EarthDragon's thread got me wondering about what the common TCMA(and others) view on the way combat should look.

I know there are some that believe you can fight the same way you perform a form or they way they see it in a movie. In my experience, this isn't the case. There seems to be this belief that if you spend a lot of time practicing you can "rewire" your body's natural responses and be able to perform like a wushu champion.

I read in one of the posts in ED's thread that when he said "mimicking" he meant the characteristics of Mantis, such as footwork and quick strikes, etc.

What your thoughts on how a traditional style of martial arts is supposed to look when fighting?

For me, everything starts with basic boxing. You learn basic punching skills and basic defenses. Then you add in legs. After a person has a firm grasp of these things you start adding in different footwork and principles of the style(such as angles of attack, multiple strikes, etc) because all of these things are much easier to add in after basic kickboxing skills are learned.

This is one of the reasons I never understood why Kenpo gets so much crap for their training methods. They do countless techniques in order to teach principles of the system in much the same way as CMA do forms to learn the same thing.