I have a story here, I was sparring with this old man who wrestled in high school and also happened to be a BJJ brown belt. Well, apparently he injured his arm a while ago, so we're sparring. I could run in circles around this guy, but as soon as we got to the ground, even with a bad arm, he was moving all around me and before I knew it, he locked in the arm triangle. He taught me a lot of great reversals, submissions, and all this great ground movement. He was just an old man with a lot of great fighting experience.
Great story. My early fighting ability (typical High School school yard scrapping) came from doing a lot of roadwork (marching band) and cutting down trees with a hand axe. Good wind and good forearms and shoulders and local muscular endurance (you cut for 20 min to fell a tree as a kid to make forts). We would march up to 5 miles both on the field and in parades. I was smaller but vastly underestimated, LOL.
@@andrewgiegerich5526 Hey, he was just a better wrestler, as a TKD guy I didn't know ground fighting existed. This is why when I got the chance I learned to wrestle, I learned Judo, and I learned that an accomplished fighter must be good in all areas of combat. Now, I love grapple, I will shoot on anyone as soon as I get the chance.
@@grsimpson3957 tkd footwork in and out is great for seeing takedowns I went from wrestling to a tkd gym and when your opponent moves forward with an attack from the distance tkd fighters stand you can easily see the attack coming and duck under for a shot
I think it was UFC's idea to have Weili in the forbidden city and do those Tai Chi moves in that promo for the sake of appealing to the mainland Chinese audience.
@@RamseyDewey Just like in UFC 111, when they edited out Dan Hardy's stomach tattoo on promotional materials, which was the Buddhist mantra "Om Mani padme hum". "I'm trying to get into China. I don't need anti-Chinese government stuff on my fighters.... This thing popped up and I heard that it was anti-Chinese government, so I ripped that thing off it. I'm not going to put him on a poster with anti-Chinese government writing on it when we're trying to get into China.... I don't know what this stuff means, so I've got to be safe." - Dana White
It's also good for promotional purposes domestically where over-exoticizing a foreign fighter builds a certain novel mystique around them and creates a juicy "clash of civilizations" type momentum to the whole event. Kinda like Evander Holyfield really leaning into the whole Christian angle when he fought Tyson. A little bit of this is fun, but when overdone it sometimes leads to xenophobic marketing and race mongering.
My general thoughts are this: if you train the style well, drill it and spar, both soft and hard against multiple styles using your art, it's a good art. I've had my nose broken by a student of an obscure north eastern Hui Muslim minority martial arts and it worked because he trained it and fought other styles with it. I've wrestled with a sixty four year old Shuaijiao champ half my weight and he was ragdolling me. I've seen people make styles that are full of mcdojos work well...So I don't discount the styles. I discount the people teaching and studying it if they don't study it well. If you train it well and you can fight with it and win across varying opponents, that's what matters to me, not the name of the style.
I mean, yes, but this only really applies to style's that have some level of effectiveness in a fight if you exclusively practice them. It's also not statistically correct to take outlier's, who may not be representative of the population as a whole, to assess the given effectiveness of a fighting style. Tuition is an issue, and was a big part of why some styles became fairly useless, because generally you can only fight as well as you train, and you can only train as well as you are taught. But the actual style is also a factor, because many styles are actually a specialist derivative of another more generalist ancestor style, and these derivative styles are often not that good for the original purpose of general combat. Take BJJ, a derivative of Judo, which itself is a derivative of Jiu-Jitsu. Jiu-Jitsu was the Japanese grappling style for use on the battlefield and for self-defence, you would absolutely die very quickly if you tried to use Modern BJJ in such conditions. Why? Because being on the ground is a very dangerous proposition, actively going to the ground when you have multiple potentially armed attackers looking to end you. Even in regards to self-defence, one of the most common forms of attack by bandit's was to charge the victim, take them down, and then either murder or just beat them up badly (which without modern medicine might have been murder after the fact anyway). Style's like Karate, Traditional Boxing, and Jiu-Jitsu, among many of the more effective styles of Kung Fu, were focused on resisting takedowns and either responding with a takedown of your own, or using close quarters striking around the clinch and using grappling to open your opponent up for a finishing blow. Obviously going to the ground is not what any of these styles were designed for. But what BJJ is surprisingly good for is a one on one confrontation in a somewhat controlled environment (e.g. no multiple opponents, no weapons, a fairly safe surface to grapple on, and so on), which incidentally is what the Brazilians who developed it were focused on, they were essentially duelling, and they made a style that was very good using the fact many styles take people to the floor to their own advantage, you reduce space, keep yourself safe from strike's, and neutralize someone without killing them. It's really good for that, and this is why, alongside intentional matchup selection and the fact they had already sparred against many of the styles on offer, Royce Gracie did so well in UFC1 and the Gracie's sold BJJ as the ultimate martial art created by them exclusively (it wasn't but we don't expect them to be nice, fair people anymore). BJJ is still really bad for practical self-defence unless you focus on stand-up grappling, especially takedown offence and defence, and you need to really avoid building a habit of going to the floor and pulling guard as a matter of course. You don't want to be there, you want to stand-up as quickly as possible. Now Greco-Roman wrestling, which is derived from catch wrestling, which was a component of traditional Boxing, very much stresses takedown defense and getting up after being taken to the floor. It is objectively going to be more effective at preparing someone for self-defence directly than BJJ because of this. Greco-Roman wrestling isn't traditional boxing nor is it traditional freestyle or catch wrestling, but it maintains the general methodology of those styles, whilst BJJ has heavily diverged. You can observe something similar with modern Boxing and other specialist combat sports. When two styles are equally effective in a general setting (think Muay Thai and Dutch Kickboxing or freestyle/catch wrestling and Judo) the practioner is the deciding factor. But in many cases you need to heavily modify a style, and often cross-training is mandatory, to make it effective. In this case that style is going to be harder for a novice to get to the point where they can actually fight, and they are going to have to work hard to learn how to make a style that has changed from the generally effective style it once was to something either specialized or optimized for aesthetics (which is a nice way of saying it has basically become a choreographed dance). If you can train two years in Aikido and be submitted by someone who's trained Judo for less than a month, Judo is clearly the better style. Does this mean all Aikido practioners will lose to all Judo practioners? No, but they would generally be extreme outliers as there are historical reasons why Aikido is no longer functional and it involves changes to both the training methods and the core of the style that make it impractical for any form of contact that doesn't involve a completely consensual randori to be tossed about.
@@AveSicarius so basically the Boxing vs Kick Boxing mind set Boxing is a great style but because they can only strike with their fist they can be completely out matched & with their more exploitable foot work due to no low kicks but they are incredible with their punches in comparison & with just a little bit of cross training and learning some good low kicks and defense they can absolutely kill in the ring but a Kick Boxer with that same mindset can do the same thing just like Judo & Aikido you can get really good at using Aikido but a Judoka has those techniques aswell & can just do the same thing if he really wanted to focus on it neither is better just different mind sets & one has more options
I know a guy who does wing chun and Hapkido as well as TKD and a bit of kuay thai saw him fight guys who wrestle and think "hapkido" doesnt work. It worked. Ive seen boxers struggle to get past his defense in Wing Chun. He just sparred with it so much he figured out how to use it. But I hqvent seen him take on a BJJ blackbelt so we will see.
@@fadyalame3507 a fighter and a martial artist are (in some cases) two different things, Let's say you've got an 60 year old man and he practices Chi Kung, Now he's a martial artist but he'd be screwed in a fight, Now let's say you have 20 year old Boxer, He's a martial artist but if he actually competes and spars then he's also a Fighter.
@@fadyalame3507 as I said it depends on the kind of martial artist, Plus if have consistently trained without pressure testing you really can't know if you will be able to handle a fight, Hence the general rule of thumb Martial artists and Fighters (in general) are different
14:50 "Aikido only work if you already know how to fight." That is eye-opening to me. I thought my 6 months training Aikido was useless. It will work after I know how to fight. :)
That's what I tell people about TMA in general. They teach body mechanics/ how the body works, but not necessarily how to fight. If you already know how to fight or also learn how to fight your art actually starts to make even more sense. I practice TMA (Kenpo) but my school doesn't just teach it as movements but also how to use it and how to fight which is a big difference. I have been pressure tested in real life and I am confident on my training. But all that being said make sure you learn how to fight not just move cool.
I totally agree with this aikido was never meant to be taught to people who were not already Jujitsu, karate practitioners . It was meant as a higher Jujitsu practice . Where it goes wrong is when you have people with no skills take aikido classes and think they are learning self defence. I have practiced aikido 23 yrs and taught it for 15 years . My aikido only started to work when I started to work in a jail for 12 years ( everything that didnt work was dropped quick ) I started training with other officers who trained boxing , judo , MMA, silat, Greco Roman wrestling . Added to the tactics used for environmental awareness, control and restraint, crowd control , use of vocal commands etc . I now teach aikido, Jujitsu, boxing hybrid . Thoroughly hated I'm sure by aikido purists . But it is all based on my understanding of aikido. It now works it didnt before .
totally agree with that assessment (and the comments above) - both from a historical perspective on aikido's origins and from personal experience (started martial arts with aikido and msk (a karate-hema hybrid thingy), began to dip my toes into MMA and Jujitsu after a couple of years and after the initial shell shock you could expect ... yeah, bsically physics and concepts). woohoo pragmatism
Hapkido is the version aikido that works. Most reputable hapkido masters won't test their tkd students for black belt until their ready to test for their hapkido black belt. TKD is sport karate but hapkido is the self defense aspect. The two together if you train your ass off will save you. If all you do is go to class to train your missing the point
Never done Bagua. But I did spend some time copying and practicing that circling thing they do just out of curiosity, watching some tutorials on it etc. I later tried it out in a sparring session, and ended up finding myself behind my opponent. BEHIND THEM. It was one of the coolest things I've ever done. I tried it out a couple more times, and found that it would even work multiple times if you set it up. I don't think you can deny that there are issues with many of the traditional martial arts currently, but if nothing else, there is definitely some extremely cool stuff in those arts that is severely underutilised right now. If you're looking to become the Best Fighter Ever, then going straight to kung fu probably isn't the best option, but I also dislike this attitude of treating it like a disease upon the martial arts world. There is legitimate value in that stuff, it would be a tragedy if it was lost to the world. These arts just need a bit of TLC from actual fighters, in my opinion, to bring out their potential a bit more.
I was researching Bagua and learned some interesting stuff. Traditionally in China (and I bet this applies to most or all old martial arts) martial arts weren't these static traditions where you had to learn and do everything exactly as taught, that's a recent development. You were supposed to take it and modify it to make it work for you. That's why there are so many styles and substyles in China. Bagua in particular has a ton of substyles because the founder literally taught all of his students differently. He would teach the first 3 palms the same to everyone, then adjust and personalize the other 5 based on the student's body and previous experience (He rarely took students who didn't already have a strong foundation in another art). All the first Gen masters started their own styles, many of the 2nd Gen did the same, and literally no one has ever practiced Bagua exactly the same as the founder.
@@jessepriest2883 I only got the info 3rd hand from modern father & son practioners, so take my words with a bag of salt... The Bagua Palms (8 mother palms) is likely a fork from XingYi style (5 animal imitation forms), which is rumoured to be another fork from Shaolin Cannon Fist (Pao Quan). So according to this theory, it all traces back to Shaolin. Thus, depending on your body size and preferred striking range and speed, you will get completely different applications using the same moves from Shaolin form. I suppose it should be no different when its later iterations like XingYi or Bagua are taught. Again, 3rd hand information. Hope someone with serious citations can bring more light to this.
@@yattungchow9406 yea that's wildly incorrect. Legend has it that Yue Fei, who may or may not have studied Shaolin boxing, was the writer of a kungfu manual that was discovered hundreds of years later by Ji Longfeng, who may or may not have passed the skills within down to the creators of Xinyi Liuhe and Dai Xinyi. And Dai Xinyi may or may not be the foundation of the original Shanxi schools of Xingyiquan. Basically, the Shaolin connection is an extremely tenuous one. Now Bagua's history is also shrouded in mystery. It definitely did come from Dong Haichuan in the Qing dynasty, and there definitely has been a lot of cross-pollination between Bagua and Xingyi (and Taiji) after the art was created and practised. But it's unclear who had taught it to Dong or if he had truly created it from nothing. In any case, there's no Shaolin or Xingyi link here even in the stories. Finally, as a formal disciple in the Ma Weiqi Bagua line and a former (non-disciple) practitioner of Shanxi Xingyi, let me say that (1) the 8 mother palms have nothing to do with Xingyi, and that (2) you have confused the 5 elemental phases with the 12 animals of Xingyi.
My partner, who has no actual combat experience and minimal exposure to Taiji Quan, made a rather profound statement a couple of years ago that pretty much matches up with what you said in this video, "You don't fight with a particular style. You fight with fighting. Martial arts styles are just systems of pedagogy and training." My own personal experience as a Canadian, where the ground is covered with snow and ice a good portion of the year, is that there are two fundamental skills that are hopefully acquired with any martial arts training: the ability to stand in a balanced and stable way as well as the ability to fall safely. If you have those two skills, you are golden. They are the two skills you will use on a daily basis over and over again. Training how not to get hit in the head or thrown in a realistic manner is great. However we can all hope that things never come to that. If they do they will probably be an outlier in comparison to the number of times that you have tripped on a crack in the side walk and been able to right yourself and keep your balance, or if you need to fall then doing so in a safe manner.
I would conclude this whole video too: Traditional martial arts might not be systems to learn to fight. But many of them are a great thing to refine and personalize your fighting style once you have one.
Yeah, that reminds me of a comment I saw once, boxing, wrestling, bjj, muay thai are like the alphabet, you can't speak without them, but traditional martial arts can be like punctuation, helping you adding depth to your writting skills
Man Ramsey I'm so glad you made the comment, "to be a better fighter you need to learn how to fight". I trained in Okinawan Shito Ryu Karate, for 10 years on top of Taekwondo. It wasn't until I sparred with kickboxers that I got a rude awaking. I ended up learning Muay Thai and then later BJJ! I still train and teach traditional martial arts, BUT here's the thing...Muay Thai and live rolling in BJJ has made my traditional martial arts better when it comes to self defense. I now look at practical self defense more realistically! 👍🏾
I love you comment. A lot of people only insult "traditional" Martial Arts and don't realize that newer styles like BJJ and Muay Thai can help enhance them and make you better at them. I've improved my Taekwondo a lot by practicing other style as well.
