Bak mei in MMA

[Frost]

if this has been posted before i apologise but what do people think of this training, is it proper bakmei in action?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sh8lX...layer_embedded

[GeneChing]

In our Nov Dec 2010 (which hits the newsstands next week), there's a short news report Dragon House 3 at the Kezar Pavilion by Greg Hebert.

[Violent Designs]

if this has been posted before i apologise but what do people think of this training, is it proper bakmei in action?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sh8lX...layer_embedded

I support it.

[Yum Cha]

Sifu Luo speaks for himself rather eloquently I thought.

[Frost]

my question was not so much was the training a good idea, its nice to see chinese styles training hard. My question was does the sparring actually look anything like what you would consider bakmei?

To me the difference between the sets and drills they were doing and the actual sparring was surprising and wondered what others thought of it?

[taai gihk yahn]

my question was not so much was the training a good idea, its nice to see chinese styles training hard. My question was does the sparring actually look anything like what you would consider bakmei?

To me the difference between the sets and drills they were doing and the actual sparring was surprising and wondered what others thought of it?

of course they look different - bok mei is a bridging based system that works like it "should" when you are fighting someone who agrees to participate in that sort of convention; and IMPO, the reason for this convention being so widespread was that it was an excellent platform wherein one person could demonstrate superior skill over another either overtly or covertly (this one perhaps being even more desirable from a Chinese cultural perspective - in other words, your opponent knows he was owned, and is even more humiliated that you could do it without anyone else except other high-level players being aware of it; in fact, you could even make it look like he was the winner, and he would be acclaimed publicly the winner but knew he really wasn't, and have to bear that he was living a lie - well, that's my sense of it at least, I may be wrong) , without the need for actually harming their opponent, which from a socioeconomic perspective made sense for MA teachers and students alike

as to a rationale for training this way, since most bok mei was generally a "closed door" style, historically it fought mostly bok mei people in training, except when it went out and fought people in the same geographic areas who trained in radically different styles like dragon, WC, SPM and pre-WFH hung kyuhn...

or didn't you know that already...

that said, I have nothing but a positive impression of Sifu Lou both in terms of his own level of fitness, how he plays his classical forms and that he is not sticking his head in the proverbial ground in regards to the lay of the contemporary landscape;

[Frost]

of course they look different - bok mei is a bridging based system that works like it "should" when you are fighting someone who agrees to participate in that sort of convention; and IMPO, the reason for this convention being so widespread was that it was an excellent platform wherein one person could demonstrate superior skill over another either overtly or covertly (this one perhaps being even more desirable from a Chinese cultural perspective - in other words, your opponent knows he was owned, and is even more humiliated that you could do it without anyone else except other high-level players being aware of it; in fact, you could even make it look like he was the winner, and he would be acclaimed publicly the winner but knew he really wasn't, and have to bear that he was living a lie - well, that's my sense of it at least, I may be wrong) , without the need for actually harming their opponent, which from a socioeconomic perspective made sense for MA teachers and students alike

as to a rationale for training this way, since most bok mei was generally a "closed door" style, historically it fought mostly bok mei people in training, except when it went out and fought people in the same geographic areas who trained in radically different styles like dragon, WC, SPM and pre-WFH hung kyuhn...

or didn't you know that already...

that said, I have nothing but a positive impression of Sifu Lou both in terms of his own level of fitness, how he plays his classical forms and that he is not sticking his head in the proverbial ground in regards to the lay of the contemporary landscape;

would you stop being sensible and thoughtful for a minute you are ruining this thread

My question would be, if the fighting now looks nothing like the training methods that have tradionally been used.....why bother with them?

and this isn't a forms are useless thread this is a genuine question, if function looks nothing like form or traditional training anymore why bother with it why not let your training evolve as you have let your fighting evolve?

[Violent Designs]

Maybe the Bak Mei functions better in close and as dirty boxing methods/techniques?

I was gonna say maybe the gloves have something to do with it.

But MMA gloves are tiny and can't impact you *THAT* much... I spar with my friend who does Wing Chun and he still applies many of the same techniques.

Although he's "impure" as well doing Kyokushin, training Thai boxing with me for a while as well.

