who things nan quan could be effective ?

[golden arhat]

i have seen nan quan performed and it just looks like hung gar performed really fast with a few flashy things added and i know hung gar works so could nan quan work ? :)

[David Jamieson]

nan quan is a performance wushu set. Not a fighting set.

any movement could be adapated. contemporary wushu requires adaptation to make it martially effective anyway.

It is for show. there are much quicker and more effective ways to learn combatives than performance wushu.

It's akin to take jazz dance, then figuring out how to turn that into viable boxing technique.

[PlumDragon]

Really depends on what we are talking about here. Are you referrign to a wushu form called Nan Quan, or the system Nan Quan?

If you are talking about wuzu quan (which is sometimes called nan shaolin quan), then that is NOT part of modern wushu dance and is a very viable fighting system.

[wushu24]

I believe you are probably referring to the modern wushu form of nanquan. Between the two styles in wushu, changquan and nanquan, nanquan is definitely the more "martial" oriented form. Especially if you learn the compulsory nanquan form. Top wushu athletes nowadays perform incredible gymnastic feats in both styles, but please don't judge wushu based on that. Most of us doing wushu cannot even possibly imagine to reach that level of athleticism. So we stick to the more "martial" forms, the compulsories.

Getting back to the point, could you use nanquan as an effective fighting art? Well, if someone showed you every application for every move, then yes. A lot of the form is modified to make it more appealing to the eye, so it would take someone very knowledgable to find out what moves = which applications. The best instructors for this kind of thing, believe it or not, are the old wushu athletes from the first & second generation of wushu teams in China. Despite popular belief, they actually trained with the "old masters" per se (this coming from my instructor, who was a former beijing wushu team member.) But keep in mind, that if you train wushu, you might learn martial applications, but you probably won't TRAIN applications. :)

[David Jamieson]

nan quan simply means southern fist.

lots of styles are nan chuan, but i haven't heard of a system called explicitly southern fist.

nan quan almost invariably refers to the contemporary wushu compulsory set that borrows it's martial flavourings from southern styles of cma.

[PlumDragon]

nan quan almost invariably refers to the contemporary wushu compulsory set that borrows it's martial flavourings from southern styles of cma.
It seems you were right, he was not referring to Nan Shaolin Quan (which *does* denote a specific system)...

But in an environment where one is asking a question about a topic that they know little about, it is important to be thorough in expanding all of the possibilities that might be associated with the question at hand. Best to preserve that... =)

[TenTigers]

sure it could be effective. A punch is a punch. However, would it be as efective as the systems it is a charactature of? Nope. The elbows lock in the punch, too much extension on the punch, no body connection on many of the strikes, stances lack correct structure, etc/ The opposite however is possible. A Southern stylist can probably learn Nan Chuan, but probably wouldn't score too high in competetion. You know, elbow not locked, not enough extension, etc...:p

[CLFNole]

Unless he was a CLF guy and the extension would be perfect :D ;)