TCMA for combat only

[YouKnowWho]

I feel your generation screwed it up,.....

You are right about this. I had sparred with my senior longfist brothers (such as Nelson Zhou, ...) but I could never make my junior longfist brothers to spar with me. For some unknown reason, combat was just not in their priority list.

David C. K. Lin always said that by including our teacher's experience, we had experienced TCMA for the past 100 years. The trend is not good.

[YouKnowWho]

I don't believe you can make a fighter.

That's why it's important to be able to select your students if money is not issue. Some of my guys go to MMA gym. Because their Chinese wrestling background, those MMA gym loved to let them to test their skill there for free. It could benefit both parties.

One of my guys had 15 years wrestling background. Onetime he defeat another guy by 15-0. A year later he met the same guy again, He found out that every moves he liked to use, that guy could almost do as good as he did. During their rematch, my guy could only beat him 5 points ahead.

If you can beat me, I want to spar with you, so I can learn from you and beat you someday. That's a great attitude to have.

[Kellen Bassette]

You are right about this. I had sparred with my senior longfist brothers (such as Nelson Zhou, ...) but I could never make my junior longfist brothers to spar with me. For some unknown reason, combat was just not in their priority list.

David C. K. Lin always said that by including our teacher's experience, we had experienced TCMA for the past 100 years. The trend is not good.

I may be off base, but I think what happened, in the States anyway, was we had this influx of MAs in the '60's and 70's...it didn't take long to figure out the real money is in teaching kids. When you gear towards kids, in the USA, you cant' be sending them home with black eyes and bloody noses or making them do real conditioning...their parents would freak.

So point sparring becomes popular to keep it "somewhat martial." Fast forward to 2012 and you have a full 3 or 4 generations of students who never engaged in true combat oriented training or real conditioning. They think/claim they are teaching traditionally, because their instructor taught them this way. The arts begin to die.

Here in Thailand you got 8 year old kids fighting full contact with elbows to the face, no head gear ect..fighting pro rules...many have 100 fights by the time they are 18. This simply wouldn't be socially acceptable in the west, putting a 10 year old kid in a situation where getting knocked out is a very real possibility.

[Kellen Bassette]

That's why it's important to be able to select your students if money is not issue. Some of my guys go to MMA gym. Because their Chinese wrestling background, those MMA gym loved to let them to test their skill there for free. It could benefit both parties.

An advantage real MMA schools have over TMA is your only going to have people who are interested in combat. If you don't have fighting spirit, you simply won't last training for an MMA match and will drop out.

If a TCMA sifu taught in this truly combat oriented manner, he would probably lose 3/4 of his class and his livelihood. I used to be opposed to separating TCMA and Sanda into different classes. I felt it was bad for the art and confusing to the true purpose of TCMA.

I'm starting to think it may be the answer though. At least with the separate classes, the health crowd, the artsy guys, the people who just want a fun workout and the LARPERS can train TCMA and be happy, sifu keeps the lights on. The fighters can train both classes.

If you can beat me, please join me, so I can learn from you. This is a great attitude.

Absolutely.

[YouKnowWho]

In today's class, my guys were talking about more TCMA are used in UFC. They have seen some vertical fist, reverse side kick (cross leg), ...

When my guy used his leading leg to "bait" his opponent's "single leg" so he could use his over hook and elbow cracking, those MMA guys all love that move and want to collect that tool into their toolbox. A valid single leg counter can be very valuable. I'm sure TCMA skill will be used in UFC more and more. Just hate to see that MMA guys help us to preserve TCMA and not our TCMA guys.

[Kellen Bassette]

In today's class, my guys were talking about more TCMA are used in UFC. They have seen some vertical fist, reverse side kick (cross leg), ...

When my guy used his leading leg to "bait" his opponent's "single leg" so he could use his over hook and elbow cracking, those MMA guys all love that move and want to collect that tool into their toolbox. A valid single leg counter can be very valuable. I'm sure TCMA skill will be used in UFC more and more. Just hate to see that MMA guys help us to preserve TCMA and not our TCMA guys.

I would add cross kick (shin check with the back leg to opponents lead leg) and low side kick as well. I even saw Alex Carceres land a double punch, couldn't believe it.

