Fight School programme on British TV

[black and blue]

First episode was on last night. They send a bunch of martial artists off to China where they go through endurance tests and fights to see who's the best... errr... fighter. The big daddy of the day to judge all that happens is Wing Chun's Simon Lau.

Ye Gods!!!

I caught the last half of the programme... an absolute pile of w@nk. Press-ups and huffing and puffing. The 'fight' at the end of the programme was between a TKD chap and a woman who practises Karate...

Both had to wear bloody great boxing gloves, the woman came running in with lead and reverse punches, and the TKD chap covered up like a boxer and let the big gloves bounce of his arms. Then he kicked... a lot. The man could obviously kick well, and did so from any range, largely because his gloves negated her punches. (Though she managed to literally catch a few kicks and push him over)

The woman 'won' the fight (despite being kicked silly) because she showed 'heart' and he resorted to illegal kicks (kicking the back of her head).

The one redeeming feature of the programme was the end... when the TKD guy lost the fight and had to leave, they interviewed him in the Temple's 'changing room' and he was crying like a school boy (he's 21 years of age, and from what I could gather, represents England in TKD championships).

All said, an amazingly sad programme designed for anyone who's never practised a martial art. Interestingly, one of the UK's movie channels was showing Snatch later that evening... so I got more out of watching Brad Pitt's pikey crunching bones in illegal boxing bouts.

[bougeac]

Hey black and blue, did you say you study the kamon system??

i'm curious, as a guy over here taught me for a couple of years and had done a lot (or so he claims) of training with kevin chan...

there was VERY little theory/explanation of the principles behind the shapes being taught and very little explained about the center line principle.

who do you train under??, i train in the augustine fong method now which is VERY technical and heavy on theory as well as application, do you do any drills which teach you line theory , how to take the line/regain it etc because the guy who taught me didnt do anything like that...

watched an old video of a kamon summer camp from a few years ago where they do "milling" at one point... very brutal!!!

btw, missed the first episode of fight school, any wc guys (apart from simon lau) on it?


hope to hear from you

[black and blue]

Hi bougeac,

We have a guy training with us at the moment who was training Fong lineage in Exeter while he was at University. He had good things to say about the club and seems to have fitted in very well with our teaching (like us all, he's bowled over by Kevin's ability).

Does your club have a website?

Regards Kamon and Center Line etc...


i'm curious, as a guy over here taught me for a couple of years and had done a lot (or so he claims) of training with kevin chan...

What's the name of the guy, I can easily check it out?


there was VERY little theory/explanation of the principles behind the shapes being taught and very little explained about the center line principle.

It's hard for me say with any certainty what someone else has been taught. But.... :) I train with Kevin Chan on Monday and with one of his senior instructors (Bill Bostock) on Tuesday and Wednesday (I hope to soon start training another day with Chan Sifu).

I wouldn't like to say the chap was lying in saying he'd trained heavily with Chan Sifu, but I would say, that as beginner, the first thing you'll learn is YJKYM and the basic WC punch. It's kind of hard to teach this and NOT explain Center Line theory. You'll also start learning SNT, and again, this is explained in terms of Center Line.


do you do any drills which teach you line theory , how to take the line/regain it etc because the guy who taught me didnt do anything like that...

There's a drill on Augustine Fong's Sparring Video that teaches a student to keep the Line against an opponent. We have a similar drill to this. We also practise the Bong/Lap drill. When done in YJKYM we are taught to keep the correct shapes and taught why we do so. We also punch to the Center and when adding in high and low attacks and the various changes, strive to create a new line, change the line, cut off our own line, and exploit the opponent's line.

Our Bong/Lap drill is also done with movement (stepping and turning), and the point of this is to open the line and then fill the gap we've opened up.

Of course, if you've trained long enough you'll progress to Chi Sau proper, and without working the Center Line I can't imagine the point of it!


watched an old video of a kamon summer camp from a few years ago where they do "milling" at one point... very brutal!!!

Milling is done at Kamon, but not often :) Chan Sifu is very particular with regards keeping the training hands-on and relevant to the street. You'd think this would be the case with all WC clubs... but sadly this isn't so.

I would like to say that the only Kamon instructors I've trained with have been Kevin Chan, Bill Bostock, Roy Fretwell, and Michael Chan. All are very good indeed, IMO. I'm sure the other instructors are also good, but I can't really comment as I've not had contact with them... and everyone has different experiences/approaches.

Where's you club located? I'd love to check it out sometime.

Hope this has help answer your Questions... Feel free to ask more if what I've said makes no sense (the usual problem with my post here ;) )

Duncan

[dezhen2001]

didn't catch the show but form ur report thank goodness! :D
seems ur enjoying ur training b&b it's all good :)

dawood

[danny james1]

i saw fight school last night and must say i was very dissapointed,it was all very fitness orientated.
i would love to see simon lau fight the eventual winner in a no rules contest but know it wont happen.
i shant waste my time watching the next programme.

[kieofwoo]

I caught the programme as well and 90% of it was endurance rubbish, nothing to do with ma.

