Not sure i would describe fighting this way because then it becomes too complex. It's not like rock, paper, scissor. Fight to your strength and polish your skills.
Not sure i would describe fighting this way because then it becomes too complex. It's not like rock, paper, scissor. Fight to your strength and polish your skills.
It's not really like that for me. I have tried to think about it like that, but I don't think that it works. You can't say fire trumps wood or this or that. It can be helpful to talk about stances and fire stances, water stances, or wind. It helps me to describe the blocking as using whipping branches (wood). But yea, it's not the end all be all of anything for sure.
I have used the 5 elements strategy many times in my life. There was a TKD guy who challenged me back in 1972. Everytime that he threw a side kick at me, I blocked his kick with my left palm and then drop my right elbow on top of his foot. After a while, his legs were no longer be able to kick me, I jumped in with a punch on his face and end that fight. Through the entire fight, I did not throw any kicks but just one single punch. That was "metal against wood".
Sorry that I don't have any youtube clip to prove this. But the UT Aikido Club chief instructor Steve McAdam was one of the witness that day.
http://blogs.utexas.edu/aikido/coaches/
I was in a Karate tournament, My opponent, a Kempo guy moved in inch by inch with strong defense. Since I could not detect any of his weakness, I moved back. Soon I was out of the ring and lose points. He tried the same strategy again. If he forced me to move back out the ring one more time, I would lose that fight. I started to us long range kicks on him. That soon forced him to stop his forward movement. That was "wood against earth".
Just to share my experience to prove that 5 elements theory does work in combat.
Last edited by YouKnowWho; 07-18-2011 at 12:03 PM.
Were you conciously thinking of the element he used and then specifically used the opposing element? That's where i get confused. Maybe it wasn't described to me in that way we just did.
Ti Fei
詠春國術
It will make the fight simple. The TCMA is all about to find the right key to open the right lock. It will be worthwhile to spend a bit time to study your opponent 1st. Sometime your opponent may have multi-elements flavor. In that case, it will be a challeng to you how fast that you can switch your own strategy.
In TCMA, everything is relative and not absolute. If you always play offense and put your opponent in defense mode, it doesn't matter what fighting strategy that your opponent uses, you just force him to fight your game.
Last edited by YouKnowWho; 07-19-2011 at 11:57 AM.
Nonsense. If your engaged in a real fight you will not have the luxury of spending time assessing your opponent.
you finish it quickly before you get jumped by his friends and other that just want to party.
Now when you go spar, or do challenge matches it makes more sense
not my point.
In a tournament or challence match you have time to study your opponent sometimes days/weeks/month before. You dont have that luxury in a street fight. Often it goes from 0 to all out in seconds and you just need to gtfo before others join the fun.
And dont discard some of the brawlers out there, sure they may not have formal MA studies but years of barfight/street fights can make you real tough to handle. Mix that in with drugs, alchohol or mental ilness and you can be in for serious trouble