Compete to win or compete to train?

[bawang]

"凡比较武艺，务要俱照示学习实敌本事，直可对搏打者，
不许仍学习花枪等法，徒支虚架，以图人前美观"

"competition should show fighting ability, only have fighting, dont allow flowery practioners performing fake forms for performance"
- gernal qijiguang

" practice of flowery gimmicks, shakey spears, twirling swords, rolling forks, should be banned"
-formation treatise
1:46 is fork rolling if u dont know what that is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwAMvJmBcR0


kung fu form tournaments make as much sense as a muslim gay parade

[taai gihk yahn]

"凡比较武艺，务要俱照示学习实敌本事，直可对搏打者，
不许仍学习花枪等法，徒支虚架，以图人前美观"

"competition should show fighting ability, only have fighting, dont allow flowery practioners performing fake forms for performance"
- gernal qijiguang

" practice of flowery gimmicks, shakey spears, twirling swords, rolling forks, should be banned"
-formation treatise
1:46 is fork rolling if u dont know what that is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwAMvJmBcR0


kung fu form tournaments make as much sense as a muslim gay parade

obviously a lot of stuff in certain weapon sets is purely for performance; and of course one can argue the "ethics" of this, but obviously if one teaches or performs for a living, it's kinda dull to show the 5 or 6 moves that one would actually use in combat (e.g. - who the heck wants to see those 13 move taiji pole sets? it's like - "I poke you from a couple of different angles and we're done" - good fighting, bad viewing)

the problem is when people think a performance move is combat oriented, and then try to come up with outlandish explanations for it; CTS was, as far as I recall, pretty clear about the difference - if not explicitly, then implicitly, since when he showed apps for weapons, they tended to be limited to the basic stuff that would work - the "fancy" stuff was in the forms, but he kinda just let those go by without addressing them application-wise;

one could argue that doing tiger-fork rolls was a good coordination builder, but it violates the principle of specificity of training; of course, one could also argue that learning to handle a weapon that way could be useful if one lost control of the weapon while fighting and had to quickly get it back (I mean, I hate when that happens to me during tiger fork death matches...), but again, it's an artifact, and not how it would probably happen; but anyway...

[bawang]

im not calling out your teacher im just showing that vid as an example, flowery things fork rolling is pretty obscure but survive from 500 years or more.
the training for tiger fork is pretty simple. the drill in jixiaoxinshu is ``four flat stance, big clinch, kill, small clinch, kill, clinch up, kill, small clinch up, kill. block up, press to kill. then u turn around repeat.

obviously a lot of stuff in certain weapon sets is purely for performance; and of course one can argue the "ethics" of this, but obviously if one teaches or performs for a living, it's kinda dull to show the 5 or 6 moves that one would actually use in combat (e.g. - who the heck wants to see those 13 move taiji pole sets?

if you eliminate need for audience and remove the audience aspect altogether, there wouldnt be need for these tings.

when the generals at the top hierarchy in command of the entire country used to condemn these things, their comments should be taken seriously. there shouldnt be any thoughts of an audience, out of principle. but when even your form you salute to invisible audience in the four corners, you have a problem.

teaching flowery twirling for crowd performance for survival, teaching some forms to rich boys for some quick cash, yes thats ok, but todays globalism and technology means you mislead one guy, you mislead a thousand. because that one guy is gonna spread the bullsh1t u told him all over the world.

plus with all the social cues and constraints removed , anyone can claim to be a master. yesterdays nerds and weird guys suddenly are grandmasters today. the harmless dumb silent guai lo in the back of the room turned out to be a ticking time bomb, waiting for the time to destroy kung fu and making it another cliche fad in american culture.

when the american public mocks GOD, mocks jesus, the source of western civilization and the history of their ancestors, why would you expect anyone to have repsect for your backflips and butterfly kicks and sword twirling from some silly chinamen

[Merryprankster]

Your question is complicated.

Some people compete because they are slaves to their ego. They want to WIN so, in essence, they can show off. A guy recently ran himself off doing that where I train. (One too many party fouls on the mat/and in etiquette)

Some people compete to see where they need to improve, or want to catapult their performance to another level, so it is a training tool, for them.

Some people compete because they are born competitors, and are differentiated from the first set of folks in the sense that it's an essential part of their being. They're not doing it because of the medal or so that other people can tell them they are great.

I'm a born competitor, and I'm personally embarrassed by praise or recognition - especially if I don't feel I earned it or if something seems simple (you don't get "points" in life for doing things you SHOULD do.) I've given away all but 4 medals I've ever earned in competition, and that's because those 4 mean something to me; they represent not the wins, but the years of hard work and 16-24 weeks of specific, boring, painful, exhausting competition prep where I learned to push my mind and my body much much further than I felt like, or ever thought I could. It sounds cliche, but when you feel like you are dying, because your breathing is ragged, your heart is pounding and your muscles won't MOVE, and you say "**** IT," and attack again, and it's for real, and made of DO, not "try...."

