The Difference Between Internal Arts and Wrestling

[wiz cool c]

I have been living in Beijing and studying Shuai Jiao and Bagua for one year now. Here are the main differences. In wrestling we spar regularly. We go at it try to throw each other as hard as we can. If you loss nobody thinks anything of it. Everyone who wrestles regularly losses sometime. I did today by two more experenced S/J guys,no big deal.

Now for the Bagua. Although I love this art and know it is applicable to fighting, they never spar in this school. They do forms and learn the applications to the form.

Now if you go on youtube and look at some push hands tournaments see the things people write it is amazing. This guy sucks he knows nothing. So and so OldMaster can effortlessly throw people. They almost never applie their art and have a real fantasy idea of what goes on under pressure.

People who have never done a push hands tournament making comments. These people need to do more resistance training and less theorizing.

[One Armed Boxer]

Hi, Where abouts are you learning bagua? I move to Beijing soon and am keen to learn

[doug maverick]

they really don't spar in bagua espiecially not in the beginning. this is internal kung fu and its a whole defferent thing when you start learning to develop all those tiny little muscles in your body you can really hurt someone and you have to learn control, but then later theres rou shou which is a little like push hands and wing chuns stiky hands combined. sparring really doens't teach how to fight it teachs you how to spar. i was raised in the south bronx and studied many defferent arts and it wasn't until i started studing internal martial arts that i knew all the stuff i learned was pretty useless and i was just lucky in fights. trust persevre it may take ten years but once you learn you'll be glad.

[Three Harmonies]

If anything takes 10 years you have been fooled for 9 1/2! It is those silly ideologies/comments that are dragging the CMA underwater and drowning them! It would be the same as saying it takes 10 years to teach one of our soldiers how to fire a weapon in combat! Silly.
Jake

[cruz]

I have been living in Beijing and studying Shuai Jiao and Bagua for one year now. Here are the main differences. In wrestling we spar regularly. We go at it try to throw each other as hard as we can. If you loss nobody thinks anything of it. Everyone who wrestles regularly losses sometime. I did today by two more experenced S/J guys,no big deal.

Now for the Bagua. Although I love this art and know it is applicable to fighting, they never spar in this school. They do forms and learn the applications to the form.

Now if you go on youtube and look at some push hands tournaments see the things people write it is amazing. This guy sucks he knows nothing. So and so OldMaster can effortlessly throw people. They almost never applie their art and have a real fantasy idea of what goes on under pressure.

People who have never done a push hands tournament making comments. These people need to do more resistance training and less theorizing.

i have to agree with you how people dont know what there talking about when they see a internal arts teacher ..there was a guy that used to talk bad about my teacher because he did;nt do much sparing ..well it inded up where his mouth was to much and challengd my teacher .my shirfu is a hsing.i teacher .anyways it looked like he barley hit him but broke is ribs and i threw him about 10 feet or so .so it just shows you some people dont understand internal arts .just because they dont realy spar like other arts

[QuaiJohnCain]

Internal artists don't spar at the intensity wrestlers do? News to me.

It's not so bad that 90% of internal arts teachers stink, the real loss occurs when someone observes a poor teacher, and assumes the entire genre is just as bad....

Buyer beware- you get poor goods, it's because you failed yourself. Period.


Tragic thread.

[YiLiQuan1]

If anything takes 10 years you have been fooled for 9 1/2! It is those silly ideologies/comments that are dragging the CMA underwater and drowning them! It would be the same as saying it takes 10 years to teach one of our soldiers how to fire a weapon in combat! Silly.
Jake

Absolutely!

Qigong takes 10 years for "real" development... Only if your teacher gradually feeds you miniscule tidbits of information that'd take all of an afternoon to teach you.

Kung fu takes 10 years to develop "real" fighting skill... Only if your teacher limits your training and learning so that what you ought to learn/develop in 6 months is extended to cover a period 20 times longer than necessary...

People need to get over the Hong Kong Kung Fooey movie mystique and get back to training... Do they really think that monks assailed daily by bandits and thieves had 10 years worth of time to become capable of defending themselves? That would have ended rather quickly, don't you think? Do they really think that caravan guards were comprised solely of people with over a decade of training? Please... That's just not fiscally sound. Nobody could afford to hire that level of skill! They'd HAVE to hire some complete nobodies just to flesh out the guard roster.

[Three Harmonies]

Precisely Matt! Wasted breath here on KFO I am afraid!
Say.....don't I owe you a beer, or you owe me three?? When you coming up I-5 next?
Cheers brother,
Jake

[doug maverick]

never said it takes ten years to learn how to fight. just said it does the to learn the full art and have a full comprehension of it. you sound like those guys who only know about competion fighting and would probably be sent home butt naked if they came around my hood talking that mess. to bad anyway not gonna comment on here again.