Chinese resaling is no pushover and she also does BJJ her skills power and humility make her the the champ she is I will say no women will beat her at hert weight. She will break all records. At fact. If am wrong you are welcome to berate met. 😉
I have the same experience. Only now after some MT and Kyokushin experience with heavy sparring I can actually pull off some of the weird techniques I learned back in the day in Kung Fu. It's fun. I even use chain punching sometimes, just for a quick moment to fuck with their rhytm and confuse them. It's easy to counter, but by the time they want to counter I already stopped doing it and never repeat it. It plants that little seed of doubt in their head :D
I'll never forget the pain of recieving my first leg kick after doing Kung Fu and Tae Kwon Do... My face must have just gone 'oh shit, does that feel like that all the time?' And no it doesn't, it feels worse over time. 😂
Yeah I can fight don't worry about that. Lol 😂 I thank you so much for your time and comments. But really Al smash any cunt like Bruce Lee said do what is needed bite also smash them in the throat lol 😂
5:46 "'Cause that's way easier than learning how to fight yourself." It's not about that. It's about ego. If someone says, "your martial art sucks", that is not just a criticism of the martial art itself, but of the person they're addressing. Because the implication is, "you must be some kind of an idiot to have picked that martial art, and stuck with it." So what is the instinctive reaction to someone saying "your martial art sucks"? It is, of course, "no, it doesn't!" This is the same insult as "your bike sucks", "your dad sucks", "YOU suck", and the gut reaction is always going to be the same: to oppose the argument. For every action there is an equal but opposite reaction. So most people being on the receiving end of the insult are not going to say, "yeah, you're right, I should pick a different martial art." Maybe they should, but having received the insult, they are almost guaranteed not to. Because who wants to admit that the person who was shaming them, was right? By trying a different martial art in order to become a better fighter, they'd be admitting just that. Whether the guy insulting them was right or not isn't relevant.
@xxzodiacxx01 It's not just in martial arts, it's with everything in life. When you think you know something, and then someone comes along who tells you different, your reaction hinges on how the difference of opinion was handed to you. To quote the Hagakure: by bringing shame to a person, how could one expect to make him a better man?
@xxzodiacxx01 _Most_ people are weak-minded. This is not a flaw in certain people only, this is actually a _feature_ of our nature. If it is good to take pride in one's achievements, then there is shame on the opposite end of the scale. Pride feels good, shame feels bad. One naturally seeks pride. Pride feels good, because that feeling tells you that you're looked up to, that people like you. If someone tries to take your pride away, you are going to do your best to prevent them, naturally.
That's not entirely true. People will say your martial art sucks and other folks will react with anger because they believe their art does NOT suck because they are BEGINNERS in their art. They know nothing! So they think , " Well I don't know how to counter your argument but I think someone from my school may. You're a rude person!" I practise ITF Taekwon-Do and I see all these things about Taekwon-Do sucks, etc. I don't think it does. I think ITF Taekwon-Do is primarily a bare knuckled fighting style (less head movement than regular boxing because you dont do as much head movement in bare knuckled fighting). I think it's a bare knuckled style with TRULY AWFUL training methods. You practice things that may or may not be effective in truly ineffective ways in patterns and 1-steps and things of that nature. I'm saying I'm not so sure it's the art that sucks so much as it is THE TRAINING METHODS that suck. Tai Chi is a perfect example. According to Ramsey, Tai Chi is a grappling art. How many Tai Chi practitioners are aware of this? Do they know they practice a grappling art? Most likely, NO! Don't you think they should know that?! Isn't trainming someone in something without telling them what they are doing and why ( in an objective, pragmatic way) a poor method of instruction? I think it is, but it's common in, "traditional", martial arts. They train people poorly, IMO. I don't know why the instruction is, generally, so poor. Sometimes, seemingly, deliberately so. I don't know if they have come to the conclusion that poor instruction allows easier exploitation of students OR they're mostly ignorant of pragmatic fighting OR it's some combination of those two things. In short, in my opinion, in many cases, the problem isn't the so much the martial art, it's the oppressive method of instruction which is so common in many traditional styles.
I really don't think it's that big of an issue, what actually corrupts the youth are the idealistic images that society instills in them at a very early age about how to look and act a certain way and how money is the be all, end all of everything.
IMO MMA is not discrediting Traditional MA (TMA). It has discredited the method of practice. All static stuff is bunk. Energy drills should be learn and discard not used as the nucleus. Change all the static TMA stuff to dynamic and it's mostly good.
@@Mishkola agreed. mma is discrediting traditional martial arts. though it may be benificial, if your main instincts are these traditioinal moves, youre gonna get your ass handed to you
@@Mishkola yes and no. Karate used to be point fighting, didn't use much gear, not continuous, and done in large open square (no ropes), and you could be docked for 'excessive contact'. Kickboxing is in a ring, it uses gear (gloves, headgear maybe) and it has minimal interference by the referees, it's continuous, unlike karate which is stopped at each point. Pretty much different animals. A few have been able to cross over. My fav is Raymond Daniels who has done point, kickboxing and a few MMA matches.
@@Badge01Kenobi apples and oranges, man. I will restate what I said: From what I understand, kickboxing grew out of a return to full-contact competition by karate practitioners.
@@Mishkola Well I was there in the early 80s and almost nobody from point karate did very well in kickboxing which is different. The few who did are famous. Wallace, Lewis, Urquidez Kickboxing originated in Thailand and another good faction were the Dutch. Kyushinkai (Mas Oyama) is not kickboxing. Sanda is pretty close to kickboxing.
20:52 another option: there are people who train a traditional Chinese martial art because they enjoy it, have no intention of competing or getting into fights, and both understand and acknowledge the shortcomings of their chosen style.
The funny thing is. Training goes out the way when it comes to dropping to instinct. You do what you can, when you can, and how you can. The forms are just there for movement of the body.
Traditional martial arts training involves discipline, hard work, honesty, intelligence and humility. These things are worthwhile. People get confused with ritualised martial arts training which are usually self serving, lazy, outdated and pointless.
If i was to ever open a kung fu school in the far future, to teach the stuff I’m learning now, I would make sure my students are proficient in boxing before teaching any of the long forms. Having someone actively trying to punch me in the face when I started sparring, improved my understanding of kung fu.
100% agree with this, even though I've studied Wing Chun and never studied boxing. Most Wing Chun vs. boxing videos online are crap-can challenge matches that aim to "prove" which is better, but when you find ones where where the two are legitimately collaborating, it's clear Wing Chun encourages long guard to a fault when it's obviously much safer for a beginner to keep their guard close.
I think every champion gets put under a microscope...and when that champion has their MMA accomplishments co-signed by Traditional Chinese Martial Arts just because they are from China, it's a bit of a slap in the face to our collective intellects (given that we are also martial artists etc)
Isn’t it dangerous? We saw this in the karate boom of the 70s and 80s- and they were only validated by movies, not world champion mixed martial artists. Granted, Sanda seems pretty grounded, but having done some wushu, I would not like to see it validated as a means to learn how to fight. Wushu is beautiful and an excellent form of exercise. It’s not gonna save your ass when the chips are down though.
I don't think it's that dangerous. I believe most people can objectively look at what happens in an MMA fight and realize that it is far removed from traditional martial arts.
Only in martial arts community you have this kind of questions, like "Is Muay Thai better than kickBoxing ?" "I Boxing effective in MMA ?". You'll never see something like "Is training Rugby effective to play football ?" or "Is PingPong effective to play tennis ?" or "If I only shoot 3points in my backyard, can I go play a pro basketball match ?" Zhang Weili talks about her background in kungfu because she sees value in it, however she trains specificaly for MMA and she compete in it, so she's also directly promoting MMA. It's like a pro tennis player who would say "I also love to play ping pong and badmington...." Noone said If you only play pingpong you can be a pro tennis player, but it probably has perks...The problem would be to say "I only train Badmington and I'm a pro Tennis player"... If Zhang Weili wants to promote traditional martial arts in MMA it's fine, she's promoting her culture. But if you check her instagram, she's training 90% of her time for MMA, she's not lying to anyone...
a lot of the mma nonsense is just fight promotion. marketing is not going away, whether it's out-of-control trash talking or national identity or whatever.
"They paid some major money." Or they just asked the Chinese government to help them promote traditional chinese martial arts, and they cleared everyone out.
You kind of confused the sunken cost and the gambler's fallacy somehow. The sunken cost fallacy is more about "we have to make it happen now because we wasted so much money on it". So it's driven by pressure, not by hope.
mcgeufer Respectfully, I beg to differ, at least a little bit. The sunk cost fallacy is when individuals continue a behavior or endeavor as a result of previously invested resources (time, money, effort). If that’s the same thing as you were trying to say, then I apologize. But my point is that Ramsey was using the term correctly.
@@raphaelworkman2170 Frankly it might be that my english skill is the real problem here. To me it seemed like he says that people keep putting more money in the project because they are convinced that it will pay off eventually. But it might be that I got that wrong way arround.
mcgeufer I won’t quibble over your English skill. Your English is better than my French or Spanish (I know very little other languages). Thanks for the comments/discussion. 😃
The sunk cost fallacy isn't about wasting money specifically. Time is an "opportunity cost" which can become a sunk cost (or appear to be one) when you put a lot of time, effort, consideration, or whatever else into an activity with nothing to show for it, and keep throwing more work into the same thing that's failed to deliver in the hope that it will eventually pay off. The gambler's fallacy is specifically where odds are involved and you think that this next roll of the dice is guaranteed because of how many times you've failed. Someone who jumps between Kung Fu schools thinking that "this next school has to be able to make me win fights because the 5 I went to previously sucked so this one can't possibly also be bad" are examples of the gambler's fallacy, while people sticking with the same kung fu school year after year and have plateaued at a moderate level of fighting skill but keep expecting that this next belt will unlock some secret techniques for them that all their work has been building up to are examples of a sunk cost fallacy.
My Taiwanese girlfriend used to say "swai jiao!" when she was angry at me; and then she would attack me. Pretty sure she wasn't trained in any martial arts. But she would always put me on my ass.
That would be great to see high level mma fighters look for different techniques from Bajiquan, Choy lay fut, or just any other uncommon art to MMA. People would love it
When I was a kid my neighborhood had a reputation for fist fights. Many of kids had no fromal combat training. What we did learn was heart and what worked and didn't work. Now these fights where brutal even by teenage standards. When I entered the Marines I was sponge I learned all that I could. After the military the learning continued taking what works for me and learning also what works for others. I didn't like doing high kicks it always seemed to leave me variable to attacks. I learned how to do them then I learned how to defend against them. Knowledge is a powerful defensive tool it keeps you alive. Experience teaches you what work for you.
As you stated in a previous video, they know the form, but not the meaning. It's a tragedy that there are so few 'old' masters who know how to fight ( to use the kata, the movements). Good on you sir! Keep doing what you're doing!
Sadly, if you look at the old masters on youtube (there are a few) they're terrible. It's a myth, my fren. Nobody learned to fight using secret internal kata movements. Kata was 'invented' to give students things to do so you could hang out with your buddies in the office (so to speak). Yes it does teach some 'floor movement sense' but not how to fight. HTH
@@flonomcflooneyloo7573Wow, you should know about Motobu Choki, he fought with kata, and won every fight he had. Maybe you just dont know what is ut for the katas
I see your point but I've sparred with a number of Muay Thai fighters with only a wing Chun and Shaolin background and beat a few, lost to a couple. Did well, basically. My wing chun class was the same intensity and same training style as my Muay Thai class actually. Constant padwork and bagwork and then sparring. If we train right any style of fighting can help you
It's not just 'training' You sparred with a bunch of different people. You had some natural talent. If by 'train right' you mean no holes in your game (i.e. not lacking groundfighting, not lacking bjj, not lacking wrestling, not lacking boxing, not lacking transitions, not lacking grip fighting, then sure).
@@zachariaravenheart Yeah man, it's honestly extremely rare nowadays. And impossible in China. Since all the real deal fighters left China to teach elsewhere to escape cultural revolution. If you manage to find one, awesome. But if ya can't I'd just go with the standard MMA gym. I mean I'm also learning BJJ and Muay Thai from wrestling to just expand my knowledge. They are awesome fighting styles.
@@flonomcflooneyloo7573 By train right I meant knowing the real applications of what's being taught to you and drilling it over and over until you can't mess it up and will easily just do it fighting someone. This is good and practical training to me. And with training like that any true fighting style can be used. But yes, also, a well rounded fighter should learn many forms of grappling and striking. I believe the more styles you are familiar with, the more you can fight without thinking, without having any particular style, you be yourself. That's when (by definition) you become very powerful. I don't want to make this comment about me, but I have experience in wrestling and currently do BJJ. To balance out my striking styles (which is a list of a few fighting ways which are pretty solid imo) Thanks for replying
Hear hear! Science has changed. Religion has changed. Combat has changed. Being a badass was probably easier against a bunch of farmers and bandits. War has changed.
My old judo instructor Charlie Hooks was like that old guy. He walked poorly but man he could roll. That story about the lao tou from Jiangsu was great. Thanks !
Her base of fitness. Has made her what she is it seems that this should be more of a focus for the youth. I have the image of her biceps stuck in my head. Fitness is the base of tony Ferguson.
@@jordanlandsaw7263 in the case of Tony, yeah. Anyone whose ever trained with him are completely blown away by one thing: his work ethic. While he is extremely skilled in pretty much all areas of combat, what really sets him apart from the rest of the competition is that he puts in more work than everyone else in the gym. Like Ali said "fights are won in the gym".
Big Dibber nick Yes, I understand the point, and in his earlier days he beat some of my gym’s guys with his crazy non-stop style. But, if you put Tony in a cage void of his beautiful elbows, explosive wrestling, and 10P BJJ - he would be literally nothing. I have athletes come into my gym all the time that are big and strong and will not stop, yet when we spar it’s still like playing with a child just because they have no techniques. Tony is what he is because that cardio allows him to train good MMA fundamentals at an unrivaled pace. It’s not the energy itself, but what it leads to.
There is something to that. Vince Lombardi once said, "Fatigue makes cowards of us all". And that base of fitness keeps someone in the game longer, with better effectiveness.