I think the MMA guys are open to new techs when you can demonstrate their value in a fighting scenario. Cung Le's going to nearly single handedly bring the spinning heel kick into the cage. There's a couple others that use it....but Cung throws it in almost every fight.

[Jimbo]

I may be off base, but I think what happened, in the States anyway, was we had this influx of MAs in the '60's and 70's...it didn't take long to figure out the real money is in teaching kids. When you gear towards kids, in the USA, you cant' be sending them home with black eyes and bloody noses or making them do real conditioning...their parents would freak.

So point sparring becomes popular to keep it "somewhat martial." Fast forward to 2012 and you have a full 3 or 4 generations of students who never engaged in true combat oriented training or real conditioning. They think/claim they are teaching traditionally, because their instructor taught them this way. The arts begin to die.

Here in Thailand you got 8 year old kids fighting full contact with elbows to the face, no head gear ect..fighting pro rules...many have 100 fights by the time they are 18. This simply wouldn't be socially acceptable in the west, putting a 10 year old kid in a situation where getting knocked out is a very real possibility.

I can agree with some of your points. A lot of the MA schools now cater to children out of financial necessity. I'm not really certain when the 'kiddie karate' (or whatever art) emphasis took off in full force, but my personal experiences when I began training in the '70s were not like that. I always trained with adults, and if you couldn't take it, you were free to leave. I saw a few other kids who came and went, and was the only kid who stuck with it consistently over those early years. My karate instructor even flunked me twice on my black belt test. I finally passed the third time, but had to take the full test all three times. And it was a tough test...no point tag, but lots of kickboxing. I doubt many teachers nowadays would flunk many students during testing, especially kids or teens. And I don't think my experiences were unique at the time.

But as far as kids in Thailand who compete in Muay Thai, that really isn't a fair comparison to your typical American kid. Aren't most of those kids from poor families who need the income of a fighting career? That's their ticket to a livelihood. I doubt your typical, educated city kid even in Thailand wants to train like that. If someone is going to be a doctor, a teacher, a pilot, musician, etc., why would they? Unless they are planning to be a pro fighter, or make MA the only occupation in their life.

I believe in a martially-oriented mindset in MA, but there has got to be other considerations as well. Generally speaking, most people take it up to in some way enhance their lives, not let it take over their lives completely. I used to have an all-or-nothing attitude about MA, but now there's other things I love in life too, and I wouldn't continue training anymore if I didn't enjoy it.

[Jimbo]

Why would you (general YOU) get into fight? Because you may think that you are not man enough if you don't fight? Why would you think that you may not be man enough? Because you don't know whether you can truly handle your opponent or not.

When you don't know that your punch is strong enough to knock your opponent down, or your throw is skillful enough to take your opponent down, you will be more likely to accept the fight just to verify your self-confidence. If you have confidence in your "finish moves", it won't hurt your self-confidence to back up and avoid the fight.

You have to have fighting ability before you can talk about "inner peace". Without the combat ability, the "inner peace" is only a lie to yourself. There is a big difference between:

- Can do but don't want to do, and
- want to do but can't do.

This is very true.

[Kellen Bassette]

I can agree with some of your points. A lot of the MA schools now cater to children out of financial necessity. I'm not really certain when the 'kiddie karate' (or whatever art) emphasis took off in full force, but my personal experiences when I began training in the '70s were not like that. I always trained with adults, and if you couldn't take it, you were free to leave. I saw a few other kids who came and went, and was the only kid who stuck with it consistently over those early years. My karate instructor even flunked me twice on my black belt test. I finally passed the third time, but had to take the full test all three times. And it was a tough test...no point tag, but lots of kickboxing. I doubt many teachers nowadays would flunk many students during testing, especially kids or teens. And I don't think my experiences were unique at the time.

But as far as kids in Thailand who compete in Muay Thai, that really isn't a fair comparison to your typical American kid. Aren't most of those kids from poor families who need the income of a fighting career? That's their ticket to a livelihood. I doubt your typical, educated city kid even in Thailand wants to train like that. If someone is going to be a doctor, a teacher, a pilot, musician, etc., why would they? Unless they are planning to be a pro fighter, or make MA the only occupation in their life.

