some of the principles his pupils were learning raised some serious red flags. I can see why he get bested by some MMA scrub off the street.

 

[Kickboxer101]

I'll try and steer this away from the whole style vs style thing that seems to be going on here. So for the kick I agree it should be banned as should the side kick to the knee or any knee kicks. Rogan once said oh yeah those kicks mess your knee up but so does a leg lock well yeah rogan but the difference is a leg lock you can tap before there's any real damage (unless your fighting rousimar palhares then your knees screwed either way lol) but it's a great techique to use on the street simple and fast

 

[kuniggety]

I'll try and steer this away from the whole style vs style thing that seems to be going on here. So for the kick I agree it should be banned as should the side kick to the knee or any knee kicks. Rogan once said oh yeah those kicks mess your knee up but so does a leg lock well yeah rogan but the difference is a leg lock you can tap before there's any real damage (unless your fighting rousimar palhares then your knees screwed either way lol) but it's a great techique to use on the street simple and fast

In an amp'd setting like an MMA fight, there will be damage from a leg lock before the person has time to tap. Pretty much every technique used in a fight is dangerous, otherwise why are you using it?

 

[Kickboxer101]

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....



.

So if a guy gets knocked out quick that means his whole style is useless does that mean Jose Aldo sucks because he's been training for years and got knocked out in 13 seconds what about Damian Maia got knocked out in 21 seconds his amazing jiu jitsu meant absolute 0 when he took a punch to the face.

 

[Kickboxer101]

In an amp'd setting like an MMA fight, there will be damage from a leg lock before the person has time to tap. Pretty much every technique used in a fight is dangerous, otherwise why are you using it?

Yes but when a leg lock starts to get painful you tap before it destroys your knee the kick you've got no choice if it lands right your knees done