Southern Preying Mantis - GM Henry Sue - Oz

[sanjuro_ronin]

Gee, you have to make a little room sometimes in the clinch...

And you know, I'm sure, you can chamber different kinds of rounds in that weapon.

And that's kind of the cornerstone of the debate, I suppose, the short hand vs the 'longer arc' styles. With Boxing being what, 40/60?

Well, boxing has gloves, big gloves and to generate KO power with pillows, you need more body behind it and momentum.
Because the contact surface with gloves is different and "further' ahead then without them, power delivery is different.

I don't think the debate is really that though, we have all seen examples of short power in boxing from Marciano to Tyson and beyond.
No, that isn't the debate or the issue.
I think that the issue is COMBINATIONS that are no more than slaps.

[Jorge]

Sanjuro,

I can't speak for the people on the link, as I don't know them and have never felt their hands, but maybe its slaps cause its a demo. Or they dont want to take each others heads off.

I train yau kung so I've learned to flow and still have power behind my shots. Its not the three strikes like most short hands. We can throw as 5-6 combos and the power is still there(in my experience it has). If I'm not mistaken Jook Lum is also known for this. Not to mention there is rebound power in these short hand systems. It takes time to learn and your not going to get it from the forms, it has to be trained live. Slowly at first so that you understand how the body moves and how to actually get the rebound going, but once the understanding is there we pick up the pace. For example, we start off with pad drills and work it into our sparring. Soy Kuil Bin Choy! Then there is the saying, it doesn't matter how hard you hit, but where you hit! Which I find to also be true. We all talk from our personal experiences...What works for me, might not work for you and visa-versa and thats cool. Whats important is that we train what works for us, we test and fine tune during sparring and most importantly we have fun learning\training. When I stop having fun, then I'll stop training....cause cats out here dont scrap anymore...and I'm not known to bring my fists to a gun fight.lolol

Bless,

Buby

[sanjuro_ronin]

I've seen their pad work too ( the guys on the video) and it is NOT what pad work is suppose to be.
Slapping the pads is just as bad as slapping the salami and not near as much fun.
But slaps is what you get when you try to "flurry" your combinations like they are doing, just like the American kenpo guys do as an outside example.

If you are fighting someone, especially a bigger person, and that someone wants to really take your striking hard off, those slabs will not work, sorry.

As for hitting the right places, that is great and all but since the other guy is not just standing there and he is trying to rip your face off and skull **** you, those "right places" are gonna be pretty hard to hit so you better hope that ANYWHERE you make contact, you are gonna make contact with enough force to STOP him from doing just that.

[TenTigers]

I agree with Jorge-the slaps are simply focused strikes but not with power, so as not to injure each other, yet still make contact. Frankly, I think this is plainly obvious to anyone with any experience and half a brain.
The breaking is to demonstrate that yes, they can generate power.
It's like light sparring vs hitting the bags/mits-if you catch my meaning.
As far as multiple strikes, in my limited SPM experience, each strike has full body connection, so the next strike comes from where the hand is, coupled with how the body is positioned.
ie: if my right hand strike brings my right shoulder forward, and my hip turned, then my left strike will come from the rear-loaded left shoulder and opposite hip movement, jab/cross does the same thing.
If I need to hit with my right instead of my left, then I need to understand how to coil and whip,spit and swallow, in order to generate the short power.
This is one of the most difficult skills to develop.
One, because developing the power in general takes time, effort, etc
two-to be able to develop the conditioned response to be able to pull this off, doing multiple strikes in rapid-fire succession, under stress of combat
...aye, there's the rub

It's being able to put it all together that will take years

[sanjuro_ronin]