I think the sunk cost aspect is huge. The sheer amount of time and effort and sustained focus in spending 10 - 20 years learning a traditional martial is not something you want to feel was wasted! And truth be told, much of it wasn't wasted. Practitioners just need to be prepared to add a few things, change a few things, and let a few things go. Both physically and mentally. And I think many are increasingly doing that. For myself, I always felt traditional karate had some shortcomings, and so I gradually addressed that over the years. And like most people, I didn't take up Tai Chi for use as a fighting art. So none of those 13 years have been wasted. However, getting deeper into the applications has been really interesting, and over time I've made some tweaks and adjustments so that some of those could actually be useful.
Great perspective. If all your time training TMA was spent with the goal of learning to and preparing for an assault - but it never comes - have you wasted your time? If that's the only thing you were measuring your training by - you might indeed feel that you have. But what TMA school - well principled and learned - emphasizes that over kindness, balance, tranquility, humility, personal development etc...? There is SO much more to the arts than just physical capability, and a good TMA instructor will be steering you toward all the avoidance skills (verbal , commonsense , awareness etc ) that will you keep you far safer than engaging in a fight.
hey thanx again for the video! i often watch cause im bored, then by the end im shadow boxing in my room! i was wondering, where can i find that video of the old man scholling the younger man in wrestling? i want to show my pops that video.
lol on the UFC Countdown for Zhang v Joanna when they were showing all the "Chinese Martial Arts" she does while training.. I commented.. " Zabit Magomedsharipov's style is more based off Chinese Martial Arts than Zhangs.." tons of people agreed.
Modern Tai chi is for exercising, marshal arts were definitely practical a centuries ago, but now it’s mostly exercise and performance based after the form of the current country, for it is not promoted by the government, for “the war is over and way of violence is unnecessary”
@@tprnbs Imagine you are in a mma match, you told your opponent you got the coronavirus. He would not get anywhere near you, you win 100%. Is that a good no touch fighting style?
I find it hard to talk about the 'ancient Asian mysticism' part without people getting offended but it's so true.. I know so many people that are completely convinced shaolin monks (or samurai) are the greatest fighters in the world and practically unbeatable especially vs westerners. I don't blame them because I used to think the same thing when I was a kid. But it can be frustrating.. I will show them clips of Buakaw and it looks unimpressive to them because it's just some guy throwing simple kicks, they could 'easily' counter those with this and that... . Then they might show me a clip of some monk leaning with his throat on a spear and ask me if I really think those simple kicks could hurt someone like this.. I try to explain to them the realities of fighting, but they don't take me seriously because I'm just some guy who trains and competed in a sport. People raised in the Shaolin temple are beyond these things. Arrrghhh😂 Some years ago I was with my friend in a coffeeshop and a week earlier the place was robbed by a guy with a knife. My friend does Kung fu and he said that right now if it were to happen again he would step in and take the guy out.. I kinda laughed and told him I would run. But he was actually serious. These ideas can definitely be dangerous..
I do/teach kung-fu. The whole shaolin spear to the throat is a parlor trick. The spear is always bendy and they basically exploit that. Its still tough to condition to do, but it's far from an impervious body.
The monk myth is not the most irritating, what irritates me the most are people convinced Bruce Lee could beat any Heavyweight chaption of every combat sport in less than a minute(I really heard that).
@@thedarkknight9021 Yeah, I know that. Bruce Lee was a great martial artist, good philosopher, very athletic body and decent figthin skills for street figths (it was his goal). Bruce Lee deserve a lot of respect, Horewher people make him a God, capable of doing supernatural things. Ps someone said (in a Mike tyson vs bruce Lee hypothetical figth) that Mike tyson was strong but slow, all muscle ad brainless......... I wonder if this people ever watched a Mike tyson match, and it they had done it, that wuold say "it's only a sport, in real life there are not rules" it might be true, but I think That you dirty tricks/moves wuold be useless against a single bare handed punch from him in your skull.
Tony Ferguson's wing chun trapping is pretty much 5%-10% of his total style, so he isn't using pure wing chun he is just using what works for him....makes me remember as to why Bruce Lee abandoned 90-95% of wing chun
Anything modern started with a tradition. Military officers still learn from battle tactics from all ages of weapons. But they’d be a fool to train with their weapons.
The problem isen't the tradition. Muay thai is traditional, for exemple. The problem is pressure testing, what most traditional martial art doesen't do.
As a person with a 14 character Polish last name, "Im not going to try" is a perfectly acceptable pronunciation and is rooted in tradition. Keep up the great videos.
As usual your videos are very insightful especially when talking about the issues within the martial arts community in China especially involving McDojos. As for kung fu working, we have guys like Zen Dragon and the late Ehsan Shafiq who came from a Kung Fu background and actually tests his skills for real. Surprisingly during my research I discovered a number of successfull Kickboxers during the late 80s and early 90s who came from a Kung Fu background like Don The Dragon Wilson who decided to take up kickboxing because he wanted to prove Kung Fu practioners could succeed in full contact sports. As for Weili, from what I understand she practiced Sanda and Shuai Jiao since she was 12 so she may have competed in combat tournament but I get your point that she never competed at a high level sport like MMA until she got interested in BJJ. And those frauds who practice styles like Taichi trying to take advantage of her success is going to hurt the martial art scene in China even more. When I think of Chi, I just think of it as something like inner strength or adrenaline not that mystical stuff you only find in Wuxia fairy tales and Kung Fu films And are people still using the Anderson Silva video to defend Wing Chun? Come on guys, at least use Tony Ferguson as an example, at least he practiced Wing Chun longer and successfully applied it in his fights. Hell, you got MMA fighters like Zabit who came from Kung Fu and Sanda background but sure let's pick Anderson Silva as the chosen one because he's more famous even though he practiced Wing Chun after he was passed his prime and the time he used it he got his face hit several times, at least Ferguson successfully used the Wing Chun hand trap to block strikes to his face.
@@legalizemiami9282 he didn't at first but he later took up Wing Chun particularly training on the WC dummy as part of his training and that helped him in some of his fights like the Pettis where he used the WC trappings to block several of Pettis' punches
There is a movie set in another province that looks similar but this is the real Forbidden City. Also if you go there it's made up of dozens of gated courtyards so easy to seal one of them off at a time for a film crew.
I think it's a wrong mentality of needing a traditional style be validated by being used successfully in the UFC. I practice Wu Family Bajiquan. I practice it with consultation from official disciples of the current inheritor of the style, Wu Lianzhi. I chose Bajiquan because I love the style. I don't need to have Bajiquan validated by being successfully used in the UFC. The fact that it's been around for about 3,000 years. That alone is validation. The fact that currently it's used by Bodyguards and police forces is validation. The success of past valid practitioners in duels and fights is validation. I don't think it's really necessary to need to have a style used in the UFC in order for it to be validated. I should also mention that the UFC is just one arena in which these styles CAN be used. It's not the only one especially because when these styles were first created and during their heyday, they were meant for life or death. Let's just remember that when thinking about traditional styles as a whole
In her last fight I saw her using the trademark playful hip thing Saenchai does, and also the great bouncing in and out footwork from Rose. Weili is showing a never before seen, at least by me, respect to not only learn but use new techniques from other champions. I think she is awesome for doing so.
Your anecdotes on old experienced scrappers and on the Aikido guy rings so true. My old dad is a genuine fighter: boxed in high school, did judo, touched on jujitsu and has done Aikido now for 40 years. He will openly say about several techniques: “These will not work but are an exercise.” On the other hand, he will also say about others: “These will work if you’re in the right place and you know how to fight.” (He is not popular in the circuit of emperors-new-clothes sensei.)
Forgot to mention he was a fencing and quarter staff instructor - just giving him credit out of pride and hardly anyone else is going to get him a slot in Black Belt Magazine 🤣
I’ve got a short, difficult question for you: Define somebody who can ‘fight’. For instance I’ve been in only one very minor altercation and have many years of martial arts experience. On the other end of the spectrum, would untrained people with many street fights be considered being able to fight who (what you often describe) as them having no skill. Finally, what about two guys in a a ring or cage with years of training but very little sparring experience?
That second wrestling clip of the old guy is awesome! Also I simply can't be the only one who would like to know what are your other favourite tai chi techniques.
Ramsey, in Canada I trained in Tai chi years ago and a little old lady schooled me in push hands. This lady practice on a daily and was in great shape for her age.
I've trained with some old judo senseis when I was 16~17 yo, purple belt and they could almost wipe the floor with me. They were slow, and they used to gas out rapidly of course, but the technique was spot on and they were almost all very explosive and surprisingly strong for their age. The ground pressure, the posture etc, they seemed to weigh much more than they did. I guarantee those guys would destroy average untrained guys (I'm not talking about gym dudes, professional fighters or something like that OBVIOUSLY)
"It's not the art, it's the artist" is a garbage quote. There's arts that are clearly and objectively better, that produces students capable of winning in the streets or sport. Meanwhile, other styles can be practiced earnestly and diligently for a decade, that are made up of bullshido techniques such as no touch "chi" throws and no touch KOs - that will get students mocked and killed in the streets or sports. If one particular striking style fails constantly in combat sports, it's a clear indication of a flawed system with flawed instruction. To this day, the most effective striking style that Zhang Weili uses frequently to win is Muay Thai, while most of her Chinese striking arts has VERY little influence on her wins.
@@TheScotchaholic - "I don't know art, but I know what I like. " Another short quote for you. I was once told that the martial arts are like a big circle, and in the beginning, they all look very different, the circle is big and the arts look quite different. Yet, as you learn and witness the more advanced techniques, the circle closes; until techniques matchup. As Ramsey has said, there really is only a small skillset needed for a fight...it's a matter of how you get there. You know, it's not the destination, it's the journey...cause the final destination is the same for all of us, and i am in no rush to get there. As far as charlatans go, that is not really art, is it? Objective reality does not and cannot exist inside any cultural construct of man....we are subjective since birth. Using scam artists as an example of objectively bad martial arts is akin to using the Louvre to exhibit dog feces. It's not art, it;s dog crap.
@@guillermozepeda9967 You used the patently false phrase, when most if not all Kung Fu styles have failed to exhibit dominating efficacy in all striking competitions such as K-1 or in MMA. When we see Joanna Jedrzejczyk and Valentina Schevchenko fight, we can clearly see their Muay Thai roots in their stances and attacks. Muay Thai is a foundational style of MMA, used by many fighters. Why? Because it has proven itself time and again. The same goes with modern/Dutch kickboxing, Western boxing, Olympic wrestling, judo, and BJJ. Where's the traditional Kung Fu representation? NOWHERE. At best, we may see some traditional Shuai jiao wrestling techniques used sporadically.
@@TheScotchaholic Would you agree that efficacy is linked to rule sets? Not everyone trains in martial arts to prizefight. In sparring, we regularly utilize 1 v2, 2 v2, even one against 3. How about weapons training? That of course adds an entire new element where credibility and efficacy is not achieved in the ring. I stand by my thesis: Anyone can pick up a paintbrush, but have you seen any of Musashi's art? Try matching his efficacy. Seriously, the artist, and to an extent the time in which he lives does make a difference.
@@guillermozepeda9967 Once again, Weili's winning ways are CLEARLY shown by her non-kung fu techniques, that finishes her opponents or enables her to outscore them. I repeat again, China has many traditional styles with many practitioners, and the ones that dare to compete, do poorly. Meanwhile, a traditional style known as Muay Thai/Boran, is the dominant fixture among the traditional striking arts. Traditional grappling arts such as Olympic/Greco-Roman wrestling, Jiu-Jitsu, and judo are mandatory skills for further success in MMA. Where are the Chinese or other styles being a necessity? They're not.
Thank you for bringing that point out. I studied Tang Soo Do to Aikido but before any martial Arts i did boxing and a okay Street fighter so when people ask me why are you studying Kokikai Ryu Aikido???
I like your cast, I would just like to say I've done 20 years of tai chi and wing chun. I've been a door man had tonnes of street fights I've never lost its never failed me. I would also like to say I've done several years of mma but the best teacher I know with most fighting skill is an old chen tai chi master 🙏
Hey.. My tai chi teacher is jiangsu as well. The chen tai chi masters are great just because they don't want to fight doesn't mean they cant. Thank you. 🙏
speaking of badass old men, there's a man named Danny Hodge who used to be a highly regarded amateur wrestler and pro wrestler and who can still crush an entire apple with one hand, he was a silver medalist at the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, his impact on amateur wrestling in the US was huge that there's a trophy named after him, which is the amateur wrestling equivalent of the Heisman Trophy. As a pro wrestler he was NWA World Junior Champion a record 7 times and is highly regarded among big names in the business like Bret Hart as one of the toughest people in the business. He also had a successful amateur boxing career with an amateur record of 17-0-0 and is a Golden Gloves winner. He had a pro record of 8-2, he quit because pro wrestling paid better at the time.
@Ramsey Dewey Speaking of TKD & since you have a background in it yourself. I'd love to hear your opinions/thoughts on WTF TKD vs ITF TKD in terms of utilizing TKD for an MMA scenario.
I have no experience with ITF taekwondo. I have never even seen an ITF school before in any of the countries I have lived in or visited. I’ve only seen a few videos of demos and sparring sessions. From what I’ve seen, both styles create unique problems with their rule sets for sparring that make it difficult and time consuming to adapt to MMA and other professional ring sports.
@@RamseyDewey Thank you so much for such a quick reply! That's very interesting. TKD is the only kicking Martial Art I've ever been interested in. So when I see people like Yayir Rodriguez, Israel Adesanya, Edson Barbosa etc pull off some TKD in MMA. I always wonder if they did WTF or ITF. But from the looks of things I'd assume they all did some WTF at some point. I wonder if Joe Rogan did WTF too?
Ramsey. I don't study Aikido. But I do study Japanese history. Here's my take on topic. Aikido grew out of a need endemic to Japan. It is meant for self defense by a swordsman without a sword. More specifically, a sword master without a sword. The object is for the unarmed master to obtain a sword for himself. That's where (and when) Aikido was most culturally and militarily relevant. Consider: every Aikido move and combination makes perfect sense if the Aikido master is facing swordsmen or is a swordsman himself. All the feints are designed to draw a swordsman/yariman opponent from his stance or balance, to take the center, and to ground him. Disarm him, take his weapon, and start this party jumpin'. This practice, and classical encounters, both, usually took place in an austere, but slightly confined, space. This makes sense in a military government, where one's enemies can sometimes wield considerable political power and clandestine effect as well as military or personal prowess. Several period anecdotal accounts involve various Daimyo or bushi attacked while in castle or temple (or bath), where the "hero" protagonist had already given up his big sword due to custom and/or command. In this context Aikido takes on a mantle of incredible relevance and power. Most important is the fact that an Aikido master must be a swordsman first and foremost. By this means he employs his knowledge of how a swordsman thinks, how he acts, how he reacts. Against swordsman or spearman opponents, such as he might encounter in a temple or castle ambush/betrayal*; a time and place where he might've temporarily given up his sword to custom or command, a sword master employs Aikido to its maximum benefit. *I'm not looking at you, Oda . . . but the period from which Aikido's philosophical genesis emerges is the late Sengoku. This was a time where official castle and temple functions were both awkward and fraught with dangers internal and external.
