The power of Internal Martial Arts

[Spirit Ape]

MMA guys can also use groin grabs in the street , eye gauges etc just because they train competition doesnt mean they are not switched on. Not to mention some of the cage fighters have worked clubs and what not and do have street fighting experience. Some Kung Fu Sifu's have no experience in fighting and are teachers of combat and traditional fighting skills. Its a catch 22, you either have heart or you dont when it comes to fighting and the better conditioned you are also helps!

 

Ape

[Mal]

[h.uriahr]

Life isnt a Steven Seagal or Van Damme movie.

 

My teachers insist that a fight should only last one second, and that's how we make it work.

There was a PaKua master who was in Seattle for awhile and for graduation day he and his #1 student went to a biker bar known for everyone having guns and thinking they are badasses. The teacher shoved three bikers standing around outside the door and when they went for him he handed them off to his student. The student used them to mop the sidewalk and graduated.

 

Remember this grasshoppa, you can pick your nose and you can pick your friends but you cant pick your friend's nose! I hope you are joking about this

Pakua master

[Starjumper]

Life isnt a Steven Seagal or Van Damme movie.

Remember this grasshoppa, you can pick your nose and you can pick your friends but you cant pick your friend's nose! I hope you are joking about this

Pakua master

 

Not joking at all. He's a well known name in PaKua, and his student is known too. I can't recall the names but I can get them, but then maybe I shouldn't. I know the student is African/American. At first I wanted to say the teacher was Pang but it wasn't him. The guy who told me used to practice with them.

 

The guy who told me is a good friend who was a student, with me, of my chi kung teacher, but he dropped out of that.

 

If somene ran off a list of well known PaKua people I would probably recognize the names.

[orb]

This is a stupid argument and everyone has the "my shit is better" but i will tell you this I have trained External & Internal MA. I have been hit and hurt by both but my opinion still stands that the guy that has full control of his body, emotions, energy, relaxation, mind, breath, root, spinal suspension, will most likely be the one delivering the most actual pain. When I train & teach I teach to hurt not play games not "endure" in the ring. I train to survive. If that means grab a key and jam in your eye so be it.

 

That is the difference.

 

One of my Silat teachers, Pa herman Suwanda was once with a Gracie guy at Dan Inosanto's academy. The Gracie said he could get out of any position and that grappling could beat anything.... etc. So Suwanda got a hold of him. They counted to 3....On three as the guy tried to "roll"with Pa, Pa herman grabbed the Guys Dick and yanked it out of his shorts and pulled the shit out of it the guy SCREAMED! And said yelling you can't do that in BJJ! Pa Herman was on top of him like white on rice.

 

Pa herman said yeah but you can do it in Silat and especially in the streets of Java.......

 

All it takes is a second to "cheat" and get the leverage or the pain needed to finish the job or survive or "stab" etc...

 

If you have Chi and conditioning to backup what we call "Malacia" You will go a long way.

I donotcare who you are these areas of your body will never and can never be conditioned "externally" through MMA training which means they will always be liabilities......

 

Eyes

Throats

Balls/Dick/Groin muscles

Armpits

ears

Glands

nerves

pressure points

Internal organs

Ribs

Feet/toes

Fingers

Ming Meng

Navel

 

These are the main areas we internal martial artists hunt for and seek to destroy.

 

As Pa harold Koning tells me all the time:

 

L.A.W

 

Lights, Air, Wheels

 

take away all three his vehicle shuts down.

 

I have MMA guys in my class I have trained MMA guys & trained with them. Iagree you should havethat knowledge but that also can blind you if you not have the "other" side of MA (internal side) & Vice a versa.

 

Internal MA that is good will have both physical & internal & healing & "malacia".

A BJJ guy came tomy silat class and he is a brown Belt. He saw what I do on the ground and said it was "Butter Fly Guard like tactics" .....

 

I said well its Silat Day 1 ground fighting.

All arts that are good have "it" to survive.

 

Peace

 

Santiago Dobles

 

Hey Vaj, first of all I do like Silat a lot and although I never trained in it - from what I know it has a very strong practical external martial art side. I hope to be able to study in a couple of years. Is the Silat in the link below the same style you trained in ?

 

 

Second, I was picking on Bagua because I did practice it along with Taiji/Qigong for a while and I had a lot experiences with that stuff. My teacher was Cesar Culda - here's one of his websites

http://www.qigong-keidelheim.de/qigong.htm

 

he is the guy with glasses but he is so humble you would rarely see him in a picture posing in the front all by himself and this was one of his teachers in China

 

.

