Informal Wing Chun anyone?

[Barney2]

Ok, it's becoming clearer what you're getting at now & I can probably lend something to it.

 

The way Richard teaches is that 'everything is Chi Sau'. It's not definitively 'you do a bong while I do a tan' etc. The idea is as soon as you touch someone you can tell what they're about to do, sometimes before they do as their subconscious will have made a decision before they're even aware of it consciously, and you can pick up on it if advanced enough - I've still got a long way to go hence wanting this extra practice as often as possible. So by that reasoning it will be used in MMA, after all, the definition of that is 'Mixed martial arts'. You just won't notice it's being used, as they're not standing there bonging and tanning.

 

I met a karate guy at a boot sale, got talking sat on a pub type wooden bench, & he was telling me how he'd never lost a competition because of the way he trained - ie sensitivity practice. He put his hand on my arm & asked me to make a kick shape with one of my legs. I'd only just started to move & he said 'right bandai', which was correctamundo.

 

So it's easy to think that somethings not occurring just because you can't see it in it's literal interpretation. All MA's are related in some way & all of them have got awesome techniques of some kind. Not many of them have got the complete set but WC comes close.

 

And in a competition you're not always going to be able to keep contact, but any contact can be used, legs as well. Then the MMA ones always go to ground after a few seconds with the guy on top punching crap out of the other ones ear for an hour. That's when I lose interest.

[onewheeldave]

Ok, it's becoming clearer what you're getting at now & I can probably lend something to it.

 

The way Richard teaches is that 'everything is Chi Sau'. It's not definitively 'you do a bong while I do a tan' etc. The idea is as soon as you touch someone you can tell what they're about to do, sometimes before they do as their subconscious will have made a decision before they're even aware of it consciously, and you can pick up on it if advanced enough - I've still got a long way to go hence wanting this extra practice as often as possible. So by that reasoning it will be used in MMA, after all, the definition of that is 'Mixed martial arts'. You just won't notice it's being used, as they're not standing there bonging and tanning.

 

I met a karate guy at a boot sale, got talking sat on a pub type wooden bench, & he was telling me how he'd never lost a competition because of the way he trained - ie sensitivity practice. He put his hand on my arm & asked me to make a kick shape with one of my legs. I'd only just started to move & he said 'right bandai', which was correctamundo.

 

 

 

Of course. I'd have no expectations whatsoever to see cage fighters doing classic bong/tan. I was talking more about the general principles of using maintained arm contact to sense what your opponent is going to do next- that's something I've not seen in the cage.

 

The fighters do obviously use body contact (e.g. when up against the cage mesh in clinches) to sense an opponents balance/intentions- that ability will obviously arise naturally out of thousands of hours of practice/sparring that involves grappling and clinching.

 

But sticky hands is specifically an arm orientated art, practiced in most styles, including wing chun, primarily in an upright stance, bodies apart, using the arms to sense intent (of course there is also sticky legs, which tends to be less common). And it is this which never seems to ocur in cage fighting.

 

 

 

 

 

And in a competition you're not always going to be able to keep contact, but any contact can be used, legs as well. Then the MMA ones always go to ground after a few seconds with the guy on top punching crap out of the other ones ear for an hour. That's when I lose interest.

 

These days there's way less of fights going to ground and staying there for the duration- there's much more stand up than there was a couple of years back. Partly due to fighters developing tactics to avoid being taken down (sprawling etc) and also due to a few rule changes that favour stand up (e.g. the ref standing both fighters up if they spend more than a certain amount of time entangled on the ground with no real progress happening).

 

I also used to find the fights a bit dull cos they almost always ended up on the ground fairly early, and stayed there for the whole fight, but current cage fighting now usually involves a lot more stand up, and, it's interesting to see how the more striking orientated fighters avoid being taken down.

[john_stork]

Surely cage fighting and street fighting are 2 different things.

 

In a street you'd kick your attacker in the cobblers, that move is never done in the cage because its not the gentlemanly thing to do. Can't remember Anderson Silva winning a fight by booting his opponent in the cherrys

[onewheeldave]

Surely cage fighting and street fighting are 2 different things.

Yes, very different. One is one-on-one with no weapons in a controlled environment with ready access to advanced medical facilites in the unlikely event of anyone getting badly hurt, and, is a sport.

 

The other can easily involve multiple opponents, weapons and the real possibility of being seriously hurt or killed.

 

In a street you'd kick your attacker in the cobblers, that move is never done in the cage because its not the gentlemanly thing to do. Can't remember Anderson Silva winning a fight by booting his opponent in the cherrys

 

It's unlikely you'd manage to kick an attacker in the groin in the street- it's a very difficult target to hit with a kick, and human males have a lot of instincts which are there precisley to protect that area- plus of course, while you're trying to kick the attacker in the groin, he's intent on crippling you by any means necessary, possibly including weapons and/or back up from his associates.

 

The real reason cage fighters don't endeavour to kick their opponents in the groin, is that the rules of cage fighting forbid it- if the rules permitted groin attacks, then they would go for it- just as they used to happily head butt their opponent, or stomp kick their heads while they were down- back in the days when the rules allowed such things.

 

Ironically, it's now quite common for cage fighters to get kicked in the groin, usually when a leg kick isn't as accurate as it should have been. There's a standard recovery time for the victim when such accidents occur, so there's no incentive to do groin kicks intentionally.

[jmaplasterin]

to Barney2,

hi i have moved to sheffield fairly recently and im looking to get back into training wing chun.

 

I have been looking at different instructors and just wondered if you could give me a bitr of info on your sifu richard baines. where are his classes, how much, his style of training? is it traditional form based training or is it more modern and practical?

cheers

jim