Who killed kung fu

[Royal Dragon]

That is part of it. It takes a unique individual to go in and get bruised up 4 times a week+

Much of Kung Fu got demilitarised when it went comercial 3-4 generations ago for that reason.

Now the "Modern" forms heavy curiculem is seen as the traditional way to teach, and it's just not so.

[Shaolin Wookie]

The way I see it, focusing on the prettiness of forms, the angular placement of the hands during some fluttering movement that isn't related to the application, the perfect erectness of the body, the exquisite balance of consecutive tornado kicks---

When that became stressed, kung fu started to die. I figure some student who didn't want to fight, or didn't understand what he was learning decided to neglect that part and focus on the wrong part of the form. Sure, structure is important. When you get in a fight, your structure is going to falter, so if you have practiced really good structure, it hopefully won't falter too much. But then.....I haven't learned a good punching combo in kung-fu yet, with the exception of one instructor who just has us throw down on bags, whatever combos we can manage. Good kicking combos can be learned from forms, just not for punching. I see it like this: if your forms aren't a little bit ugly, as in "powerful", then they're pretty much just dancing.

Anyways....I've heard BS about internal organ damage from improper breathing techniques waaay too much. I mean come on....there are myriad martial arts, all of which focus on breathing (conditioning is important in MA, but so is managing breath---but that goes for all sports....take distance running for instance), but none of which purport anything so outlandish and downright ridiculous. I again chalk it up to some self-righteous student/teacher that became threatened by the fact his students caught up to his skill level, then made up some BS (perhaps even believed it) about how they were good, but were breathing wrong and doing irreperable harm to their gall bladders. hahaha......

[Vajramusti]

""The way I see it, focusing on the prettiness of forms, the angular placement of the hands during some fluttering movement that isn't related to the application, the perfect erectness of the body, the exquisite balance of consecutive tornado kicks---

When that became stressed, kung fu started to die.""
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Major confusion between good kung fu and modern wushu. Consecutive tornado kicks more common in wushu.

Why not discuss mma?

joy chaudhuri

[Shaolin Wookie]

Plenty of traditional forms include things that are unrealistic and downright stupid, IMO. But tornado kicks are fun, and good for teaching balance. But a crescent kick or a high roundhouse trains it more realistically.

[ammocase]

Why do people care about MMA-UFC? Its not like your going to get into a self defense confrontation in the street an are going to have a mat an a referee to regulate the rules for you. Kung fu is about open hand strikes an hitting to vital areas as the throat an eyes, that ( within good reason ) is outlawed in the ufc cause its a "sport" that doesnt want their fighters crippled or maimed, but unfortunatelty that seriously throws away many years of training ( fists an finger bone conditioning for finger jabs an claw strikes etc.) while other sports orientated styles have all their "weapons" at their disposal cause their training to a larger extent then kung fu, is geared for this envoirnment.

Early ufc matches were retarded, some fighters were taken down an most didnt realise that that was a bad thing. No one realised how vunerable they were when their base was taken down an they were dominated easily.

If you want to be good at the ufc... then you want to be good at a sport, so take sport martial arts like boxing an wrestling.

If you take kung fu or karate or whatever an want to be good at ufc .. then change your training to being more sports like an mix in some grappling, cause them nice clean matts an outlawed rules of certain strikes... invites many takedowns.

[sunfist]

You Fool! Do Your Realise What Youve Done?!