One thing I will say for it, the fight at the end wasn't overly edited and had a genuine feel to it. Admittedly it was a pretty pants fight - the TKD guy was rubbish in that he only had one range. If he really represents England then I don't expect much from the national team. At least the karate girl did 2 things (punch continuously and occasionally grab the TKD guy's leg and push him over). So I reckon she should have won.

I would love to have known what was going through Simon Lau's head watching to though - none of it was very wing chun! Hope he's being paid handsomely ;)

[Ish]

i just couldn't help but laugh my ass off when simon lau said he would make a decision based on his wisdom, i don't know how anyone could say that and not laugh at themselves

[Souljah]

lol, yea i was cracking up at that point to ish

kieofwoo

MA has alot to do with endurance, how do you expect to last in a fight, and generally be fit enough to cope with most situations.

OK admittedly there is alot of that endurance but you got what you waited for when they fought...didnt u? although it was quite ****e

[kieofwoo]

Hey Souljah

Well it would have been nice to see more skills training. MA specific skills. For example the punching and kicking they started with - what was that about? If they had been doing an excercise that required accurate and powerful kicking, that would have been fine. Same thing with the punches. Instead they were rewarded for going at a large pad. Any kind of going. The guy they rated as best was the one who made his knuckles bleed. That's stupid. If the way forwards is to make yourself bleed, then I'll be taking the side door. And remember that this wasn't a conditioning excercise.

Look I wasn't expecting a masterpiece, but I was still a bit disappointed. They could have at least fit in more thatn 1 fight in the 1 hour show.

I'll still probably tune in if I've nothing better to do this week...:rolleyes:

[Souljah]

hey kieofwoo


Yea i'll probably watch it too.

What I meant was that the endurance training is all part of building stregth..

The guy who bled was given strongest for his hheart and determination to continue with bleeding knuckles though his technique was not correct for someone who was supposed to be one of the top in the UK.
The thing I didnt like was a break down in technique, after every1 got tired it became accepted that the punches and kicks were half hearted, and it was just a case of who could tap a big pad the longest, there is no skill there. If they had kept to it it would have been much more worthwhile for them and would have proven who was really strongest.

[kieofwoo]

That's exactly what I'm getting at Souljah, one accurate punch is worth 10 sloppy ones.

Where do you train by the way, fellow london bud?

[Souljah]

I train in east london, hackney to be precise.
I train in concept - chinese internal MA called rei (tai chi, hsing i and ba gua)
The fundementals of the style include kickboxing.

Isay in concept because I dont have enough knowledge in my style to really get in depth into each indiviually (at my level- only 20 months deep), however once I have finished this system I want to go on and learn each of these styles individually

what about you?

[kieofwoo]

I'm training wing chun in central london. I'm very new to it, started this summer! - although I have done various MA for about 5 years now and mastered none!!

I'm hoping that this is the system that I will stick to :)

The internal MA's are nice, I have a mate who's been training bagua for a while now after a long stint with taichi. I've been quite impressed with his circularity ;)

Hey you might be interested in this clip of yiquan here (http://omnilounge.co.uk/files/yiquan.mov)

It's another soft style that my bagua mate liked.


See you around souljah, don't get into any wars, stick to the components, soul music and jah no dead jah no dead :p

[Souljah]

lol kieofwoo.

:D :D

Do you by any chance train with anyone from the UK Wing Chun Kung Fu Association?
James Sinclaire and Mark Phillips teach in that association, Very respectable teachers although due to their popularity their classes are VERY large (30+ people!)

What is your sifus name?

[Souljah]

what other MAs have you done?

[phoenix-eye]

It was a rubbish programme - I had actually been looking forward to it as well.

It seemed to be aimed at people who hadn't done martial arts but the stupid thing was that they didn't take time to explain the different martial arts that each person did e.g Tae Kwon Do, Karate, Kung Fu and Soo Bahk Do (???).

The majority of the show seemed to consist of the 3 "Sifus" chucking bed clothes about as if it was an army boot camp.

Absolute pants.

[kieofwoo]

Originally posted by Souljah

Do you by any chance train with anyone from the UK Wing Chun Kung Fu Association?
James Sinclaire and Mark Phillips teach in that association, Very respectable teachers although due to their popularity their classes are VERY large (30+ people!)



'fraid not...

[kieofwoo]

Originally posted by Souljah
what other MAs have you done?

Taekwondo
Tangsoodo
Mantis
WingChun

[Souljah]

any reason why you didnt complete them?

[kieofwoo]

TaeKwonDo and TangSooDo - I moved away from my instructors.

Mantis - My instructor moved away from me.

I then chose wing chun as my MA of choice, especially as I have good teachers near me.

Hopefully this time I'll have some luck with geography!

[Souljah]

Yesterdays programme was more interesting.....the horse stance and iron palm was fun to watch. Although the person that sat in horse stance for longest was only 5 minutes, and then he couldnt even walk!
OK maybe they dont practice horse stance that much but you would expect more, plus, alot of them didnt know how to even sit in the horse stance (probably cos they were the kickboxers).

And that guy Don was really harsh for no REAL reason.....next week is their punishment because of this......

:eek: :D