German Bai Lung
09-21-2004, 07:11 AM
Here goes this theme once again! :D But first: I will try to share some thoughts first and later make some personal notes. Not because i want to proclaim how good I am ( in fact I know there are a lot of people here who are better in skill and knowledge) but just to show that there is some kind of experience!
Thoughts first:
Fighting with traditional chinese martial arts especially Mantis Styles are always very dangerous! ALWAYS! In the latest MQ there is a good example from WHF to this case.
So, most of your training ( and I bet just every teacher here will do this!) is drills, forms and their applications and once more drills. So you gain skills with the techniques of Mantis. So far so good.
But there are more skills to gain: I call them basic fighting skills. BASIC!
I mean with this term: reaction, timing, eye for the distances, overview, be in control of basic defense and offense techniques and of course to control your body and mind (for example: not being afraid to hit + to get hit, control emotions, control your moves etc)!
To gain fighting skills there must be more than drilling techniques! You must fight! Okay. Now you can go out and fight on the streets... you donīt want to? Okay, I neither.
So you can fight with your Students or with your Kung Fu Brothers. In the best case you kick some a$$ and show whats mantis about. But in the worst case (and remember murphy! its everytime time for the worst case!) you lose some students, you hurt seriously your kung fu brother or go to hospital for some weeks and not be able to teach anymore ...
Donīt tell me that this could not happen! As you all know Mantis is about kicking in the groin, locking arms and legs, throwing, throat graps, eye piercing etc ...
I myself come to the following schedule:
To gain basic fighting skills the beginner trains with safeties lightcontact sparring. If he gets better the fighting goes to semicontact ( I understand semi as more contact than light!). Next there is the advanced and he MUST train fighting with no gloves for controlling his actions. In this fight I donīt want to see some applications done with no or less contact. Itīs a freefight situation with emphasis on technical and controlled behaviour!
Also a advanced student could train fullcontact with big gloves and full safeties! Thats very important to gain the skill of performing hits and kicks with full power and not to lose control of ones actions! Or being afraid of hiting the oponent!
Personal Notes (now here they come!):
I donīt care at all when some of the fighting done by me or my students looks (for the untrained eye) like kickboxing!
Kickboxing is of course a good fighting art and got a lot of things cammon with chinese Martial arts! Itīs kicking and boxing! Yeah, for the beginning itīs okay. Later there will be more and more Mantis ...
From the first days of my teachingtime I fight with my students. I learned and they learned. I went through all kind of fighting: Light, Full Contact, with and without safeties. Technical and without any techniques ... ( ;) )
In my first days of teaching a very experienced Kickboxer joined and stayed untill today. We fought often and he was better than me not only because he was taller and more experienced in fighting. He also addopted the good mantis stuff very quick and was able to choose from his very fast and good kicks for longer range and could uses also Mantis in the infight. It was a hard time for me! But I survived ;) Now he is one of my best friends ... and still my student.
My school was visited by all kind of trained fighters: boxers, Karatekas, Kickboxers, Taekwondokas ... some came in to see what we did and to fight. Some to train. Some went away - some stayed.
Since now noone appeared and leaved not being impressed. Noone has beaten me or my top student Paul. That could be changed at any time - I know that, but it shows to me that my fighting abilities are not that bad and I know what I am speaking of. I still fight with my students, new ones and older ones and sometimes I get hurt.
I make that notes just to show: I know what Iīm talking about.
But I am very open to everyone who maybe knows someting more or better!
I hope everyone could follow this text allthough itīs written in very poor english! Looking forward to good responses!
Thoughts first:
Fighting with traditional chinese martial arts especially Mantis Styles are always very dangerous! ALWAYS! In the latest MQ there is a good example from WHF to this case.
So, most of your training ( and I bet just every teacher here will do this!) is drills, forms and their applications and once more drills. So you gain skills with the techniques of Mantis. So far so good.
But there are more skills to gain: I call them basic fighting skills. BASIC!
I mean with this term: reaction, timing, eye for the distances, overview, be in control of basic defense and offense techniques and of course to control your body and mind (for example: not being afraid to hit + to get hit, control emotions, control your moves etc)!
To gain fighting skills there must be more than drilling techniques! You must fight! Okay. Now you can go out and fight on the streets... you donīt want to? Okay, I neither.
So you can fight with your Students or with your Kung Fu Brothers. In the best case you kick some a$$ and show whats mantis about. But in the worst case (and remember murphy! its everytime time for the worst case!) you lose some students, you hurt seriously your kung fu brother or go to hospital for some weeks and not be able to teach anymore ...
Donīt tell me that this could not happen! As you all know Mantis is about kicking in the groin, locking arms and legs, throwing, throat graps, eye piercing etc ...
I myself come to the following schedule:
To gain basic fighting skills the beginner trains with safeties lightcontact sparring. If he gets better the fighting goes to semicontact ( I understand semi as more contact than light!). Next there is the advanced and he MUST train fighting with no gloves for controlling his actions. In this fight I donīt want to see some applications done with no or less contact. Itīs a freefight situation with emphasis on technical and controlled behaviour!
Also a advanced student could train fullcontact with big gloves and full safeties! Thats very important to gain the skill of performing hits and kicks with full power and not to lose control of ones actions! Or being afraid of hiting the oponent!
Personal Notes (now here they come!):
I donīt care at all when some of the fighting done by me or my students looks (for the untrained eye) like kickboxing!
Kickboxing is of course a good fighting art and got a lot of things cammon with chinese Martial arts! Itīs kicking and boxing! Yeah, for the beginning itīs okay. Later there will be more and more Mantis ...
From the first days of my teachingtime I fight with my students. I learned and they learned. I went through all kind of fighting: Light, Full Contact, with and without safeties. Technical and without any techniques ... ( ;) )
In my first days of teaching a very experienced Kickboxer joined and stayed untill today. We fought often and he was better than me not only because he was taller and more experienced in fighting. He also addopted the good mantis stuff very quick and was able to choose from his very fast and good kicks for longer range and could uses also Mantis in the infight. It was a hard time for me! But I survived ;) Now he is one of my best friends ... and still my student.
My school was visited by all kind of trained fighters: boxers, Karatekas, Kickboxers, Taekwondokas ... some came in to see what we did and to fight. Some to train. Some went away - some stayed.
Since now noone appeared and leaved not being impressed. Noone has beaten me or my top student Paul. That could be changed at any time - I know that, but it shows to me that my fighting abilities are not that bad and I know what I am speaking of. I still fight with my students, new ones and older ones and sometimes I get hurt.
I make that notes just to show: I know what Iīm talking about.
But I am very open to everyone who maybe knows someting more or better!
I hope everyone could follow this text allthough itīs written in very poor english! Looking forward to good responses!