His Bagua is actually very good and he is extremely dedicated to his practice and I have all my respect for him - however for real fighting I just can't recommend it.

 

Now your story with the penis retracting technique - although very amusing - I find it quite irrelevant - as I don't think you need to study any type of martial arts in order to do that. You know my granma was so ferocious that she could bite your teacher's balls off in one lightning fast move if you messed with her despite all his silat wisdom and she couldn't even do one pushup but we were all scared of her to death.

 

Now I totally agree that all these stories with "my shit is better then your shit" are getting old - but I'm also quite annoyed with all these exagerated taobums soap operas where somehow everybody here seems to have met or heard of an unbeatable freaking genius who is at least 1000 years old born before Christ and can shoot fireballs outta his ass but when asked to step on the tatami and prove their skill - either backs off using some weird religious/moral excuse or ends up accepting but then desperately tries to poke you in the eyes....

 

I wanna see an art of some sort - a technique, a smart move applied against a real opponent not compiled in some old fashioned chinese dance(taolu) - I want it to work and be better then the regular punching/kicking/chocking attack that any punk can learn in 5 min on the streats. And until I see that with my own eyes I am still going to pick on all the martial arts "philosophers "- because to me it seems that it's a healthy reaction to all the lies in these discussions and keeps the bs to a moderate level.

 

V/R, Orb

'

[orb]

Not exactly IMA but here's a good video on Sistema, which requires softness and sensitivity to succeed in an stairwell environment:

 

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=vpbwxXAbyAs

 

The first quarter of the video.

 

Enjoy.

 

yep, that's "grandpa" - Kadochnikov at the end of the video he is almost 84 now - retired from the Army in '62.

 

Here's a site with more videos from his system and his son is teaching http://www.kadochnikov.info/video

[Gerard]

.

Edited September 21, 2010 by durkhrod chogori

[wudangquan]

Going into a bar of 1%'er bikers and shoving them and cleaning up against them, their guns, their superior numbers and likely superior size, likely experience with violence in the prison system, combat experience in 'nam if they're American, etc. ad nauseum . . .

 

It makes for good post-modern Wuxia, anyway.

 

That's not to say that it's certainly not possible, or that it didn't happen . . .

 

But what kind of mentally subnormal person would do that?

 

A. You're harrassing innocent people who've not harmed you, and invading THEIR space

B. Your putting your students in mortal danger for the sake of your own ego

C. They're opening themselves up for retribution. For every action there's an equal or greater reaction, karmic consequence, or whatever.

 

I don't want to talk about style vs. style anymore because it's a sort of purposeless argument.

 

However . . .

 

The difference between a person who trains to fight and a fighter is execution.

 

The difference between someone who "does" martial arts and someone who "is" a martial artist is that they don't need to do this kind of nonsense.

 

They don't even need to fight if someone hits them twice in the face - as long as they're able to walk away without getting injured or seriously injuring another person - because they KNOW they can.

 

Anybody who behaves like that - provoking fights with people, going out and looking for trouble, etc. is a jackass and they're motivated by their own fears and fealings of inadequacy.

 

One thing I can say for certain is that it's not indicative of high level IMA development.

[steve]

 

Anybody who behaves like that - provoking fights with people, going out and looking for trouble, etc. is a jackass and they're motivated by their own fears and fealings of inadequacy.

 

I agree - that's why I quite training with the Wing Chun guy.

The only way to get good at streetfighting is to do it - he lived in a tough, threatening world and so he did it.

Fighting is not that important to me so I moved on...

[wudangquan]

I am not a believer in the "law of attraction" so much or anything like that, but I do believe that what you focus on you energize.

 

I was off on some macho BS violence trip from the time I was 15 until I got on a plane with a one way ticket to India and less than $50 to my name because I was about to have a serious break with reality.

 

But I brought all that upon myself. I could always rationalize it somehow, but the truth was I was constantly thinking about violence and I had a nasty ego and wierd fears so I brought it all down upon myself.

 

My father on the other hand - is nearly 60 and I know for a fact he's never been in a fight in his life.

 

There's that old Aikido parable . . . Something about almost fighting a guy and then the old man starts talking to him and brings him to tears talking about the problems in his life. . .

 

The reason I even jumped into this thread is that I think the chest thumping of MMA is ridiculous.

 

To see it in IMA is worse - it's kind of pathetic.

