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Originally Posted by Sagacious Lu
I think it's pretty clear from the way I made my argument that I'm not just mindlessly bashing kung fu; I have identified why the style is inadequate clearly and concisely without making any jokes about it. If these ideas have been "done to death" than the reason is that my experience is very common among kung fu practitioners.
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Ya ya, we know dis already.
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Sure, people should respect the opinions of others but there's a point where the facts are facts whether you like it or not. I'm not going to bend over backwards to put a positive face on something just because it's someone's sacred cow.
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It's neither my Holy Cow nor Grail.
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The cold hard fact is that if your goal is to learn how to fight this style is inherently inferior.
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That's a mistake though. Styles themselves do nothing, it's what you do with them, that is important.
How do these styles come about in the first place?
Are they written on the back of napkins between courses in a Chinese restaurant?
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That's the thing, TB isn't saying "this is shit because I said so" he's saying it's shit and then provides very strong, logical reasons why it is in fact shit.
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Logical to you maybe.
When I see people comparing styles rather than people, styles rather than methodology or styles rather than philosophy, what I see is a pile of shit so large it makes pye look like a small number.
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I hope someone who's wants to learn to fight comes and reads this thread, and hopefully they'll choose something more effective as a result.
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K'Ching.
What if they don't think MA help you learn to fight at all?
Not any of them?
What if all they are looking for is good information?
What if they are looking for histories and philosophy?
What if they think fighting is for really, really stupid people, who can't control their own ego?
Maybe they just won't bother with the forum and go elsewhere, as it doesn't matter how hard you pull, you can't make a horse drink if it doesn't want to.
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We'd be better off not having a CMA forum than to pretend that there isn't a lot of nonsense in them.
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Who's pretending?
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It isn't trolling to point out a bad idea when you see one.
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It depends how you do it.
If you do it offensively, then it's not going to be productive.
Case in point, why is it that Thai Bri can be polite on say Burton Richardsons forum re questions on WC, yet he can't be civil on the main forum?
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You asked me what the positive aspects are; well, I learned the basics of kicking and punching and how to hit a heavy bag, and to some degree I was able to start setting up take downs with strikes. I could have learned these things much more quickly in another school, but I did walk away with some real knowledge.
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You're right, that doesn't seem like a lot to take away?
Is it the school to blame though, or do you think you maybe had your own blinkers on for a while?
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Most of the esoteric techniques (in other words that can't be found in most other popular systems) that I think are still useful in kung fu are what I would consider diry tricks, or gimmicks. You might just be able to get an advantage by hitting your opponent with the back of your wrist (this is a crane technique) and it's worth while to be aware the you can do it, but that's the sort of thing that's only good in very specific situations. It's a low percentage move but it might just come in handy some day. There are also some locks and take downs in chin na that are valid even if they are mixed in with a lot of things that only work in demonstrations. However, these little nuggets of usefulness are not valuable enough to justify the amount of time you have to waste on poor training practices to learn them.
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See to me, these are just things you tuck away in the back of your mind labelled, examine more closely on a rainy day.