I agree with Jorge-the slaps are simply focused strikes but not with power, so as not to injure each other, yet still make contact. Frankly, I think this is plainly obvious to anyone with any experience and half a brain.
The breaking is to demonstrate that yes, they can generate power.
It's like light sparring vs hitting the bags/mits-if you catch my meaning.
As far as multiple strikes, in my limited SPM experience, each strike has full body connection, so the next strike comes from where the hand is, coupled with how the body is positioned.
ie: if my right hand strike brings my right shoulder forward, and my hip turned, then my left strike will come from the rear-loaded left shoulder and opposite hip movement, jab/cross does the same thing.
If I need to hit with my right instead of my left, then I need to understand how to coil and whip,spit and swallow, in order to generate the short power.
This is one of the most difficult skills to develop.
One, because developing the power in general takes time, effort, etc
two-to be able to develop the conditioned response to be able to pull this off, doing multiple strikes in rapid-fire succession, under stress of combat
...aye, there's the rub

It's being able to put it all together that will take years

Sorry, don't see it.
If you don't train it the right way it will NOT come out in combat, it just won't no matter how hard you think it will.
I've seen it first hand with my Sifu's students, with students from a nearby Pak mei school in London and another pak mei school here in Toronto ( Scarborough to be specific).

Now of course it could be just those people, but the fact that it is constant and across the board and not just with a couple of practioners makes MY experience on this way different than yours it seems.

[TenTigers]

I've seen their pad work too ( the guys on the video) and it is NOT what pad work is suppose to be.
Slapping the pads is just as bad as slapping the salami and not near as much fun.
But slaps is what you get when you try to "flurry" your combinations like they are doing, just like the American kenpo guys do as an outside example.

If you are fighting someone, especially a bigger person, and that someone wants to really take your striking hard off, those slabs will not work, sorry.

agreed. I think the idea in this case is that if the person is disoriented, then they are set up for the heavier coup de gras.
Finger fliks to the eyes are not KO's but if I can make you shut your eyes and wince for even a second, I can get in my second strike, and my third.
Sure, it's great to KO someone with an opening strike, but not likely.
More likely you will set up,daze, confuse, and then go in for the kill.
Similar to how a shark will first bump its prey, then circle and take a chomp, circle and take another chomp, and when the prey is incapacitated, go in for the rip-open-the gut and devour.

-except for those Great Whites that come up from underneath at 25mph and take a sealion in its jaws,while breaching like a marlin. those are cool!
(and also the reason why I only swim in pools...)

[TenTigers]

yeah, I think I drifted a bit-
In the first part, I was just saying how I believe they are training, the second part being how SPM trains the multiple strikes.
They are actually two separate thoughts.

[sanjuro_ronin]

yeah, I think I drifted a bit-
In the first part, I was just saying how I believe they are training, the second part being how SPM trains the multiple strikes.
They are actually two separate thoughts.

As you know, we tend to agree on most things, simple because we both cling to the "ancient ways" even if we train them with a modern flair.
But the reason I am being contensious with you on this is because I KNOW that the vast majority of Short hand guys that "slap fight" end up doing this for real and pay the price for it, I have seen it and have tried to fix that on those that I care enough to fix.
It's not that I KNOW more than them, its because I understand the role of short power better than they do in regards to TODAY'S fighting.
It doesn't matter how it was done 50 years ago, those people were not presented with they type of fighters we are today and most of them fought within their "inbreeding grounds".
How m any times do we have to see another "kung fu master" get his ass kicked by a MMA guy because he doesn't have a clue to sloving that puzzle because he has been playing a different game all this time?

I don't know how you spar bro, but I do know how I do it and how I have seen it and felt it in the schools I have trained in and the fact it, Short hand falls apart as soon as it is presented a different set of variables than it is trained against.

I can name names even but I won't because I am not here to ruin anyone livelyhood, but too many Sifu's are in a dilusion of effectiveness because all they do is "fight" their own students and their own kind.

Well, guess what?
There are far more people training MT and MMA and USING it then there was guys training kung fu and karate and using it back 10-20 or 30 years ago.
And they KNOW how to take most TCMA out of their comfort zone.