 

It's funny how things play out in retrospect. Up until my early-mid twenties I seriously thought I was a tough guy. One night while I was drinking with the hardest person I've ever met he said one sentence, and it started a chain reaction in my life that totally turned everything around. . .

 

"Tough guys end up in dumpsters".

 

There are many things that I don't agree with on this forum, but I civilly try to talk about it or just forget about it.

 

I seriously don't understand why anyone would be aspiring towards violence, though.

 

The martial arts adage of steel wrapped in cotton is appropriate I think. But it has a significance beyond the physical world.

 

When cultivating our minds and spirits should also be like steel wrapped in cotton. Totally firm and determined internally, but soft and giving way on the outside.

Edited November 14, 2008 by wudangquan

[Baguakid]

I'm in agreement with wudangquan,

 

My interest in MA, CMA, or IMA is from an energetic/health standpoint. I can be just as happy practicing Zhan Zhuang or non-martial qigong or neigong than a martial art.

 

Also, another reason I choose Chinese Martial arts over other styles. I love the beauty of the form. The forms the dragon bagua I practice are beautiful.

 

But, I also like the strengthening aspects of Neigong and Bagua.

[mjjbecker]

..

Edited July 7, 2009 by mjjbecker

[wenwu]

Hey wenwu,

 

Do I know you ? We practice Bagua from Wang ZhuangFei.

Dong HaiChuan -> YinFu -> Gong BaoTian -> Wang ZhuangFei

 

As I understand it, Gong Baotian also studied with Dong HaiChuan after his time with Yinfu.

My teacher's name is Ming QianBo who studied with several ppl in our lineage.

 

 

hey baguakid

 

we don't 'know' each other but cantacted you a little while ago about bagua in shanghai, i live in Beijing and study yin bagu here but at that time i was considering moving south

 

however

 

intersting t see a different form of the yin line. i would be interested in talking to you more about the differences between the study methids

[mjjbecker]

..

Edited July 7, 2009 by mjjbecker

[Starjumper]

I didn't say I agreed with the attack on the biker bar, I was just sharing a graduation story because I had just read one. We can surmise that maybe the biker's karma DID invite what happened to them just as well as if it didn't, for those of us who like to pass judgments. I myself do not fight. What I think is cool is making people fall down without touching them. Barring that, what I think is cool is stealing people's balance and making them fall down. Of course they can be killed or maimed while this is being done but I'm not interested in that. Also, big bad martial artists used to come from around the country to try to punch my teacher, Dave, and the results were frequently hilarious, but his teacher, who was also my teacher, remained 'hidden' because he didn't want to bother with people like that. Dave also used to teach CIA, FBI, and special ops people.

 

In the final analysis; I will repeat what I said earlier: All other things being equal, the most sensitive person will always prevail, and that is an obvious FACT. It's also an obvious fact that the internal arts train for sensitivity.

 

I'll share a story about BJJ since people have been mentioning that. There was a BJJ master visiting my applications class to learn some of the internal techniqus (he said he had been learning tai chi to add to his BJJ) and I told him I had been debating with others about how a good tai chi person will always be able to slip out of a takedown attempt. He said it didn't matter because the tai chi tactics work just as well on the floor as they do standing.

 

It seems to me that a good one inch palm strike against the ribs of a BJJ guy, while you are on the floor, would work to your advantage.

Edited November 14, 2008 by Starjumper7

[Mal]

I wanna see an art of some sort - a technique, a smart move applied against a real opponent not compiled in some old fashioned chinese dance(taolu) - I want it to work and be better then the regular punching/kicking/chocking attack that any punk can learn in 5 min on the streets.

 

Good point Orb. In my eyes, Traditional Chinese Kung Fu, learn properly, gives you this result. (As do 100's of other "styles" IF that is there intent, it's not the style) but you won't learn it in 5 min. Just like you wouldn't want to practice "the regular punching/kicking/chocking attack that any punk can learn in 5 min on the streets" everyday for the rest of your life. Too boring.

 

My sifu was talking to class a few days ago saying

1.It's extremely unlikely to encounter a skilled kung fu person in a street fight (e.g. I'm not highly skilled, but my lineage does not allow provoking uncalled for fights, it's unacceptable in terms of our behavior. Putting myself in a situation where this might happen i.e. visiting "dangerous" pubs / locations is also not acceptable behavior. Most traditional schools have the same ethics. So the chances of that sort of person having a reason to attack me or my family is unlikely) I'm learning self defense, which means improving my health and mind (defense from DISease of the body and mind) not just how to be a thug

 

2. It's also unusual to learn Traditional Chinese Kung Fu due to the communist governments ban on fighting. That is why most of what is out there is just forms and techniques rather than the fighting practice.