I did karate before taking up boxing. Unlike many people though I knew my karate world not work in boxing ring. My style is Wado Ryu and it focuses on angles, body movement,pivots, evasion ect. After some time during sparring I was using all those things without even realizing it was from my karate training. I believe when TMA are combined with practical systems they become something else. That being said, I think karate is still way to formal to be learned in a short time. I would recomend boxing first
WHEN YOU WERE TALKING BOUT aikido IT REMINDED ME OF THAT BLITZ IN (sorry caps) and out style of things like point Karate etc When Machida came out and started burning through everyone it was shocking to people. But he already knew the ground game and then implemented his original style into it with better effect then almost everyone else at the time. I'm thinking all have their place in certain situations. Aikido included. Pretty sure it gets a worse rep cause people tend to think Steven Seagal is annoying and tends to be one that most people connect Aikido to since he is well known.
Done muay Thai for a year, also boxing for 2 years, loved sparring. Also had real fights (won't get into details) but sparring prepares you, 100% I became Confident.
That is funny, Ramsey, when I was a kid I trained North Shao Lin Gongfu and sometimes my teacher would teach us some Tai Chi Chuan. As a kid in Brazil back in the late 90s I still believed I would be able to develop skills as a fighter without "fighting" (or sparring), although I already competed in Judo at the time, but that is not the issue here. The thing is that I saw Tai Chi as I saw Kung Fu, as a mainly striking art (at least we used to train it as a mainly striking art, but maybe there are styles or teachers with a different approach); and I always heard that Tai Chi Chuan was considered to be the anti-kung fu back in the day, but I never really understood why. Now, many years later (I am on my mid 30s), after having trained some grappling and striking (I have only sparred in striking and BJJ, but I have competed in Judo with some level of local/amateur success), and after hearing you speak about Tai Chi as a grappling art, I have finally understood it: the movements and forms of Tai Chi clearly are grappling techniques, and it makes sense to say that grappling would be the anti-striking (as we see today in MMA grapplers controlling fights against strikers that are not well prepared to defend against grappling). Thank you teacher Ramsey!
Could you comment more on that? Of course that we are talking about different times and contexts, one is war or self defense in a different era and the other one is a contemporary sport, but can we make that analogy? Please, answer my question, I am a big fan of the channel!!
I love that led sweep, it’s beautiful. That’s the art of tai chi quan, it’s a grappling sport and fully agree with you Ramsey, but I’d love to master that leg sweep, it’s one of the most effective and coolest tai chi quan moves that is possible to do in a real fight, and watching you execute it is so cool I have no words 😶 excellent form my friend that’s how you integrate a beautiful move into your arsenal and make it deadly 👌💯
Wing chun nerd and sunk cost fallacy. Lol. I've called you a classic poet warrior but with this drop I'm gonna have to add comedian and econ man too. Good vid. Enjoyed it.
I used to train for 13 years, had a black belt. I thought i knew something. Now, the teacher i had at the time mixed karate, kenpo, silat and called it Kungfu. But after 13 years the new techniques never changed. Also it was supposed to be a supersecret ancient. Blablabla, you get the drift. Around 2014 i saw an advertisement for a local Hung Kuen school. I thought i knew what IT was. Boy was i wrong, hard work, painful stance training, sore muscles, and didn't get to learn 4 forms in a year, instead 1 year of 2 until he found it "sufficient". And the sparring! They used boxing techniques and take downs and grapple and used protective gear . That doesn't look like kungfu! After a year of training i was allowed to join the sparring sessions. The teacher regulary invites different schools: HEMA, jiu jitsu, karate. (He is still waiting on the reply of the local wing Chun school... ) to exchange techniques and spar, which is incredibly fun and great comraderie. And yes we got our ass handed to us sometimes but we can hold our own. I train for 6 years now and never looked back to my old teacher. I think "what is traditional training" means you take something you learn: appreciate and respect where it comes from and develop it further and challenge it.
@@dartfather Huh? I was under impression that sanda is a *rule set* that was devised to be a common ground for practitioners of Chinese MA (colloquially known as "kung fu") to put their skills to test against each other regardless of what school they belonged to. Being a specific rule set, it of course opened up an associated sport and people training for that specific sport from the get go.
@@Annokh Whatever your impression is, it was created in the 60's after the chinese kungfu delegation were badly beaten whenever they compete outside of china. Call it what they want, it was actually a re-adjustment, rethinking, reinvention or repair of what is not working.
It's pronounced "Yem-jay-check" but it's not really jay and not really check because those two sounds in jay and check are not pronounced like that. In my language it's these two letters "dž, č" and it's also a slavic language so I know and Joanna is polish.
It's all but impossible to express in written English sounds that must be pronounced in Jędrzejczyk's surname. But surprisingly a lot of foreigners, English and others, try to grapple with that pronunciation with results even if far from close to proper, still deserving lots of kudos for their efforts.
@@desimujahid this sound "ah" is not pronounced in this surname; but to complicate the matter in standard Polish, I mean the most often used, people tend to pronounce it with two different separate consonants d and rz, I have just realised that's how I pronounce this surname my whole life, my childhood best friend was also Jędrzejczyk..
Great video! I love wing chun but I’ve always had the mentality/realization that if I didn’t have high school wrestling, 5 years of karate as well as some BJJ training, my wing chun would not make sense (to me). With those experiences (as different as they all are) I’ve learned to understand and use wing chun on a good level... but, if I walked into wing chun originally, I’m not sure if it would've made any sense.
Really succinct and well said. I agree on a points. I would just add that while techniques can certainly be learned from Tai Chi or Bagua, the essence of each style is much harder teach and learn. I have trained trained since 1985 in a bunch of styles including Isshinryu and Tang Soo Do karate, Hung Gar, Shaolin Northern Long Fist, etc. As a current intermediate student of Tai Chi and Yin Style Bagua (Lion, Dragon and Phoenix systems), my experience is that while there are many effective grappling and chin na techniques, especially in YSB, that can be learned quickly and easily incorporated into other styles/mma, the best of Bagua and Tai Chi simply cannot be copied and pasted. It’s the same way an Olympic swimmer can teach you how to you swim and give you really helpful pointers for competition, they can’t give you their strength, speed or determination. Their countless hours of brutal practice. You have to earn those on your own. Same with all styles. They’re only as good as the depth and extent to which they are trained. I’ve trained long and seriously enough to begin to feel the deeper benefits of the foundational Zhan Zhaung exercises in Tai Chi. Same with Yin Style Bagua, with the Standing Strengthening Postures. They are the real core of the power in Bagua and must be trained daily for months and years to develop any real power in the strikes. Both Zhan Zhuang and Standing Strengthening must be trained diligently everyday to develop the deeper power of the techniques within each style. Without the core training well developed, it’s just choreography. That’s the real “secret” in kung fu and Tai chi. It’s long, boring, grueling, daily foundational work. Just like horse stance in karate. All the legit masters I knew sat in a deep horse stance at least 1-2 hours every day. Most famous Tai Chi teachers spent hours a day standing still in various postures, because they understood that was the essence of the style. It helps develop not only slow twitch fiber strength but a fully relaxed musculoskeletal and nervous system. Practicing daily for years fosters a totally unique state of being that can’t simply be taught. It’s an old joke in Tai Chi classes when new students are sweating and struggling their to stay still in a challenging Zhan Zhuang posture the teacher will casually say, “relax” and the veteran students will laugh. Because they know it’s easier said than done and takes time and dedication to learn how to simply “relax” enough in Tai Chi to derive the greatest benefits of the style. My Yin Style Bagua teacher has always emphasized daily, Standing Strengthing as absolutely essential to the style. He says without it, you have none of the core strength inherent in the style to apply its uniquely powerful strikes. The postures were designed to lengthen not only muscles the tendons as well. It takes time and consistent practice to literally grow into the most powerful use of Bagua’s hand strikes. You can tell how dedicated a student is by their hand postures. The other YSB teachers my teacher knows vary greatly in strength and fight capability based on whether they train Standing Strengthening daily. The ones who don’t, have no power and can’t stand against the ones that do. Part of what I love most about Yin Style Bagua is it’s incredible array of techniques and adaptability for all ages, sizes, stages of health, there’s something in it for everyone, to always keep training. So there’s countless chin na techniques that anyone can learn and apply for basic self defense, in minutes. And there are many uniquely deceptive and effective hand strikes, counters, etc. But without devoting at least 2 hours of training a day to Bagua, especially starting with the Standing Strengthening exercises and circle turning, you’ll never feel the true strength of the style. When able, I will train Tai Chi and Bagua about 5 hours a day. To me that’s the minimum to really feel these styles in a way that they can provide the best health benefits and be applied in a fight. I think the most common misunderstanding between mma and us older traditional fighters is the assumption that if I’m learning Tai Chi I can’t also be learning or already have learned boxing, Muay Thai, etc. I learned in high school with karate, and kung fu in college, most styles aren’t effective unless you commit several hours a day to training them, refining your technique and taking every opportunity to spar/pressure test against other styles. So again, brilliant post as usual. Just didn’t want people thinking Tai Chi is just a collection of techniques that can easily be learned in a day. Or that Bagua is just cool, flashy hand strikes. They are what you put into them.
"I learned in high school with karate, and kung fu in college, most styles aren’t effective unless you commit several hours a day to training them, refining your technique and taking every opportunity to spar/pressure test against other styles. " Couldn't have said it my self. I have repeatedly that it takes a lifetime to master just one style. You see a lot of people think that they have a black belt means they have mastered the style when they essentially only masted the basics and then that is a guess at best because they are still required to perfect the techniques. They may be good but they are far from perfect.
Weili style is mostly Muay Thai, what actually seems to rustle the jimmies of chinese nationalists, "how dare she uses that unrefined martial art of that brown skin asians?"
I won't agree with you bro, actually Muay Thai is probably the most popular striking martial art in China. And I don't see any people are not happy with her Muay Thai style.
There's two types of martial artists in China: The ones that have done their own research in comparing styles, techniques, and success rates in the streets, military, and competition - that REALLY want to learn how to fight, and don't care where the origins of their instructions come from, as long as it works effectively and reliably.. The second types are about fantasy fulfillment and ethnic pride, without any regard to the practicality and proven effectiveness of said style. These are the ones ALWAYS getting rude awakenings. Xu Xiaodong should be a national hero!
@@AaronXu70 That's exactly how it is except for the fact that they now have Sanda, a rip-off of Muay Thai with added Judo/Sambo elements. Sanda/Sanshou is the most popular striking art in China because it is show-cased as Chinese Kung Fu. Sanda is a relatively new art that gained popularity in the 70's because prior to that, Kung Fu representatives were continually getting destroyed by Thai fighters. The Chinese often looked down on the Thais and other SE Asians because they believed for the longest time that their "profound martial arts" were superior - that is until the Thais badly embarrassed them by KOing their representatives in the first rounds. So how do the Chinese beat the Thais? They copy their art, add unfamiliar rules and grappling (which are normally illegal under Thai rules) and call it Chinese Kung Fu. They are excellent copy-cats yet too proud to admit it.
@@Krypteian Spot on. I tell the Kung Fu defenders: EVERY traditional Kung Fu style has failed to represent itself well in combat sports - while the traditional art of Muay Thai which is the "safer" sport offshoot of Muay Boran, has proven itself time and again. Sanda is a fairly modern creation since the 1920s, that's evolved since then. It's China's early form of "MMA". It CANNOT be considered a traditional Kung Fu style. The crazy ethnocentric nationalists love to think it is.
@Michael Terrell II What history of being effective? Unproven folk stories from snake oil salesmen? Do you realize that there isn't ONE successful Chinese MMA fighter with a traditional Kung Fu background, that utilizes these skills to become a top contender or champion - from the countless traditional styles and countless practitioners? Where's the effectiveness? The Chinese have been mislead by their own generational sham artists.
the guy who used that aikido move seems to be an perfect example that the skills of the fighter are making the difference in a fight and how someone is practicing to fight. oh wow my English here is pretty bad im sorry for that hope u can understand anyway lol
As a Tai Chi guy from the states, there are some Tai Chi schools that still "teach" the combat aspect of the forms. By "teach" I mean they run occasional compliant drills and sometimes do push hands in a way that allows actual application of techniques. Unfortunately, that isn't a very effective training method for learning to fight. I'm planning on joining an MMA gym after this coronavirus blows over (hopefully soon) and I think seeing some more of what you've been talking about can help me bridge the gap. I would really appreciate if you were to go into a bit more depth in showing Tai Chi techniques you've used like you did here with the takedown in this video. Every other video I've seen explains the techniques like my Tai Chi teachers did, without resistance and outside of a sparring match or an actual competition, so this was very refreshing. Thanks for the video!
Ur right about some mma schools never sparring mma, spent 5 years did grappling and kickboxing tournaments and didn't even know mma with both could be used together.
The rolling in line we see in training videos, along with jumping up rolling backwards ect. Medicine balls, all of this stuff seems like enough training for regular people to fight at a little higher level.
All I can say is if you really want to learn how to protect yourself start with boxing, it will teach you everything that is essential. Blocking, cutting angles, putting your opponent into your power, and so much more. I started with boxing and then went to muay thai, I would say I have more of a Dutch style of fighting now and I find it overwhelms most people who have only done muay thai.
Tony Ferguson is the type of guy that makes Ramsey Dewey forget his last name.
lol
I have a story here, I was sparring with this old man who wrestled in high school and also happened to be a BJJ brown belt. Well, apparently he injured his arm a while ago, so we're sparring. I could run in circles around this guy, but as soon as we got to the ground, even with a bad arm, he was moving all around me and before I knew it, he locked in the arm triangle. He taught me a lot of great reversals, submissions, and all this great ground movement. He was just an old man with a lot of great fighting experience.