[Jorge]

Let me see if I can marry what Sanjuro is saying to what Ten Tigers and myself are saying...

If I'm understanding Sanjuro correctly, he's saying that training in a slap type fashion will build bad habits. Please correct me if I'm wrong. If so, then I can agree to an extent. Because you fight the way you train and if all you are doing is letting your hands go, but not really training the power generation, intent and skill that Ten Tigers is talking about, it will never happen in a stressful type of environment like a real fight.

If so, then we all agree. One must train accordingly! Slapping has its time an place, but to go slap happy as a means of training your fighting hand its not progressive. You are not going to learn the proper timing, distancing it takes to release ging or the proper intent to make it work. My Sifu comes from a full contact background so he stresses full contact training and sparring, we all get roughed up, but we are training martial arts.LOLOL Maybe I'm a gluten for pain, but I feel like the man coming home all Fncked up after training.LOLOL

Ten Tigers: I understand what you mean...One of my old JKD instructors would have us chain punch for days and of course some had it more down then others with regards to power... When it came to this technique he didn't care if we had crazy power behind it. He said the trick was to snap the head back quickly as many times as you could within a rapid succession. His logic was that if the head snaps back and the brain shakes inside and smacks against the skull enough times, eventually it would short its self out and cause a KO. Which made sense for it was chain punches. I've also seen it done, but I cant comment on how much power the dude used to get it done.


Bless,

Buby

[sanjuro_ronin]

In a nutshell, Buby, yes, you are right, what was my point, to a degree.
But you make a comment that reflects the other point that I don't think came across:

I've also seen it done,

We've ALL seen stuff done, that is an irrelevant point, the context of HOW it was done is everything.
I've seen guys get take out by a low round kick all the time in demos, but how many times do you see ONE kick take out a guy in a fight?
I've seen many guys put down with a shot to the gut or ribs or side of the neck, in demos, but how many times have you seen it in an actual fight?
See my point?
Many things seem to work in controlled sparring and in demos and when Sifu demos it on us hurts like freaking tomorrow, but that doesn't mean it will work on someone trying to give us a new anus.

[SavvySavage]

In a nutshell, Buby, yes, you are right, what was my point, to a degree.
But you make a comment that reflects the other point that I don't think came across:

We've ALL seen stuff done, that is an irrelevant point, the context of HOW it was done is everything.
I've seen guys get take out by a low round kick all the time in demos, but how many times do you see ONE kick take out a guy in a fight?
I've seen many guys put down with a shot to the gut or ribs or side of the neck, in demos, but how many times have you seen it in an actual fight?
See my point?
Many things seem to work in controlled sparring and in demos and when Sifu demos it on us hurts like freaking tomorrow, but that doesn't mean it will work on someone trying to give us a new anus.

One needs to questions why these movements from the drills don't come out looking pretty during sparring or even come out at all. The traditional way of looking at it would say to us that we haven't trained it long enough which baffles me. If I've been doing drills for four years...how many more years do I need to drill before I stopped getting punched in sparring? Then the person would say that you haven't been training full time for four years...that you're only doing it part time...thereby saying you need to put MORE time into the same kind of drilling. I feel bad for saying this but the people making these claims aren't ever sparring and there is never any footage of them fighting. They "have" sparred but no one was ever around to ascertain whether or not their claims of using real kung fu were real and if they actually looked any different than "glorified kickboxers."

Sanjuro makes a good point about how techniques worked, whether in demo or sparring/fighting, and that that makes a difference in whether or not it actually works. I was sparring the other day and my partner made this claim: "The reason I'm getting hit is because I'm actually trying to do kung fu. It seems like you're just head hunting."

Years ago I would have fully supported this view and said, "yeah you're right. I'm just going crazy and not doing 'real' technique but you're probably better than me overall." Looking at it now I say that the old me was full of crap. The guy I was sparring trying to do 'real kung fu' was doing just the opposite. He was not defending/attacking effectively and was getting pummeled. His mistake, imo, was trying to do moves out of forms that aren't realistic no matter how often trained. Being effective in sparring might just be the 'real kung fu'.

