Would Wing Chun synergize or clash with Hapkido

[Gerry Seymour]

I really like this post and agree completely. As Bruce Lee said - how many ways can there be for two human beings, with two hands and two feet, to fight hand to hand and toe to toe? Actually, there are many ways - but in the end they must be more similar than different due to how we are made and how we will interact with another. Obviously, we on this forum love thinking and talking about this stuff and exchanging ideas and experience - posts like this are why I visit here. Great analysis and insight, Respectful and inclusive (not exclusive) of different approaches.

Thank you for the kind words.

 

[Tony Dismukes]

I'm not sure how to expand much more, but I'll try.

Every art - as it is taught (so this can vary somewhat by instructor) - has a "feel", and often a type of motion that is somewhat distinctive. Judo is more push-pull circular with tight movement, and Aikido is more accepting circular with broad movement. I know some folks in Aikido who would say those are opposing and clashing approaches, but I find they fit together nicely. Okay, so that's two circular arts.

Shotokan is linear and angular. Surely that would clash with the movement and feel of Aikido, but I don't think it does. The habits of moving that way can make it harder to learn circular movement at first (assuming the Shotokan is first), but once you get past that part (or if they are trained together), they turn out to complement well. Early in the process, the angles of Shotokan fit nicely into places that would have been a "mistake" in the Aikido (stepping off-line, too far away). As that progresses, the Shotokan gains some circles and some of the circles in the Aikido shorten or change planes, becoming more upright. Some even flatten and become closer to direct response.

Everthing I've played with or studied has fit together for me. My primary art is Nihon Goshin Aikido, which primarily moves with circles. Our strikes are not generally circular (derived ostensibly from Shotokan), but our movement to them still follows the movement patterns from Daito-ryu, because that's our base footwork and bodywork. And the strikes still work nicely. The bits of striking I picked up and recall from Shotokan, Tang Soo Do, FMA, boxing, etc. all seem to fit nicely into Gerry-fu. The grappling I've picked up from Jujutsu (probably derived from Wally Jay's), BJJ, Judo, FMA, MMA (mostly BJJ base), etc. all seem to fit in, as well. I occasionally find a movement pattern that feels "off", but I've almost always been able to find an adjustment that makes the technique work for me. A few times I've run into techniques that didn't work for me, but I chalk that up to either esoteric techniques (I think most TMA have some techniques that are there for a purpose other than direct application) or just not having enough time to understand the real principles.

It might be that having a hybrid base art makes this easier to learn, but I think it goes back even before my experience with NGA. At one point in my early teens I was studying Judo and Shotokan at the same time, under the same instructor. That might be the formative time for my acceptance of different movement.

I have encountered systems that clash.

I was training in Tracy Kenpo at the same time I was training in Tibetan White Crane. The fundamental way techniques are trained does clash between these systems.

In kenpo we were taught to keep the shoulders squared to the front, when throwing punches. The punches tended to rely heavily on physical strength.

In white crane we are taught to rotate the body sideways when throwing a punch, as a way of making a full-body engagement and relying less on physical strength.

Because I was doing both, I ended up drifting somewhere in between which wasn’t correct for either. When I was doing crane, sifu kept telling me “turn more!” When I was doing kenpo, my teacher kept telling me “stop turning, keep square to the front.”

I remember very clearly one day being in the kenpo school and doing a bunch of punching drills, and suddenly having a very clear realization that training in kenpo was undermining my crane, and vice-versa. I realized I needed to make a choice between the two because training them both was preventing me from getting really good at either.

This is where I realized the importance of consistency in how you train. You need to have a consistent method in how you approach things because that is where you get good at it. It does not make sense to train two or more punching methods that are fundamentally different. You don’t need it, and they get in the way of each other. What you need is one consistent method that you can really focus on and get good with. Collecting methods really can be a distraction and an interference.

I think it is good to train several systems as a way to experience different methods and ultimately decide which one is best for you, then stop doing the others.

I think training multiple systems works better when the systems have a very different focus from each other, such as doing a striking system along with a grappling system. I think that in general you will find fewer contradictions, although I won’t say you will never find contradictions.

But training in several punching systems for example, that are done fundamentally differently from each other, just does not make any sense to me. It’s like trying to travel down two roads at the same time. You get a mile down one road then change your mind about where you want to go, so you turn around and go a mile the other way before changing your mind again. And again. You never get anywhere. If each destination is a hundred miles away, traveling that first mile over and over won’t get you there. That is what happens when you keep switching back and forth between two or more disagreeing systems.

I was going to just reply in thread, but I think you guys have finally motivated me to write up my definitive post on the subject. I'm writing that now and will be posting a new thread later this afternoon.