Great story. My early fighting ability (typical High School school yard scrapping) came from doing a lot of roadwork (marching band) and cutting down trees with a hand axe. Good wind and good forearms and shoulders and local muscular endurance (you cut for 20 min to fell a tree as a kid to make forts). We would march up to 5 miles both on the field and in parades. I was smaller but vastly underestimated, LOL.
Seems like you don't know how to wrestle
Which means you don't know how to fight
@@andrewgiegerich5526 Hey, he was just a better wrestler, as a TKD guy I didn't know ground fighting existed. This is why when I got the chance I learned to wrestle, I learned Judo, and I learned that an accomplished fighter must be good in all areas of combat. Now, I love grapple, I will shoot on anyone as soon as I get the chance.
@@grsimpson3957 tkd footwork in and out is great for seeing takedowns
I went from wrestling to a tkd gym and when your opponent moves forward with an attack from the distance tkd fighters stand you can easily see the attack coming and duck under for a shot
@@andrewgiegerich5526
Such a dick comment.
I think it was UFC's idea to have Weili in the forbidden city and do those Tai Chi moves in that promo for the sake of appealing to the mainland Chinese audience.
Absolutely!
@@RamseyDewey Just like in UFC 111, when they edited out Dan Hardy's stomach tattoo on promotional materials, which was the Buddhist mantra "Om Mani padme hum".
"I'm trying to get into China. I don't need anti-Chinese government stuff on my fighters.... This thing popped up and I heard that it was anti-Chinese government, so I ripped that thing off it. I'm not going to put him on a poster with anti-Chinese government writing on it when we're trying to get into China.... I don't know what this stuff means, so I've got to be safe." - Dana White
@@Grahf0 Dana White, ever the erudite humanitarian.
It's also good for promotional purposes domestically where over-exoticizing a foreign fighter builds a certain novel mystique around them and creates a juicy "clash of civilizations" type momentum to the whole event.
Kinda like Evander Holyfield really leaning into the whole Christian angle when he fought Tyson.
A little bit of this is fun, but when overdone it sometimes leads to xenophobic marketing and race mongering.
I thought it was the PRC government...
My general thoughts are this: if you train the style well, drill it and spar, both soft and hard against multiple styles using your art, it's a good art. I've had my nose broken by a student of an obscure north eastern Hui Muslim minority martial arts and it worked because he trained it and fought other styles with it. I've wrestled with a sixty four year old Shuaijiao champ half my weight and he was ragdolling me. I've seen people make styles that are full of mcdojos work well...So I don't discount the styles. I discount the people teaching and studying it if they don't study it well.
If you train it well and you can fight with it and win across varying opponents, that's what matters to me, not the name of the style.
Well said and true
I mean, yes, but this only really applies to style's that have some level of effectiveness in a fight if you exclusively practice them. It's also not statistically correct to take outlier's, who may not be representative of the population as a whole, to assess the given effectiveness of a fighting style. Tuition is an issue, and was a big part of why some styles became fairly useless, because generally you can only fight as well as you train, and you can only train as well as you are taught. But the actual style is also a factor, because many styles are actually a specialist derivative of another more generalist ancestor style, and these derivative styles are often not that good for the original purpose of general combat.
Take BJJ, a derivative of Judo, which itself is a derivative of Jiu-Jitsu. Jiu-Jitsu was the Japanese grappling style for use on the battlefield and for self-defence, you would absolutely die very quickly if you tried to use Modern BJJ in such conditions. Why? Because being on the ground is a very dangerous proposition, actively going to the ground when you have multiple potentially armed attackers looking to end you. Even in regards to self-defence, one of the most common forms of attack by bandit's was to charge the victim, take them down, and then either murder or just beat them up badly (which without modern medicine might have been murder after the fact anyway). Style's like Karate, Traditional Boxing, and Jiu-Jitsu, among many of the more effective styles of Kung Fu, were focused on resisting takedowns and either responding with a takedown of your own, or using close quarters striking around the clinch and using grappling to open your opponent up for a finishing blow. Obviously going to the ground is not what any of these styles were designed for. But what BJJ is surprisingly good for is a one on one confrontation in a somewhat controlled environment (e.g. no multiple opponents, no weapons, a fairly safe surface to grapple on, and so on), which incidentally is what the Brazilians who developed it were focused on, they were essentially duelling, and they made a style that was very good using the fact many styles take people to the floor to their own advantage, you reduce space, keep yourself safe from strike's, and neutralize someone without killing them. It's really good for that, and this is why, alongside intentional matchup selection and the fact they had already sparred against many of the styles on offer, Royce Gracie did so well in UFC1 and the Gracie's sold BJJ as the ultimate martial art created by them exclusively (it wasn't but we don't expect them to be nice, fair people anymore). BJJ is still really bad for practical self-defence unless you focus on stand-up grappling, especially takedown offence and defence, and you need to really avoid building a habit of going to the floor and pulling guard as a matter of course. You don't want to be there, you want to stand-up as quickly as possible. Now Greco-Roman wrestling, which is derived from catch wrestling, which was a component of traditional Boxing, very much stresses takedown defense and getting up after being taken to the floor. It is objectively going to be more effective at preparing someone for self-defence directly than BJJ because of this. Greco-Roman wrestling isn't traditional boxing nor is it traditional freestyle or catch wrestling, but it maintains the general methodology of those styles, whilst BJJ has heavily diverged. You can observe something similar with modern Boxing and other specialist combat sports.
When two styles are equally effective in a general setting (think Muay Thai and Dutch Kickboxing or freestyle/catch wrestling and Judo) the practioner is the deciding factor. But in many cases you need to heavily modify a style, and often cross-training is mandatory, to make it effective. In this case that style is going to be harder for a novice to get to the point where they can actually fight, and they are going to have to work hard to learn how to make a style that has changed from the generally effective style it once was to something either specialized or optimized for aesthetics (which is a nice way of saying it has basically become a choreographed dance). If you can train two years in Aikido and be submitted by someone who's trained Judo for less than a month, Judo is clearly the better style. Does this mean all Aikido practioners will lose to all Judo practioners? No, but they would generally be extreme outliers as there are historical reasons why Aikido is no longer functional and it involves changes to both the training methods and the core of the style that make it impractical for any form of contact that doesn't involve a completely consensual randori to be tossed about.
@@AveSicarius so basically the Boxing vs Kick Boxing mind set Boxing is a great style but because they can only strike with their fist they can be completely out matched & with their more exploitable foot work due to no low kicks but they are incredible with their punches in comparison & with just a little bit of cross training and learning some good low kicks and defense they can absolutely kill in the ring but a Kick Boxer with that same mindset can do the same thing just like Judo & Aikido you can get really good at using Aikido but a Judoka has those techniques aswell & can just do the same thing if he really wanted to focus on it neither is better just different mind sets & one has more options
I know a guy who does wing chun and Hapkido as well as TKD and a bit of kuay thai saw him fight guys who wrestle and think "hapkido" doesnt work. It worked. Ive seen boxers struggle to get past his defense in Wing Chun. He just sparred with it so much he figured out how to use it. But I hqvent seen him take on a BJJ blackbelt so we will see.
"I got tired of getting punched in the face, so I switched to boxing."
Odd move, but okay.
"Wierd flex but okay"
Wat
TKD to TKD you tend to fight hands down. TKD to another style... bad habit. Boxing at least teaches you the head movement, footwork, slips and feints.
@@dcoverbay True, but it also probably involves more punches to the head than any other combat sport.
I wondered about that. Maybe he meant he was getting punched in the face in actual fights.
This is absolutely true. Being a great martial artist doesn’t mean your a great fighter. Pressure test your skills can enlighten you.
But martial artist are designed to fight what are you talking about
@@fadyalame3507 a fighter and a martial artist are (in some cases) two different things,
Let's say you've got an 60 year old man and he practices Chi Kung,
Now he's a martial artist but he'd be screwed in a fight,
Now let's say you have 20 year old Boxer,
He's a martial artist but if he actually competes and spars then he's also a Fighter.
@@Matt_PunchEnthusiast_Morris not really a martial artist can be good at fighting too
@@fadyalame3507 as I said it depends on the kind of martial artist,
Plus if have consistently trained without pressure testing you really can't know if you will be able to handle a fight,
Hence the general rule of thumb Martial artists and Fighters (in general) are different
@@Matt_PunchEnthusiast_Morris are you Sure tai chi originally was meant for grappling
14:50 "Aikido only work if you already know how to fight."
That is eye-opening to me. I thought my 6 months training Aikido was useless.
It will work after I know how to fight. :)
That's what I tell people about TMA in general. They teach body mechanics/ how the body works, but not necessarily how to fight. If you already know how to fight or also learn how to fight your art actually starts to make even more sense. I practice TMA (Kenpo) but my school doesn't just teach it as movements but also how to use it and how to fight which is a big difference. I have been pressure tested in real life and I am confident on my training. But all that being said make sure you learn how to fight not just move cool.
I totally agree with this aikido was never meant to be taught to people who were not already Jujitsu, karate practitioners .
It was meant as a higher Jujitsu practice .
Where it goes wrong is when you have people with no skills take aikido classes and think they are learning self defence.
I have practiced aikido 23 yrs and taught it for 15 years . My aikido only started to work when I started to work in a jail for 12 years ( everything that didnt work was dropped quick )
I started training with other officers who trained boxing , judo , MMA, silat, Greco Roman wrestling . Added to the tactics used for environmental awareness, control and restraint, crowd control , use of vocal commands etc .
I now teach aikido, Jujitsu, boxing hybrid . Thoroughly hated I'm sure by aikido purists .
But it is all based on my understanding of aikido. It now works it didnt before .
totally agree with that assessment (and the comments above) - both from a historical perspective on aikido's origins and from personal experience (started martial arts with aikido and msk (a karate-hema hybrid thingy), began to dip my toes into MMA and Jujitsu after a couple of years and after the initial shell shock you could expect ... yeah, bsically physics and concepts). woohoo pragmatism
Hapkido is the version aikido that works. Most reputable hapkido masters won't test their tkd students for black belt until their ready to test for their hapkido black belt. TKD is sport karate but hapkido is the self defense aspect. The two together if you train your ass off will save you. If all you do is go to class to train your missing the point
imo fighting is not the primary reason to pursue a martial art. most people won't ever fight, but all people can benefit from the healing aspects.
Never done Bagua. But I did spend some time copying and practicing that circling thing they do just out of curiosity, watching some tutorials on it etc. I later tried it out in a sparring session, and ended up finding myself behind my opponent. BEHIND THEM. It was one of the coolest things I've ever done. I tried it out a couple more times, and found that it would even work multiple times if you set it up. I don't think you can deny that there are issues with many of the traditional martial arts currently, but if nothing else, there is definitely some extremely cool stuff in those arts that is severely underutilised right now.
If you're looking to become the Best Fighter Ever, then going straight to kung fu probably isn't the best option, but I also dislike this attitude of treating it like a disease upon the martial arts world. There is legitimate value in that stuff, it would be a tragedy if it was lost to the world. These arts just need a bit of TLC from actual fighters, in my opinion, to bring out their potential a bit more.
Agreed; Kung Fu is to be learned and applied to real life/mma.
Very well said
I was researching Bagua and learned some interesting stuff. Traditionally in China (and I bet this applies to most or all old martial arts) martial arts weren't these static traditions where you had to learn and do everything exactly as taught, that's a recent development. You were supposed to take it and modify it to make it work for you. That's why there are so many styles and substyles in China. Bagua in particular has a ton of substyles because the founder literally taught all of his students differently. He would teach the first 3 palms the same to everyone, then adjust and personalize the other 5 based on the student's body and previous experience (He rarely took students who didn't already have a strong foundation in another art). All the first Gen masters started their own styles, many of the 2nd Gen did the same, and literally no one has ever practiced Bagua exactly the same as the founder.
@@jessepriest2883 I only got the info 3rd hand from modern father & son practioners, so take my words with a bag of salt...
The Bagua Palms (8 mother palms) is likely a fork from XingYi style (5 animal imitation forms), which is rumoured to be another fork from Shaolin Cannon Fist (Pao Quan). So according to this theory, it all traces back to Shaolin.
Thus, depending on your body size and preferred striking range and speed, you will get completely different applications using the same moves from Shaolin form. I suppose it should be no different when its later iterations like XingYi or Bagua are taught.
Again, 3rd hand information. Hope someone with serious citations can bring more light to this.
@@yattungchow9406 yea that's wildly incorrect. Legend has it that Yue Fei, who may or may not have studied Shaolin boxing, was the writer of a kungfu manual that was discovered hundreds of years later by Ji Longfeng, who may or may not have passed the skills within down to the creators of Xinyi Liuhe and Dai Xinyi. And Dai Xinyi may or may not be the foundation of the original Shanxi schools of Xingyiquan. Basically, the Shaolin connection is an extremely tenuous one.
Now Bagua's history is also shrouded in mystery. It definitely did come from Dong Haichuan in the Qing dynasty, and there definitely has been a lot of cross-pollination between Bagua and Xingyi (and Taiji) after the art was created and practised. But it's unclear who had taught it to Dong or if he had truly created it from nothing. In any case, there's no Shaolin or Xingyi link here even in the stories.
Finally, as a formal disciple in the Ma Weiqi Bagua line and a former (non-disciple) practitioner of Shanxi Xingyi, let me say that (1) the 8 mother palms have nothing to do with Xingyi, and that (2) you have confused the 5 elemental phases with the 12 animals of Xingyi.
My partner, who has no actual combat experience and minimal exposure to Taiji Quan, made a rather profound statement a couple of years ago that pretty much matches up with what you said in this video, "You don't fight with a particular style. You fight with fighting. Martial arts styles are just systems of pedagogy and training."
My own personal experience as a Canadian, where the ground is covered with snow and ice a good portion of the year, is that there are two fundamental skills that are hopefully acquired with any martial arts training: the ability to stand in a balanced and stable way as well as the ability to fall safely. If you have those two skills, you are golden. They are the two skills you will use on a daily basis over and over again. Training how not to get hit in the head or thrown in a realistic manner is great. However we can all hope that things never come to that. If they do they will probably be an outlier in comparison to the number of times that you have tripped on a crack in the side walk and been able to right yourself and keep your balance, or if you need to fall then doing so in a safe manner.
That's why I'm considering Judo.
I would conclude this whole video too:
Traditional martial arts might not be systems to learn to fight. But many of them are a great thing to refine and personalize your fighting style once you have one.