Well, there's something to that. You can take pride in that. A personal sense of accomplishment in doing something that requires real effort and all of your resources and capability to accomplish.

Winning - well, yeah you want to win - but it's almost incidental to that.

[taai gihk yahn]

im not calling out your teacher im just showing that vid as an example, flowery things fork rolling is pretty obscure but survive from 500 years or more.

no, I know you aren't, no worries - it was a valid example, I was just putting it into some context to actually support what you were saying

the training for tiger fork is pretty simple. the drill in jixiaoxinshu is ``four flat stance, big clinch, kill, small clinch, kill, clinch up, kill, small clinch up, kill. block up, press to kill. then u turn around repeat.
if you eliminate need for audience and remove the audience aspect altogether, there wouldnt be need for these tings.

exactly - it's a long stick with three sharp points at the end - you stab, stab, stab, maybe tangle up a weapon or get it stuck in something, so you may need o twist it to get it back...

when the generals at the top hierarchy in command of the entire country used to condemn these things, their comments should be taken seriously. there shouldnt be any thoughts of an audience, out of principle. but when even your form you salute to invisible audience in the four corners, you have a problem.
teaching flowery twirling for crowd performance for survival, teaching some forms to rich boys for some quick cash, yes thats ok, but todays globalism and technology means you mislead one guy, you mislead a thousand. because that one guy is gonna spread the bullsh1t u told him all over the world.
plus with all the social cues and constraints removed , anyone can claim to be a master. yesterdays nerds and weird guys suddenly are grandmasters today. the harmless dumb silent guai lo in the back of the room turned out to be a ticking time bomb, waiting for the time to destroy kung fu and making it another cliche fad in american culture.
when the american public mocks GOD, mocks jesus, the source of western civilization and the history of their ancestors, why would you expect anyone to have repsect for your backflips and butterfly kicks and sword twirling from some silly chinamen

silly Chinaman, tricks are for white kids...

[bawang]

exactly - it's a long stick with three sharp points at the end - you stab, stab, stab, maybe tangle up a weapon or get it stuck in something, so you may need o twist it to get it back...

entanglement is the whole point of tiger fork. its for support infantry to tie up the enemy. kill stance doesnt mean you kill. it means you hold him in the kill position then yor squad mates finish. the tigerfork can break even japanese swords easily. japanese turn the edge backwards and fight with the back of the blade when they fight forks.

[jdhowland]

I only twirl my fork for spaghetti.

Lots of good responses here. And maybe I should clarify my position by saying that I totally agree with what has been said about the need for open competition. I will encourage my students to try it if it ever becomes available here. The only other kf school I know of is a Wu Tan group 160 miles away and they don't do competition. There is a sports arena less than a mile from my school that regularly features amateur "championships" (at a pretty low level of skill, I've been told). Might be a good venue for some of us.

I don't know the rules and I'm pretty sure I don't have the specific skills to train others for this kind of competition. My cambo partners don't have strikes. My jj has good groundwork but leaves out the strikes in competition. My kf has it all to varying degrees but because of time constraints we work mostly standing up. The classical Japanese stuff is good for preparing to fight a 16th century Japanese soldier, but that hasn't happened in a while. Overall, we have plenty of knowledge. Three of my students are instructors in other arts. We just don't have the interest in what's going on under some stage lights somewhere else.

Watching any competition bores me and the idea of spectator sports makes me want to scream, "Get off your butts and go do it yourselves! Get some exercise!"

So maybe I just want to clarify my thinking on this. Is the semi-clandestine/anti-sporting attitude I share with my teachers preventing me from learning something valuable? Even though I'll never be a fan of professional fighters, should I watch what they are doing on YouTube? Life is short and I'd rather train.

[jdhowland]

[QUOTE=bawang;
when the american public mocks GOD, mocks jesus, the source of western civilization and the history of their ancestors, why would you expect anyone to have repsect for your backflips and butterfly kicks and sword twirling from some silly chinamen[/QUOTE]

Huh? Not sure I understand this. Are you saying "jesus" is a source of western civilization? Western civilization started in Anatolia 8000 years before Rabbi Yeshua came to town.
It is probably wrong to mock gods, but some are better than others. btw I am very interested in the history of my ancestors who used the word god properly and not as a substitute name for some foreign tribal deity.

I hope the twirly swords and backflips will die out from the public conception of kung fu. But it probably won't anytime soon. We should all go back to the old ways and not call our "styles" anything but Joe Blow's fighting or Rick's Stick headcrunching technique. That way popular media won't shame the name of kung fu. My art is no longer Chinese. It comes from China. But my personal arrogance and stupidity should not make people think poorly of the ancestors.