 

My additional point would be if it's been around for 300 years and people are still bothering to spend 10 years of their life learning it and the rest of their life practicing it, there must be something of value there.

 

In the final analysis; I will repeat what I said earlier: All other things being equal, the most sensitive person will always prevail

 

I'd replace "sensitive" with skillful. And thats not technical skill. If your skill is attacking people when their awareness is down (e.g. most muggers and streetfighters) Whoever applys their skill best will "win"

 

Also unless people are "playing" these days you are unlikely to get anything close to a "fair chance" at unarmed combat. You will be facing superior strength, superior numbers, concealed weapons, guns. And probably a combination of the above

 

So "picking" a biker bar may really be your only chance at a "fair fight" Most of the bikers I know enjoy a bit of biff as part of their night out. But you don't want them to decide not to play any more and bring out the weapons and their 50 mates.........

[Gerard]

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Edited September 21, 2010 by durkhrod chogori

[wudangquan]

Yeah just because I don't understand what someone else is doing doesn't mean it's not their destiny to do it.

 

I don't mean to be to critical.

 

Sorry about that.

 

Sometimes I want to prove my point like anyone else.

 

And then I remember that there isn't any point.

[Gerard]

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Edited September 21, 2010 by durkhrod chogori

[adam mizner]

[Vajrasattva]

i agree a real fight should end fast, but i have been in some long ones. life is never black and white.

 

metta

adam

 

 

Agreed

 

It should not even be a FIGHT but a complete TARGET DENIAL and RESOLUTION of Conflict.

 

peace

 

santiago

[Gerard]

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Edited September 21, 2010 by durkhrod chogori

[Baguakid]

Gee, I missed a couple of these bullying answers.

I say to that that you don't know what you are talking about, simply because finding a real IMA teacher is akin to searching for elephants in Antarctica.

 

Happened to me with Tai Chi. I learnt Chen style from a wushu teacher and nothing, a waste of time. Three years down the toilet and I had already a good background on Zhan Zhuan practice. Then I switched to Bagua with a Beijing trained teacher student of master Wang Tong (Liang style Bagua) and voila! I found the real deal.

 

The transformation was automatic and still going on. Bagua stays with you forever. Tai Chi as well as long as you find a real teacher which today is almost impossible.

 

Even BK Frantzis states that in one of his vids (min 3:00):

 

Very enlightening clip.

 

Totally agree.... It is said in Shanghai that of the Internal martial arts, less practice Bagua and of those who practice bagua, few do it well.

 

It's very difficult to find a good teacher.

[Gerard]

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Edited September 21, 2010 by durkhrod chogori

[Sloppy Zhang]

I think one important thing to note about Frantzis' old school videos is the level of.... um.... commitment/skill of the tai chi people of the time. Most of them were kinda New Age like and all into "harmonizing with the universe, send chi to your opponent in push hands" and all that. Then Frantzis comes along and he's like, "these meditation and qi gong skills can be used in fighting!" and they're all like, "groovy", then Frantzis comes and slams a palm into them and they're like, "man you're wacking out on the universe maaaaaaaan" or something like that. They aren't professional fighters, or even full contact hobbyists, so naturally they're not gonna have the structure/strength/other attributes in the demos.

 

Now, from what I understand Frantzis' teacher, Liu Heng Chieh, traveled to the mountains to study taoism, and what he learned in the mountains was some circle walking meditation. Liu thought that those circle walking methods he learned in the mountains could very well be the same (or at least very similar to), what Dong Haichuan learned himself, which as we all know serves as the basis for the style of bagua.

 

The other interesting thing about bagua is that Dong taught all his students differently according to their skills. He didn't really teach them techniques as much as he taught principles, and then each individual person made those principles evident according to their skills. Yin Fu, for example, made those principles evident within what he already knew (luohanquan and some other stuff I think). Cheng was already skilled at wrestling, so those same principles manifested themselves through wrestling. Of course some lineages say that their head spent more time with Dong, or that their person helped Dong create some techniques, yadda yadda.... but the fact remains that Dong really only taught people who had already proven themselves in some way shape or form, it was just a matter of how those people employed what Dong taught them which made up the styles.

 

So yeah, maybe some thoughts on why/how Frantzis' bagua looks a bit different, or contains (or does not contain) some other things... at least from my limited perspective