Yeah, that reminds me of a comment I saw once, boxing, wrestling, bjj, muay thai are like the alphabet, you can't speak without them, but traditional martial arts can be like punctuation, helping you adding depth to your writting skills
It is not about traditional systems but what the individual trains for and how good they are.
Man Ramsey I'm so glad you made the comment, "to be a better fighter you need to learn how to fight". I trained in Okinawan Shito Ryu Karate, for 10 years on top of Taekwondo. It wasn't until I sparred with kickboxers that I got a rude awaking. I ended up learning Muay Thai and then later BJJ! I still train and teach traditional martial arts, BUT here's the thing...Muay Thai and live rolling in BJJ has made my traditional martial arts better when it comes to self defense. I now look at practical self defense more realistically! 👍🏾
I love you comment. A lot of people only insult "traditional" Martial Arts and don't realize that newer styles like BJJ and Muay Thai can help enhance them and make you better at them. I've improved my Taekwondo a lot by practicing other style as well.
Chinese resaling is no pushover and she also does BJJ her skills power and humility make her the the champ she is I will say no women will beat her at hert weight. She will break all records. At fact. If am wrong you are welcome to berate met. 😉
I have the same experience. Only now after some MT and Kyokushin experience with heavy sparring I can actually pull off some of the weird techniques I learned back in the day in Kung Fu. It's fun. I even use chain punching sometimes, just for a quick moment to fuck with their rhytm and confuse them. It's easy to counter, but by the time they want to counter I already stopped doing it and never repeat it. It plants that little seed of doubt in their head :D
I'll never forget the pain of recieving my first leg kick after doing Kung Fu and Tae Kwon Do... My face must have just gone 'oh shit, does that feel like that all the time?' And no it doesn't, it feels worse over time. 😂
Yeah I can fight don't worry about that. Lol 😂 I thank you so much for your time and comments. But really Al smash any cunt like Bruce Lee said do what is needed bite also smash them in the throat lol 😂
5:46 "'Cause that's way easier than learning how to fight yourself."
It's not about that. It's about ego. If someone says, "your martial art sucks", that is not just a criticism of the martial art itself, but of the person they're addressing. Because the implication is, "you must be some kind of an idiot to have picked that martial art, and stuck with it." So what is the instinctive reaction to someone saying "your martial art sucks"? It is, of course, "no, it doesn't!" This is the same insult as "your bike sucks", "your dad sucks", "YOU suck", and the gut reaction is always going to be the same: to oppose the argument. For every action there is an equal but opposite reaction. So most people being on the receiving end of the insult are not going to say, "yeah, you're right, I should pick a different martial art." Maybe they should, but having received the insult, they are almost guaranteed not to. Because who wants to admit that the person who was shaming them, was right? By trying a different martial art in order to become a better fighter, they'd be admitting just that. Whether the guy insulting them was right or not isn't relevant.
@xxzodiacxx01 It's not just in martial arts, it's with everything in life. When you think you know something, and then someone comes along who tells you different, your reaction hinges on how the difference of opinion was handed to you. To quote the Hagakure: by bringing shame to a person, how could one expect to make him a better man?
If someone tells me "you suck", my reaction would be either "show me" or "I knew, I suck at blah blah".
I knew I suck at most of things.
@xxzodiacxx01 _Most_ people are weak-minded. This is not a flaw in certain people only, this is actually a _feature_ of our nature. If it is good to take pride in one's achievements, then there is shame on the opposite end of the scale. Pride feels good, shame feels bad. One naturally seeks pride. Pride feels good, because that feeling tells you that you're looked up to, that people like you. If someone tries to take your pride away, you are going to do your best to prevent them, naturally.
@@GuitarsRockForever And yet you felt like replying here, suggesting you don't think your comment sucked.
That's not entirely true. People will say your martial art sucks and other folks will react with anger because they believe their art does NOT suck because they are BEGINNERS in their art. They know nothing! So they think , " Well I don't know how to counter your argument but I think someone from my school may. You're a rude person!" I practise ITF Taekwon-Do and I see all these things about Taekwon-Do sucks, etc. I don't think it does. I think ITF Taekwon-Do is primarily a bare knuckled fighting style (less head movement than regular boxing because you dont do as much head movement in bare knuckled fighting). I think it's a bare knuckled style with TRULY AWFUL training methods. You practice things that may or may not be effective in truly ineffective ways in patterns and 1-steps and things of that nature.
I'm saying I'm not so sure it's the art that sucks so much as it is THE TRAINING METHODS that suck. Tai Chi is a perfect example. According to Ramsey, Tai Chi is a grappling art. How many Tai Chi practitioners are aware of this? Do they know they practice a grappling art? Most likely, NO! Don't you think they should know that?! Isn't trainming someone in something without telling them what they are doing and why ( in an objective, pragmatic way) a poor method of instruction? I think it is, but it's common in, "traditional", martial arts. They train people poorly, IMO.
I don't know why the instruction is, generally, so poor. Sometimes, seemingly, deliberately so. I don't know if they have come to the conclusion that poor instruction allows easier exploitation of students OR they're mostly ignorant of pragmatic fighting OR it's some combination of those two things. In short, in my opinion, in many cases, the problem isn't the so much the martial art, it's the oppressive method of instruction which is so common in many traditional styles.
I really don't think it's that big of an issue, what actually corrupts the youth are the idealistic images that society instills in them at a very early age about how to look and act a certain way and how money is the be all, end all of everything.
Damn dude, i often find your comments on other videos
Screpitum Ralk ”its seems like our intresset are a lined”
IMO MMA is not discrediting Traditional MA (TMA). It has discredited the method of practice. All static stuff is bunk. Energy drills should be learn and discard not used as the nucleus. Change all the static TMA stuff to dynamic and it's mostly good.
Well, If I understand correctly, when people turned Karate competitions into full-contact, they became kickboxing.
@@Mishkola agreed. mma is discrediting traditional martial arts. though it may be benificial, if your main instincts are these traditioinal moves, youre gonna get your ass handed to you
@@Mishkola yes and no. Karate used to be point fighting, didn't use much gear, not continuous, and done in large open square (no ropes), and you could be docked for 'excessive contact'. Kickboxing is in a ring, it uses gear (gloves, headgear maybe) and it has minimal interference by the referees, it's continuous, unlike karate which is stopped at each point. Pretty much different animals. A few have been able to cross over. My fav is Raymond Daniels who has done point, kickboxing and a few MMA matches.
@@Badge01Kenobi apples and oranges, man. I will restate what I said: From what I understand, kickboxing grew out of a return to full-contact competition by karate practitioners.
@@Mishkola Well I was there in the early 80s and almost nobody from point karate did very well in kickboxing which is different. The few who did are famous. Wallace, Lewis, Urquidez Kickboxing originated in Thailand and another good faction were the Dutch. Kyushinkai (Mas Oyama) is not kickboxing. Sanda is pretty close to kickboxing.
20:52 another option: there are people who train a traditional Chinese martial art because they enjoy it, have no intention of competing or getting into fights, and both understand and acknowledge the shortcomings of their chosen style.
The funny thing is. Training goes out the way when it comes to dropping to instinct. You do what you can, when you can, and how you can. The forms are just there for movement of the body.
sounds like coping
@@Tespriyeah, 90 year olds are definitely coping
@@eprd313 well they live under totalitarian rule, they have to cope.
Imagine saying playing chess is useless, and then imagine saying just because you played chess for 15 years you can now command a full on war theater
Traditional martial arts training involves discipline, hard work, honesty, intelligence and humility. These things are worthwhile.
People get confused with ritualised martial arts training which are usually self serving, lazy, outdated and pointless.
yhea finally some one gets it tradional martial arts and ritualised martial arts are 2 diferent things
If i was to ever open a kung fu school in the far future, to teach the stuff I’m learning now, I would make sure my students are proficient in boxing before teaching any of the long forms. Having someone actively trying to punch me in the face when I started sparring, improved my understanding of kung fu.
100% agree with this, even though I've studied Wing Chun and never studied boxing. Most Wing Chun vs. boxing videos online are crap-can challenge matches that aim to "prove" which is better, but when you find ones where where the two are legitimately collaborating, it's clear Wing Chun encourages long guard to a fault when it's obviously much safer for a beginner to keep their guard close.
man I love those wrestling videos with the old dudes. They show the power of moving the right way at the right time.
Out of all the guys who do UFC fighting, Tony Tenth Planet Guy Who's Gonna Fight Khabib If This Corona Thing Ever Clears Up is one of my favourite.
Why can't people just appreciate her work ethic and accomplishments?
I think every champion gets put under a microscope...and when that champion has their MMA accomplishments co-signed by Traditional Chinese Martial Arts just because they are from China, it's a bit of a slap in the face to our collective intellects (given that we are also martial artists etc)
What do you think of Dino’s question? Is validating traditional martial arts as dangerous as he thinks?
Isn’t it dangerous? We saw this in the karate boom of the 70s and 80s- and they were only validated by movies, not world champion mixed martial artists. Granted, Sanda seems pretty grounded, but having done some wushu, I would not like to see it validated as a means to learn how to fight. Wushu is beautiful and an excellent form of exercise. It’s not gonna save your ass when the chips are down though.
I think study Law is better then traditional martial
I don't think it's that dangerous. I believe most people can objectively look at what happens in an MMA fight and realize that it is far removed from traditional martial arts.
Only in martial arts community you have this kind of questions, like "Is Muay Thai better than kickBoxing ?" "I Boxing effective in MMA ?". You'll never see something like "Is training Rugby effective to play football ?" or "Is PingPong effective to play tennis ?" or "If I only shoot 3points in my backyard, can I go play a pro basketball match ?"
Zhang Weili talks about her background in kungfu because she sees value in it, however she trains specificaly for MMA and she compete in it, so she's also directly promoting MMA.
It's like a pro tennis player who would say "I also love to play ping pong and badmington...." Noone said If you only play pingpong you can be a pro tennis player, but it probably has perks...The problem would be to say "I only train Badmington and I'm a pro Tennis player"...
If Zhang Weili wants to promote traditional martial arts in MMA it's fine, she's promoting her culture. But if you check her instagram, she's training 90% of her time for MMA, she's not lying to anyone...
a lot of the mma nonsense is just fight promotion. marketing is not going away, whether it's out-of-control trash talking or national identity or whatever.
"They paid some major money."
Or they just asked the Chinese government to help them promote traditional chinese martial arts, and they cleared everyone out.
I bet that was exactly what happened.
u know too much
Or both
You kind of confused the sunken cost and the gambler's fallacy somehow.
The sunken cost fallacy is more about "we have to make it happen now because we wasted so much money on it".
So it's driven by pressure, not by hope.
mcgeufer
Respectfully, I beg to differ, at least a little bit. The sunk cost fallacy is when individuals continue a behavior or endeavor as a result of previously invested resources (time, money, effort).
If that’s the same thing as you were trying to say, then I apologize. But my point is that Ramsey was using the term correctly.
@@raphaelworkman2170 Frankly it might be that my english skill is the real problem here. To me it seemed like he says that people keep putting more money in the project because they are convinced that it will pay off eventually. But it might be that I got that wrong way arround.
mcgeufer
I won’t quibble over your English skill. Your English is better than my French or Spanish (I know very little other languages). Thanks for the comments/discussion. 😃
@@mcgeufer No you were on point. He misread probably.
The sunk cost fallacy isn't about wasting money specifically. Time is an "opportunity cost" which can become a sunk cost (or appear to be one) when you put a lot of time, effort, consideration, or whatever else into an activity with nothing to show for it, and keep throwing more work into the same thing that's failed to deliver in the hope that it will eventually pay off. The gambler's fallacy is specifically where odds are involved and you think that this next roll of the dice is guaranteed because of how many times you've failed. Someone who jumps between Kung Fu schools thinking that "this next school has to be able to make me win fights because the 5 I went to previously sucked so this one can't possibly also be bad" are examples of the gambler's fallacy, while people sticking with the same kung fu school year after year and have plateaued at a moderate level of fighting skill but keep expecting that this next belt will unlock some secret techniques for them that all their work has been building up to are examples of a sunk cost fallacy.
I love this guy. He has very thought provoking videos. One of the best in TH-cam in my opinion.
My Taiwanese girlfriend used to say "swai jiao!" when she was angry at me; and then she would attack me. Pretty sure she wasn't trained in any martial arts. But she would always put me on my ass.
Zodiac are you sure about that?
Simp
@Rafael Acosta Thanks for answering a question that was never asked. You seem really smart. Are you a member of Mensa?
@@icyfrostaye1109 lmfaoooooooo
That would be great to see high level mma fighters look for different techniques from Bajiquan, Choy lay fut, or just any other uncommon art to MMA. People would love it
You sir are increasingly becoming a martial artist that I respect.
OSU!! 👊
When I was a kid my neighborhood had a reputation for fist fights.
Many of kids had no fromal combat training. What we did learn was heart and what worked and didn't work.
Now these fights where brutal even by teenage standards.
When I entered the Marines I was sponge I learned all that I could.
After the military the learning continued taking what works for me and learning also what works for others. I didn't like doing high kicks it always seemed to leave me variable to attacks. I learned how to do them then I learned how to defend against them.
Knowledge is a powerful defensive tool it keeps you alive. Experience teaches you what work for you.
Ramsey are you going to finish voicing jack dempseys book
Wait is he doing that for real? I looked, but couldn't find a copy.
@@Deathskull0001 hes done chapter 1-9
@@karlokamenjasevic921 Amazing, thank you!
@@Deathskull0001 no problem :D
As you stated in a previous video, they know the form, but not the meaning. It's a tragedy that there are so few 'old' masters who know how to fight ( to use the kata, the movements). Good on you sir! Keep doing what you're doing!
Sadly, if you look at the old masters on youtube (there are a few) they're terrible. It's a myth, my fren. Nobody learned to fight using secret internal kata movements. Kata was 'invented' to give students things to do so you could hang out with your buddies in the office (so to speak). Yes it does teach some 'floor movement sense' but not how to fight. HTH
@@flonomcflooneyloo7573Wow, you should know about Motobu Choki, he fought with kata, and won every fight he had. Maybe you just dont know what is ut for the katas
Hahahah Ramsey uses the magical kungfu technique of pregnant pauses in his story telling!
He is a GREAT story teller. It's fascinating, entertaining and captivating.
The pause keeps us on the edge of our seats!
LOL, yeah it's like 'shadowless hand' technique. How about the 'wordless persuasion' technique?
