Sanda/Sanshou

[fa_jing]

My teacher and I were watching a video advertising 1 months sanshou training in China, showed them training with boxing gloves, free-sparring, shuai chiao demonstrations, etc. His response, being that he's not been keeping up with the latest developments in Chinese Martial sport over the last 5 or so years, was something like wow, I thought that was Thai Boxing or Kickboxing or something. I'm like, no, that's Chinese San Shou and it's great, take a look. Now my teacher respects TCMA greatly, but he is a JKD man through and through, so this fit right into his philosophy of how to teach MA. He told me, "you know what happened, they're tired of getting whupped." I imagine that's a fair statement...we all know the failings of the wu-shu-ified CMA. The Ezine article with Master Ma says as much. So Sanshou is saving CMA from a sport perspective, and with traditional and sportive martial arts co-existing, I think it has to help the preservation of the real fighting element of Kung Fu, and the effects will continue to be felt in TCMA. In other words I don't thing TCMA will stray too far away from realistic because of it's association to Sanshou.