[SavvySavage]

I'd also like to point out that I've never been stopped by short power during sparring. It's a great concept when drilling but seems to fizzle when sparring. Some may claim that I haven't sparred with the 'real deal' whatever that means and whoever that is.

[Jorge]

In a nutshell, Buby, yes, you are right, what was my point, to a degree.
But you make a comment that reflects the other point that I don't think came across:

We've ALL seen stuff done, that is an irrelevant point, the context of HOW it was done is everything.
I've seen guys get take out by a low round kick all the time in demos, but how many times do you see ONE kick take out a guy in a fight?
I've seen many guys put down with a shot to the gut or ribs or side of the neck, in demos, but how many times have you seen it in an actual fight?
See my point?
Many things seem to work in controlled sparring and in demos and when Sifu demos it on us hurts like freaking tomorrow, but that doesn't mean it will work on someone trying to give us a new anus.

Bro, but that is a given! No tech. is full proof. Its going to vary according to your opponent. Its one of the reasons I dont rely on kinematic responses cause I learned quickly that everybody's pain threshold or tolerance is different. Not to mention if the dude is geeked up!

I can't relate, because I don't do controlled sparring. After the first six months, we are all made to fight full contact.


Bless,

Buby

[Jorge]

One needs to questions why these movements from the drills don't come out looking pretty during sparring or even come out at all. The traditional way of looking at it would say to us that we haven't trained it long enough which baffles me. If I've been doing drills for four years...how many more years do I need to drill before I stopped getting punched in sparring? Then the person would say that you haven't been training full time for four years...that you're only doing it part time...thereby saying you need to put MORE time into the same kind of drilling. I feel bad for saying this but the people making these claims aren't ever sparring and there is never any footage of them fighting. They "have" sparred but no one was ever around to ascertain whether or not their claims of using real kung fu were real and if they actually looked any different than "glorified kickboxers."

Sanjuro makes a good point about how techniques worked, whether in demo or sparring/fighting, and that that makes a difference in whether or not it actually works. I was sparring the other day and my partner made this claim: "The reason I'm getting hit is because I'm actually trying to do kung fu. It seems like you're just head hunting."

Years ago I would have fully supported this view and said, "yeah you're right. I'm just going crazy and not doing 'real' technique but you're probably better than me overall." Looking at it now I say that the old me was full of crap. The guy I was sparring trying to do 'real kung fu' was doing just the opposite. He was not defending/attacking effectively and was getting pummeled. His mistake, imo, was trying to do moves out of forms that aren't realistic no matter how often trained. Being effective in sparring might just be the 'real kung fu'.

Bro,
You are probably right, because drills will only get you so far and they do not prepare you for a real fight. You have to fight in order to learn to fight and not against your same style.

IMHO, its incorrect to train sequences as found in forms, because everybody is different. No two people are going to react the same. Again, I'm stuck cause its not the way I was taught to train my Kung Fu. I learned kinematic responses so I could learn how the body should react, but again, everybody's different.

Yes, I will agree wit you. He was doing the opposite, but that falls on the sifu/coach for not coaching him properly during the sparring. And every move has its time and place, knowing when to use them is something else.

The Kung Fu I've learned is fast and ugly. Its like a street fighters intent, but with a boxers speed and grace.LOLOL I made that one up so if any one wants to use my saying its .25 cents, so I can get me a quarter water.LOLOL

Bless,

Buby

[Jorge]

I'd also like to point out that I've never been stopped by short power during sparring. It's a great concept when drilling but seems to fizzle when sparring. Some may claim that I haven't sparred with the 'real deal' whatever that means and whoever that is.

You have never been stopped by a good cross or a good solid jab? We have those in short hand systems, of course by different names. What makes them short hand is our posture, no need to bring the elbows back.

Bless,

Buby