[taai gihk yahn]

would you stop being sensible and thoughtful for a minute you are ruining this thread

My question would be, if the fighting now looks nothing like the training methods that have tradionally been used.....why bother with them?

and this isn't a forms are useless thread this is a genuine question, if function looks nothing like form or traditional training anymore why bother with it why not let your training evolve as you have let your fighting evolve?

I look at it this way - "general fighting" versus "style specific" (in other words, the stuff that makes bok mei look like bok mei); general is that common denominator that most fighting comes down to when you see it happen, which is pretty much what MMA looks like - in other words, "natural" fighting in the sense that this is what the biomechanics and neuormuscular physiology run home to when under stress and geared towards high-percentage; it is the most versatile, adaptable and "safest" way to engage in combat against a wide variety of unknown opponents; as such, it really is what needs must be trained in order to be able to get into and stay in the game;
now, the "style specific" stuff, the idosyncratic bok-mei-like stuff is kind of the icing on the cake - it can be applied in 3 situations: one, when both parties agree to set up the context where it can flourish - e.g. - a bridging hands contest with rules written and / or unwritten; because of the constraints of the context, you can "safely" work the more intricate things that, if the opponent simply declines to participate, don't matter for spit; two - if u r just so much better than your opponent that you can FORCE the context as well as the content on him - so if he's a talentless scrub, you can dominate him and in a way "force" him to work in a bridging context, and work this stuff; third, if u r good enough at the "general" stuff, and are evenly matched w another skilled opponent, it may be the edge that gets u ahead, by virtue of its unconventionality - so e.g. maybe u r entering into clinch range and u r able to momentarily use ur bok mei listening, bridging, swallow/spit type ging in context of the general work, to get the edge, either to actually hit the guy or gain control; what is happening here is that u r working ur regular context, but if the opportiunity momentarily presents itself to work a la BM, u seize on it;
now, this is of course theoretical as I personally have not had the chance to ever try this sort of thing; so I am making somewhat of an assumptive leap here, just trying to logically consider a potential rationale for this; of course, the counter-argument is that if it's so low percentage and specific, why bother, just train the general stuff harder - and I agree up to a point, in the sense that eventually all skill sets hit an asymptote and it's more about maintenance than progress, so it may at THAT point be more worthwhile to train more abstruse skill sets to a greater degree; of course, then one asks, why would it make sense to have the outlyer skill set be the main aspect of the system? and again, I'd say that in the context-specifics of the past, it made sense; in the current context, where the more common denominator is the sort of "naturalistic" fighting we see, it doesn't - so yeah, it's a bit of an existential crisis, i grant you that - we'll just see where it ends up...

[bawang]

im jealous of his huge pulsating biceps

[Frost]

Maybe the Bak Mei functions better in close and as dirty boxing methods/techniques?

I was gonna say maybe the gloves have something to do with it.

But MMA gloves are tiny and can't impact you *THAT* much... I spar with my friend who does Wing Chun and he still applies many of the same techniques.

Although he's "impure" as well doing Kyokushin, training Thai boxing with me for a while as well.

yeah but if it worked at that range you would expect them to be working on entering into that range in there normal sparring rather than hanging out at a range that they dont really know

[RB93SAAT]

my question was not so much was the training a good idea, its nice to see chinese styles training hard. My question was does the sparring actually look anything like what you would consider bakmei?

To me the difference between the sets and drills they were doing and the actual sparring was surprising and wondered what others thought of it?

there're more wing chun than bak mei techniques, btw, lou's ex-wife used to study wing chun under chris chan for many years.

is it proper bakmei in action?

mma, yes...traditional bak mei, i have to say no!

[Shaolindynasty]

He points out that they cross train in part one of the video

[RB93SAAT]

as you can see these wing chun dummy techniques, luo learnt it from his ex-wife christy.

[Dragonzbane76]

refreshing to see a CMA's school look to the next level and go forward with that kind of training.

You could say it's not Bak Mei, you could say that its a diversion from the roots of said style. You could also say that it's the evolution of what needs to happen as well. You could say that it's progression to the next level and not being stuck in the past.

But in the end you could say a lot of things and it doesn't matter. Only thing that matters in fact is that you train hard in a realistic fashion.