Quote Originally Posted by sanjuro_ronin View Post
I wanted to focus on this part because we have discussed this before:


Yes, we see this a lot and the reason is this:

No one ever develops a style to fight against itself ( WC was not developed to fight against WC but other systems, Mantis the same, Hung Ga, the same and so forth).
The principles and structures of the style were not developed to be used against itself, but others.
So when a system is in a vac um and trained and fought against itself only, then those key principles and attributes end up being converted to be used against itself rather than others.
This isn't very noticeable with "natural methods" such as boxing But the more specialized ( more exotic) the system ( like SPM, Pm, Northern Mantis and so forth) the more disconnect in practice there is.

EX:
Imagine if the left hook works best against a right cross, it is developed to work against a right cross, all its principles are for VS a right cross BUT it is only trained Vs a left hook.
How good a left hook do you think it would be? how effective will it be when it does fave a right cross?
And that comes back to too many forms and no contact work within the art AS well as not testing outside your own environment
I agree with you, BUT the question really is how many generations back do we have to go before we find teachers teaching the art from a view point of this actually worked because I regularly tested it against other styles and fought for my life with it?
How many decades is that for most arts, back to the boxers rebellion, a hundred years ago?
Even more, how much stuff is being taught that simply doesn’t work because its never been tested on a regular basis, for example what did wing chun look like when it was used regularly in a fight, did it look the same as today, or was it stripped down, basic and more like all the other arts out there?
We know for example Lama kung fu was a series of exercises, principles and techniques never forms when it started, was this the same for all styles, did they look similar
And of course the flip side is, are these so called esoteric systems better than the so called natural styles, is the time spent doing learning and testing and honing those unique aspects of fighting better spent getting better at the natural aspects which seem to work well under pressure

I guess that’s a question for each person to answer, but I think its telling that weapons work in nearly all styles is similar, ie when something really mattered and you had to get it right or die you looked pretty much like the next guy did, and I suspect fighting bare hand when it mattered way back when was the same, when the changes happened is anyones guess