I see your point but I've sparred with a number of Muay Thai fighters with only a wing Chun and Shaolin background and beat a few, lost to a couple. Did well, basically. My wing chun class was the same intensity and same training style as my Muay Thai class actually. Constant padwork and bagwork and then sparring. If we train right any style of fighting can help you
It's not just 'training' You sparred with a bunch of different people. You had some natural talent. If by 'train right' you mean no holes in your game (i.e. not lacking groundfighting, not lacking bjj, not lacking wrestling, not lacking boxing, not lacking transitions, not lacking grip fighting, then sure).
Yo, I wish I could find more good traditional schools that train like that. Especially Wing Chun because that’s one that has always interested me
@@zachariaravenheart Yeah man, it's honestly extremely rare nowadays. And impossible in China. Since all the real deal fighters left China to teach elsewhere to escape cultural revolution. If you manage to find one, awesome. But if ya can't I'd just go with the standard MMA gym. I mean I'm also learning BJJ and Muay Thai from wrestling to just expand my knowledge. They are awesome fighting styles.
@@flonomcflooneyloo7573 By train right I meant knowing the real applications of what's being taught to you and drilling it over and over until you can't mess it up and will easily just do it fighting someone. This is good and practical training to me. And with training like that any true fighting style can be used. But yes, also, a well rounded fighter should learn many forms of grappling and striking. I believe the more styles you are familiar with, the more you can fight without thinking, without having any particular style, you be yourself. That's when (by definition) you become very powerful. I don't want to make this comment about me, but I have experience in wrestling and currently do BJJ. To balance out my striking styles (which is a list of a few fighting ways which are pretty solid imo) Thanks for replying
My old WC school in Duluth Ga. did that too drills and pad work..sparring was tough.
Hear hear! Science has changed. Religion has changed. Combat has changed. Being a badass was probably easier against a bunch of farmers and bandits. War has changed.
My old judo instructor Charlie Hooks was like that old guy. He walked poorly but man he could roll. That story about the lao tou from Jiangsu was great. Thanks !
In advertising her kungfu background as a marketing move Zhang Weili would be Tai Cheating.
Her base of fitness.
Has made her what she is it seems that this should be more of a focus for the youth.
I have the image of her biceps stuck in my head.
Fitness is the base of tony Ferguson.
mr illis No.
@@jordanlandsaw7263 in the case of Tony, yeah. Anyone whose ever trained with him are completely blown away by one thing: his work ethic. While he is extremely skilled in pretty much all areas of combat, what really sets him apart from the rest of the competition is that he puts in more work than everyone else in the gym. Like Ali said "fights are won in the gym".
Big Dibber nick Yes, I understand the point, and in his earlier days he beat some of my gym’s guys with his crazy non-stop style. But, if you put Tony in a cage void of his beautiful elbows, explosive wrestling, and 10P BJJ - he would be literally nothing. I have athletes come into my gym all the time that are big and strong and will not stop, yet when we spar it’s still like playing with a child just because they have no techniques. Tony is what he is because that cardio allows him to train good MMA fundamentals at an unrivaled pace. It’s not the energy itself, but what it leads to.
There is something to that. Vince Lombardi once said, "Fatigue makes cowards of us all". And that base of fitness keeps someone in the game longer, with better effectiveness.
@@eldenlean5221 Tonys base os wrestling
I think the sunk cost aspect is huge.
The sheer amount of time and effort and sustained focus in spending 10 - 20 years learning a traditional martial is not something you want to feel was wasted!
And truth be told, much of it wasn't wasted.
Practitioners just need to be prepared to add a few things, change a few things, and let a few things go. Both physically and mentally.
And I think many are increasingly doing that.
For myself, I always felt traditional karate had some shortcomings, and so I gradually addressed that over the years.
And like most people, I didn't take up Tai Chi for use as a fighting art. So none of those 13 years have been wasted.
However, getting deeper into the applications has been really interesting, and over time I've made some tweaks and adjustments so that some of those could actually be useful.
Great perspective. If all your time training TMA was spent with the goal of learning to and preparing for an assault - but it never comes - have you wasted your time? If that's the only thing you were measuring your training by - you might indeed feel that you have. But what TMA school - well principled and learned - emphasizes that over kindness, balance, tranquility, humility, personal development etc...? There is SO much more to the arts than just physical capability, and a good TMA instructor will be steering you toward all the avoidance skills (verbal , commonsense , awareness etc ) that will you keep you far safer than engaging in a fight.
hey thanx again for the video! i often watch cause im bored, then by the end im shadow boxing in my room!
i was wondering, where can i find that video of the old man scholling the younger man in wrestling? i want to show my pops that video.
It’s probably on TH-cam. A friend sent me the video in an attachment.
I cant believe i havent heard more people talking about this. THANK YOU for bringing attention to this.
lol on the UFC Countdown for Zhang v Joanna when they were showing all the "Chinese Martial Arts" she does while training.. I commented.. " Zabit Magomedsharipov's style is more based off Chinese Martial Arts than Zhangs.." tons of people agreed.
Modern Tai chi is for exercising, marshal arts were definitely practical a centuries ago, but now it’s mostly exercise and performance based after the form of the current country, for it is not promoted by the government, for “the war is over and way of violence is unnecessary”
Nooo! DO NOT "Get out there and train"! Stay home, stay safe! Bad Ramsey!
Get in there and train.
But, you cannot spar. We must maintain social distance, which is at least 1.5 meters.
GuitarsRockForever it’s time to develop no touch knockout skills :)
@@tprnbs
Imagine you are in a mma match, you told your opponent you got the coronavirus. He would not get anywhere near you, you win 100%.
Is that a good no touch fighting style?
GuitarsRockForever haha :) yes it’s good but not enough, if your opponent has corona virus too it doesn’t work :(
You are a very good storyteller. You’re very engaging. Thank you for being here! Thank you for being you!
I find it hard to talk about the 'ancient Asian mysticism' part without people getting offended but it's so true.. I know so many people that are completely convinced shaolin monks (or samurai) are the greatest fighters in the world and practically unbeatable especially vs westerners. I don't blame them because I used to think the same thing when I was a kid. But it can be frustrating.. I will show them clips of Buakaw and it looks unimpressive to them because it's just some guy throwing simple kicks, they could 'easily' counter those with this and that... . Then they might show me a clip of some monk leaning with his throat on a spear and ask me if I really think those simple kicks could hurt someone like this.. I try to explain to them the realities of fighting, but they don't take me seriously because I'm just some guy who trains and competed in a sport. People raised in the Shaolin temple are beyond these things. Arrrghhh😂
Some years ago I was with my friend in a coffeeshop and a week earlier the place was robbed by a guy with a knife. My friend does Kung fu and he said that right now if it were to happen again he would step in and take the guy out.. I kinda laughed and told him I would run. But he was actually serious. These ideas can definitely be dangerous..
I do/teach kung-fu. The whole shaolin spear to the throat is a parlor trick. The spear is always bendy and they basically exploit that. Its still tough to condition to do, but it's far from an impervious body.
The monk myth is not the most irritating, what irritates me the most are people convinced Bruce Lee could beat any Heavyweight chaption of every combat sport in less than a minute(I really heard that).
@@thedarkknight9021
Yeah, I know that. Bruce Lee was a great martial artist, good philosopher, very athletic body and decent figthin skills for street figths (it was his goal). Bruce Lee deserve a lot of respect, Horewher people make him a God, capable of doing supernatural things.
Ps someone said (in a Mike tyson vs bruce Lee hypothetical figth) that Mike tyson was strong but slow, all muscle ad brainless......... I wonder if this people ever watched a Mike tyson match, and it they had done it, that wuold say "it's only a sport, in real life there are not rules" it might be true, but I think That you dirty tricks/moves wuold be useless against a single bare handed punch from him in your skull.
Ramsey, props for having the courage for speaking of this while living in China. You are as real as it gets.
3:54 according to Wikipedia she started sanda at the age of 12
Tony Ferguson's wing chun trapping is pretty much 5%-10% of his total style, so he isn't using pure wing chun he is just using what works for him....makes me remember as to why Bruce Lee abandoned 90-95% of wing chun
Anything modern started with a tradition. Military officers still learn from battle tactics from all ages of weapons. But they’d be a fool to train with their weapons.
The problem isen't the tradition. Muay thai is traditional, for exemple. The problem is pressure testing, what most traditional martial art doesen't do.
@@MinusMaximusXX are you Sure?
As a person with a 14 character Polish last name, "Im not going to try" is a perfectly acceptable pronunciation and is rooted in tradition. Keep up the great videos.
Y'all and the Welsh, man.
As usual your videos are very insightful especially when talking about the issues within the martial arts community in China especially involving McDojos.
As for kung fu working, we have guys like Zen Dragon and the late Ehsan Shafiq who came from a Kung Fu background and actually tests his skills for real.
Surprisingly during my research I discovered a number of successfull Kickboxers during the late 80s and early 90s who came from a Kung Fu background like Don The Dragon Wilson who decided to take up kickboxing because he wanted to prove Kung Fu practioners could succeed in full contact sports.
As for Weili, from what I understand she practiced Sanda and Shuai Jiao since she was 12 so she may have competed in combat tournament but I get your point that she never competed at a high level sport like MMA until she got interested in BJJ. And those frauds who practice styles like Taichi trying to take advantage of her success is going to hurt the martial art scene in China even more.
When I think of Chi, I just think of it as something like inner strength or adrenaline not that mystical stuff you only find in Wuxia fairy tales and Kung Fu films
And are people still using the Anderson Silva video to defend Wing Chun? Come on guys, at least use Tony Ferguson as an example, at least he practiced Wing Chun longer and successfully applied it in his fights. Hell, you got MMA fighters like Zabit who came from Kung Fu and Sanda background but sure let's pick Anderson Silva as the chosen one because he's more famous even though he practiced Wing Chun after he was passed his prime and the time he used it he got his face hit several times, at least Ferguson successfully used the Wing Chun hand trap to block strikes to his face.
I didnt know Tony Ferguson had a Wing Chun background?
@@legalizemiami9282 he didn't at first but he later took up Wing Chun particularly training on the WC dummy as part of his training and that helped him in some of his fights like the Pettis where he used the WC trappings to block several of Pettis' punches
@@Elementa2006 thats dope as fuck, thanks for sharing deadass lol i wouldnt have known that if you didnt bring it up. May 9th is gonna be lit
Actually, she was a pro/semi-pro Sanda athlete before retiring due to injury and had to work as a fitness trainer to make a living.
It's a memory from many years ago; I thought there was at least one mega movie set of the forbidden city in China for filming things like that
A lot of movies are filmed there.
There is a movie set in another province that looks similar but this is the real Forbidden City. Also if you go there it's made up of dozens of gated courtyards so easy to seal one of them off at a time for a film crew.
I think it's a wrong mentality of needing a traditional style be validated by being used successfully in the UFC. I practice Wu Family Bajiquan. I practice it with consultation from official disciples of the current inheritor of the style, Wu Lianzhi.
I chose Bajiquan because I love the style. I don't need to have Bajiquan validated by being successfully used in the UFC. The fact that it's been around for about 3,000 years. That alone is validation. The fact that currently it's used by Bodyguards and police forces is validation. The success of past valid practitioners in duels and fights is validation. I don't think it's really necessary to need to have a style used in the UFC in order for it to be validated.
I should also mention that the UFC is just one arena in which these styles CAN be used. It's not the only one especially because when these styles were first created and during their heyday, they were meant for life or death. Let's just remember that when thinking about traditional styles as a whole
Great vid. But you should have ended with, "Now STAY INSIDE and train." lol
I always felt like it doesn't always matter what you learned but if your bad at fighting it doesn't matter if you learn "the best" martial arts
In her last fight I saw her using the trademark playful hip thing Saenchai does, and also the great bouncing in and out footwork from Rose. Weili is showing a never before seen, at least by me, respect to not only learn but use new techniques from other champions. I think she is awesome for doing so.
Your anecdotes on old experienced scrappers and on the Aikido guy rings so true. My old dad is a genuine fighter: boxed in high school, did judo, touched on jujitsu and has done Aikido now for 40 years. He will openly say about several techniques: “These will not work but are an exercise.” On the other hand, he will also say about others: “These will work if you’re in the right place and you know how to fight.” (He is not popular in the circuit of emperors-new-clothes sensei.)
Forgot to mention he was a fencing and quarter staff instructor - just giving him credit out of pride and hardly anyone else is going to get him a slot in Black Belt Magazine 🤣
I’ve got a short, difficult question for you: Define somebody who can ‘fight’.
For instance I’ve been in only one very minor altercation and have many years of martial arts experience. On the other end of the spectrum, would untrained people with many street fights be considered being able to fight who (what you often describe) as them having no skill. Finally, what about two guys in a a ring or cage with years of training but very little sparring experience?
That second wrestling clip of the old guy is awesome!
Also I simply can't be the only one who would like to know what are your other favourite tai chi techniques.
It is sad how much information has been lost from the old timers that really knew how traditional martial arts were to be used.
I imagine that is true for many arts and crafts. Things do not always improve over time, and knowledge doesn't always increase.
The really incredible thing is that EVERY video, ANY video, typology of videos you bring, all ALL of them are pure pearls ❤️🙏👌😊
Ramsey, in Canada I trained in Tai chi years ago and a little old lady schooled me in push hands.
This lady practice on a daily and was in great shape for her age.
Sure.
spot friggin on. as usual. :) great video.
Tony Furgeson, the kind of guy to have an unremberable last name.
I've trained with some old judo senseis when I was 16~17 yo, purple belt and they could almost wipe the floor with me. They were slow, and they used to gas out rapidly of course, but the technique was spot on and they were almost all very explosive and surprisingly strong for their age. The ground pressure, the posture etc, they seemed to weigh much more than they did. I guarantee those guys would destroy average untrained guys (I'm not talking about gym dudes, professional fighters or something like that OBVIOUSLY)
It's not the art, it's the artist. In my opinion, most older fighters get underestimated; and you shouldn't do that with Old Man Strength!
"It's not the art, it's the artist" is a garbage quote.
There's arts that are clearly and objectively better, that produces students capable of winning in the streets or sport.
Meanwhile, other styles can be practiced earnestly and diligently for a decade, that are made up of bullshido techniques such as no touch "chi" throws and no touch KOs - that will get students mocked and killed in the streets or sports.