[YiLiQuan1]

never said it takes ten years to learn how to fight.

No, but you did imply it.

just said it does the to learn the full art and have a full comprehension of it.

Only 10 years to learn the full art and have full comprehension? For that standard, I'd say you're falling short of the mark. I've been training for 22 years this year, and I'm still learning quite a bit.

you sound like those guys who only know about competion fighting and would probably be sent home butt naked if they came around my hood talking that mess.

No, I sound like one of those guys that's been doing this a while, has had the chance to get around a bit, and knows that there are too many people who claim that CMA needs far more time to develop skill than it really does. This is due to either a) unscrupulous teachers; b) students/teachers with a severe lack of knowledge; or c) a combination of both.

As for your "hood," and being send home "butt naked," somehow I'm just really not impressed...

to bad anyway not gonna comment on here again.

Your loss.

I've been doing internal arts for 22 years. I've also done external arts during that time as well. There is little genuine difference. If you write a list of what the "differences" are, you'll find, in the end, more similarities than differences. As has been discussed so many times, the "internal/external" debate was a false one to begin with, and was propagated by poorly informed teachers after the fact. We have the "traditional" instruction model (e.g. teach only a small amount at a time; keep "secret" techniques to maintain both control over students and encourage their dependence on the teacher; forbid students to interact with either other students or outside schools; etc.) to thank for this.

Even in traditional training, if a student can't hold their own in a fight after no more than 6 months, there's something incredibly wrong with that instructional method.

[cruz]

Your loss.

I've been doing internal arts for 22 years. I've also done external arts during that time as well. There is little genuine difference. If you write a list of what the "differences" are, you'll find, in the end, more similarities than differences. As has been discussed so many times, the "internal/external" debate was a false one to begin with, and was propagated by poorly informed teachers after the fact. We have the "traditional" instruction model

after 22 years you think that there is little difference in internal and external ...your talking about teachers holding info from people whos your teacher ...and i have noticed that people talk on here like they are right and that the person that made a statement is wrong and then gets slack for it ...iam suprized that there is a forum and people just dont give up on it

[wiz cool c]

Hi, Where abouts are you learning bagua? I move to Beijing soon and am keen to learn

Ritan Park with Zhang Lao Shi. You can go to www.kungfuinchina.com

[Fu-Pow]

You can learn some basics in a short amount of time but there are deeper levels to internal arts, deeper levels of body movement that aren't obvious at first. If you just are content with the shallower level then you might be better off doing external arts and mastering those skills under pressure.

FP

[BAI HE]

Wiz, throw and throw and throw with the SC guys. Bagua throws are very SC but Bagua san-shou is the lead. Take whatever anyone will give or teach, but think about san-shou to throw and your entry to throw strategy.

Lots of Bagua material is missing the "throws" these days.

[doug maverick]

i'm back. and i apologize for assuming you were someone you weren't i just didn't want to turn this into one of those stupid threads about why this or that doesn't work. you know what there are alot(the amount is astounding) of bad internal (and external for that matter) teachers out there. i've been training for almost as long as you(about 20 years, the last five have been in xing yi) and what i am trying to say to people that when practicing martial arts you have to get out of that mcdonald fast food way of thinking to truly learn an art for whatever reason takes time, its not like the matrix where they plug soemthing in you and then you just learn it. i've trained in xing yi for the past five years and i was fortunate enough to find a good capable teacher who knows the full art, he wanted me to fully comprehend each fist so i learned them slowly, and though i've learned the five fist and some of the linking set i haven't learned the full system(though i can apply them) i just don't like those stupid arguments of what better or why this doesn't work. its all about the individual. i said it on another thread, traditional arts weather its chinese japanese or other, is not designed for compition ofcourse there are some exceptions, their designed for the real deal, and you have to know how to handle all the miriads of defferent situations that go on in real fighting without having a dilussion of your skill and that takes a while. my sifu always says that in internal arts it goes three weeks(the stage when you wanna die from the pain) three months(where you think its not works) and three years(where if you trained hard enough you've managed some skill and think your powerfull) the last one is the most dangerous and why alot of cma teachers aren't that good they reach that point don't push past it and are stuck with that mantallity for ever. anyway i just wanted to say that if you really wanna a learn internal arts don't worry about sparring just because your good at sparring doens't mean you'll be good at the real thing. which is what traditional martial arts are designed for.