I believe in a martially-oriented mindset in MA, but there has got to be other considerations as well. Generally speaking, most people take it up to in some way enhance their lives, not let it take over their lives completely. I used to have an all-or-nothing attitude about MA, but now there's other things I love in life too, and I wouldn't continue training anymore if I didn't enjoy it.

I'm generalizing quit a bit here, I know it doesn't pertain to every school, just general trends. I came up in the later '90's in Karate, and I think I had some great teachers that put a real good combat foundation under me. I also saw a lot of bad Karate in my travels as well.

As to the Thai kids, I don't think it's so much a financial thing as a cultural thing. Really very few of them will ever get to fight on tv in Bangkok, there's just so many kids that do it...In the country there's really no money except what they make in gambling. For every one that makes money gambling someone else loses money.

I think they grow up around it, see their family and friends train and they want to do it too. I'm sure a lot of them got dreams of being the next Buakaw, but the majority will never see enough money to justify training over working.

All or nothing mentality is for pro fighters and those who want to be serious teachers. There are a lot of other great things in life.

[jimbob]

I Just hate to see that MMA guys help us to preserve TCMA and not our TCMA guys.

If anyone is going to preserve something that works, it will be the people who understand how, why, when and where it works. Whether or not they acknowledge it as TCMA I don't know - it may well all end up as MMA, but if you're looking at 'just' fighting, is this such a bad thing anyway?

[YouKnowWho]

If anyone is going to preserve something that works, it will be the people who understand how, why, when and where it works. Whether or not they acknowledge it as TCMA I don't know - it may well all end up as MMA, but if you're looking at 'just' fighting, is this such a bad thing anyway?

What I don't like is when you introduce something new, people would say, "My style has that. We do it differently". People may take your idea but won't give you credit. I was as guilt as everybody else on this issue. When my

- MT friend show me his "flying knee", I told him that my longfist system also has that. I did a double jumping kick without kicking out my 2nd leg.
- TKD friend show me his "spin hook kick", I also said that my longfist system has that. I did a 360 degree backward floor sweep.

Many years ago I tried to integrate legs move such as cut, spring, hook, scoop, lift, twist, break, ... into Taiji. My teacher said not only Taiji people won't appreciate my effort, they may even hate me by doing that. I didn't quite understood back then. Now I can understand it better. Sometime "helping" and "smart ass" are hard to be distinguished.

[Robinhood]

What I don't like is when you introduce something new, people would say, "My style has that. We do it differently". People may take your idea but won't give you credit. I was as guilt as everybody else on this issue. When my

- MT friend show me his "flying knee", I told him that my longfist system also has that. I did a double jumping kick without kicking out my 2nd leg.
- TKD friend show me his "spin hook kick", I also said that my longfist system has that. I did a 360 degree backward floor sweep.

Many years ago I tried to integrate legs move such as cut, spring, hook, scoop, lift, twist, break, ... into Taiji. My teacher said not only Taiji people won't appreciate my effort, they may even hate me by doing that. I didn't quite understood back then. Now I can understand it better. Sometime "helping" and "smart ass" are hard to be distinguished.

No-one with any experience is going to give you credit forbody level moves, it is at the higher level you perform at, not the moves per say , that you will get you your credit, doing them at body level can be copied by most people with athletic ability, so most body level moves are meanjng less in the big picture of things.

[YouKnowWho]

What's your definition of "high level" stuff? Are you talking about

- snake engine, or
- 6DFV?

My definition is anything that you can

- use in combat is high level (such as to punch on your opponent's face).
- only talk about and cannot use in combat is low level (such as Wuji, Dazhoutian and meridian flow, ...).

[Syn7]

I'm sure a lot of them got dreams of being the next Buakaw

Speaking of good MT. Love the finish.

http://youtu.be/HFjjpYYAI9U

[YouKnowWho]

Speaking of good MT. Love the finish.

http://youtu.be/HFjjpYYAI9U

I like this clip. If combat is your highest priority, you will develop your front toe kick, roundhouse kick effectively. You don't even need to develop other kicks. Sometime we look back and realize that we have spent so much time to develop many techniques that we don't use in combat. What's a big waste.