If one particular striking style fails constantly in combat sports, it's a clear indication of a flawed system with flawed instruction.
To this day, the most effective striking style that Zhang Weili uses frequently to win is Muay Thai, while most of her Chinese striking arts has VERY little influence on her wins.
@@TheScotchaholic - "I don't know art, but I know what I like. " Another short quote for you. I was once told that the martial arts are like a big circle, and in the beginning, they all look very different, the circle is big and the arts look quite different. Yet, as you learn and witness the more advanced techniques, the circle closes; until techniques matchup. As Ramsey has said, there really is only a small skillset needed for a fight...it's a matter of how you get there. You know, it's not the destination, it's the journey...cause the final destination is the same for all of us, and i am in no rush to get there. As far as charlatans go, that is not really art, is it? Objective reality does not and cannot exist inside any cultural construct of man....we are subjective since birth. Using scam artists as an example of objectively bad martial arts is akin to using the Louvre to exhibit dog feces. It's not art, it;s dog crap.
@@guillermozepeda9967
You used the patently false phrase, when most if not all Kung Fu styles have failed to exhibit dominating efficacy in all striking competitions such as K-1 or in MMA.
When we see Joanna Jedrzejczyk and Valentina Schevchenko fight, we can clearly see their Muay Thai roots in their stances and attacks.
Muay Thai is a foundational style of MMA, used by many fighters. Why? Because it has proven itself time and again.
The same goes with modern/Dutch kickboxing, Western boxing, Olympic wrestling, judo, and BJJ.
Where's the traditional Kung Fu representation? NOWHERE.
At best, we may see some traditional Shuai jiao wrestling techniques used sporadically.
@@TheScotchaholic Would you agree that efficacy is linked to rule sets? Not everyone trains in martial arts to prizefight. In sparring, we regularly utilize 1 v2, 2 v2, even one against 3. How about weapons training? That of course adds an entire new element where credibility and efficacy is not achieved in the ring.
I stand by my thesis: Anyone can pick up a paintbrush, but have you seen any of Musashi's art? Try matching his efficacy. Seriously, the artist, and to an extent the time in which he lives does make a difference.
@@guillermozepeda9967
Once again, Weili's winning ways are CLEARLY shown by her non-kung fu techniques, that finishes her opponents or enables her to outscore them.
I repeat again, China has many traditional styles with many practitioners, and the ones that dare to compete, do poorly.
Meanwhile, a traditional style known as Muay Thai/Boran, is the dominant fixture among the traditional striking arts.
Traditional grappling arts such as Olympic/Greco-Roman wrestling, Jiu-Jitsu, and judo are mandatory skills for further success in MMA.
Where are the Chinese or other styles being a necessity? They're not.
Thank you for bringing that point out. I studied Tang Soo Do to Aikido but before any martial Arts i did boxing and a okay Street fighter so when people ask me why are you studying Kokikai Ryu Aikido???
And i studied Yin Style BaGua Zhang
I like your cast, I would just like to say I've done 20 years of tai chi and wing chun. I've been a door man had tonnes of street fights I've never lost its never failed me. I would also like to say I've done several years of mma but the best teacher I know with most fighting skill is an old chen tai chi master 🙏
Hey.. My tai chi teacher is jiangsu as well. The chen tai chi masters are great just because they don't want to fight doesn't mean they cant. Thank you. 🙏
speaking of badass old men, there's a man named Danny Hodge who used to be a highly regarded amateur wrestler and pro wrestler and who can still crush an entire apple with one hand, he was a silver medalist at the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, his impact on amateur wrestling in the US was huge that there's a trophy named after him, which is the amateur wrestling equivalent of the Heisman Trophy. As a pro wrestler he was NWA World Junior Champion a record 7 times and is highly regarded among big names in the business like Bret Hart as one of the toughest people in the business.
He also had a successful amateur boxing career with an amateur record of 17-0-0 and is a Golden Gloves winner. He had a pro record of 8-2, he quit because pro wrestling paid better at the time.
@Ramsey Dewey Speaking of TKD & since you have a background in it yourself. I'd love to hear your opinions/thoughts on WTF TKD vs ITF TKD in terms of utilizing TKD for an MMA scenario.
I have no experience with ITF taekwondo. I have never even seen an ITF school before in any of the countries I have lived in or visited. I’ve only seen a few videos of demos and sparring sessions. From what I’ve seen, both styles create unique problems with their rule sets for sparring that make it difficult and time consuming to adapt to MMA and other professional ring sports.
@@RamseyDewey Thank you so much for such a quick reply!
That's very interesting. TKD is the only kicking Martial Art I've ever been interested in. So when I see people like Yayir Rodriguez, Israel Adesanya, Edson Barbosa etc pull off some TKD in MMA. I always wonder if they did WTF or ITF. But from the looks of things I'd assume they all did some WTF at some point. I wonder if Joe Rogan did WTF too?
Ramsey. I don't study Aikido. But I do study Japanese history. Here's my take on topic.
Aikido grew out of a need endemic to Japan. It is meant for self defense by a swordsman without a sword. More specifically, a sword master without a sword. The object is for the unarmed master to obtain a sword for himself. That's where (and when) Aikido was most culturally and militarily relevant.
Consider: every Aikido move and combination makes perfect sense if the Aikido master is facing swordsmen or is a swordsman himself. All the feints are designed to draw a swordsman/yariman opponent from his stance or balance, to take the center, and to ground him. Disarm him, take his weapon, and start this party jumpin'. This practice, and classical encounters, both, usually took place in an austere, but slightly confined, space.
This makes sense in a military government, where one's enemies can sometimes wield considerable political power and clandestine effect as well as military or personal prowess. Several period anecdotal accounts involve various Daimyo or bushi attacked while in castle or temple (or bath), where the "hero" protagonist had already given up his big sword due to custom and/or command. In this context Aikido takes on a mantle of incredible relevance and power.
Most important is the fact that an Aikido master must be a swordsman first and foremost. By this means he employs his knowledge of how a swordsman thinks, how he acts, how he reacts. Against swordsman or spearman opponents, such as he might encounter in a temple or castle ambush/betrayal*; a time and place where he might've temporarily given up his sword to custom or command, a sword master employs Aikido to its maximum benefit.
*I'm not looking at you, Oda . . . but the period from which Aikido's philosophical genesis emerges is the late Sengoku. This was a time where official castle and temple functions were both awkward and fraught with dangers internal and external.
Zhang Weili is great for MMA. I wish her the best.
I did karate before taking up boxing. Unlike many people though I knew my karate world not work in boxing ring. My style is Wado Ryu and it focuses on angles, body movement,pivots, evasion ect. After some time during sparring I was using all those things without even realizing it was from my karate training. I believe when TMA are combined with practical systems they become something else. That being said, I think karate is still way to formal to be learned in a short time. I would recomend boxing first
WHEN YOU WERE TALKING BOUT aikido IT REMINDED ME OF THAT BLITZ IN (sorry caps) and out style of things like point Karate etc
When Machida came out and started burning through everyone it was shocking to people.
But he already knew the ground game and then implemented his original style into it with better effect then almost everyone else at the time.
I'm thinking all have their place in certain situations. Aikido included.
Pretty sure it gets a worse rep cause people tend to think Steven Seagal is annoying and tends to be one that most people connect Aikido to since he is well known.
Done muay Thai for a year, also boxing for 2 years, loved sparring. Also had real fights (won't get into details) but sparring prepares you, 100% I became Confident.
In countdown show, they literally show it 10 second. It super little and everyone know that Taichi is not what she uses in battle.
That is funny, Ramsey, when I was a kid I trained North Shao Lin Gongfu and sometimes my teacher would teach us some Tai Chi Chuan. As a kid in Brazil back in the late 90s I still believed I would be able to develop skills as a fighter without "fighting" (or sparring), although I already competed in Judo at the time, but that is not the issue here. The thing is that I saw Tai Chi as I saw Kung Fu, as a mainly striking art (at least we used to train it as a mainly striking art, but maybe there are styles or teachers with a different approach); and I always heard that Tai Chi Chuan was considered to be the anti-kung fu back in the day, but I never really understood why. Now, many years later (I am on my mid 30s), after having trained some grappling and striking (I have only sparred in striking and BJJ, but I have competed in Judo with some level of local/amateur success), and after hearing you speak about Tai Chi as a grappling art, I have finally understood it: the movements and forms of Tai Chi clearly are grappling techniques, and it makes sense to say that grappling would be the anti-striking (as we see today in MMA grapplers controlling fights against strikers that are not well prepared to defend against grappling). Thank you teacher Ramsey!
Could you comment more on that? Of course that we are talking about different times and contexts, one is war or self defense in a different era and the other one is a contemporary sport, but can we make that analogy? Please, answer my question, I am a big fan of the channel!!
i hope you and your family are doing well in china, thank you for giving us the hidden tips and tricks!
I love that led sweep, it’s beautiful. That’s the art of tai chi quan, it’s a grappling sport and fully agree with you Ramsey, but I’d love to master that leg sweep, it’s one of the most effective and coolest tai chi quan moves that is possible to do in a real fight, and watching you execute it is so cool I have no words 😶 excellent form my friend that’s how you integrate a beautiful move into your arsenal and make it deadly 👌💯
Wing chun nerd and sunk cost fallacy. Lol. I've called you a classic poet warrior but with this drop I'm gonna have to add comedian and econ man too. Good vid. Enjoyed it.
econ?!
I used to train for 13 years, had a black belt. I thought i knew something.
Now, the teacher i had at the time mixed karate, kenpo, silat and called it Kungfu. But after 13 years the new techniques never changed. Also it was supposed to be a supersecret
ancient. Blablabla, you get the drift.
Around 2014 i saw an advertisement for a local Hung Kuen school. I thought i knew what IT was. Boy was i wrong, hard work, painful stance training, sore muscles, and didn't get to learn 4 forms in a year, instead 1 year of 2 until he found it "sufficient". And the sparring! They used boxing techniques and take downs and grapple and used protective gear . That doesn't look like kungfu! After a year of training i was allowed to join the sparring sessions. The teacher regulary invites different schools: HEMA, jiu jitsu, karate. (He is still waiting on the reply of the local wing Chun school... ) to exchange techniques
and spar, which is incredibly fun and great comraderie. And yes we got our ass handed to us sometimes but we can hold our own.
I train for 6 years now and never looked back to my old teacher. I think "what is traditional training" means you take something you learn: appreciate and respect where it comes from and develop it further and challenge it.
We just want kung fu to be effective
There's Sanda, isn't there?
Truth
@@kahahabahaha
Sanda is a system the chinese created later when they were failing using traditional kungfu.
@@dartfather Huh? I was under impression that sanda is a *rule set* that was devised to be a common ground for practitioners of Chinese MA (colloquially known as "kung fu") to put their skills to test against each other regardless of what school they belonged to. Being a specific rule set, it of course opened up an associated sport and people training for that specific sport from the get go.
@@Annokh Whatever your impression is, it was created in the 60's after the chinese kungfu delegation were badly beaten whenever they compete outside of china. Call it what they want, it was actually a re-adjustment, rethinking, reinvention or repair of what is not working.
Tony Ferguson is the type of guy to use Wing Chun techniques to bathe his opponents with their own blood
It's pronounced "Yem-jay-check" but it's not really jay and not really check because those two sounds in jay and check are not pronounced like that. In my language it's these two letters "dž, č" and it's also a slavic language so I know and Joanna is polish.
It's all but impossible to express in written English sounds that must be pronounced in Jędrzejczyk's surname. But surprisingly a lot of foreigners, English and others, try to grapple with that pronunciation with results even if far from close to proper, still deserving lots of kudos for their efforts.
aren't those retroflexed affricates
@@desimujahid one of them surely, this sound: "drz"
@@vyderka
Yes
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Voiced_retroflex_affricate.ogg
@@desimujahid this sound "ah" is not pronounced in this surname; but to complicate the matter in standard Polish, I mean the most often used, people tend to pronounce it with two different separate consonants d and rz, I have just realised that's how I pronounce this surname my whole life, my childhood best friend was also Jędrzejczyk..
I blame Hollyweird for the Chinese mysticism stuff, movies warp your mind really.
Did someone quote Kung Fu panda?
You know what?. Some people are learning Martial Arts, for the Arts and everyone don’t want to be a MMA fighter.
31:24
Ironic, since Bruce Lee criticised the hell out of traditional martial arts and forms.
'Classical mess' is the term that pops to mind... 😏
Yep. And in spite of this every TMA practitioner ever idolizes Bruce Lee.
@@RamseyDewey at least he was not disinformed
Not to mention he also criticised competition fighting as well, yet lots of people say he is the father of modern mma.
@@cosmokramer7396 you re dumb mma has rules why would he fight under rules
@@RamseyDewey he didn t Critized entirely
Great video! I love wing chun but I’ve always had the mentality/realization that if I didn’t have high school wrestling, 5 years of karate as well as some BJJ training, my wing chun would not make sense (to me). With those experiences (as different as they all are) I’ve learned to understand and use wing chun on a good level... but, if I walked into wing chun originally, I’m not sure if it would've made any sense.
I have the utmost respect for Zhang as a fighter but from what I understand about China, she is saying whatever the government wants her to say.
Really succinct and well said. I agree on a points.
I would just add that while techniques can certainly be learned from Tai Chi or Bagua, the essence of each style is much harder teach and learn.
I have trained trained since 1985 in a bunch of styles including Isshinryu and Tang Soo Do karate, Hung Gar, Shaolin Northern Long Fist, etc.
As a current intermediate student of Tai Chi and Yin Style Bagua (Lion, Dragon and Phoenix systems), my experience is that while there are many effective grappling and chin na techniques, especially in YSB, that can be learned quickly and easily incorporated into other styles/mma, the best of Bagua and Tai Chi simply cannot be copied and pasted. It’s the same way an Olympic swimmer can teach you how to you swim and give you really helpful pointers for competition, they can’t give you their strength, speed or determination. Their countless hours of brutal practice. You have to earn those on your own. Same with all styles. They’re only as good as the depth and extent to which they are trained.
I’ve trained long and seriously enough to begin to feel the deeper benefits of the foundational Zhan Zhaung exercises in Tai Chi.
Same with Yin Style Bagua, with the Standing Strengthening Postures. They are the real core of the power in Bagua and must be trained daily for months and years to develop any real power in the strikes.
Both Zhan Zhuang and Standing Strengthening must be trained diligently everyday to develop the deeper power of the techniques within each style. Without the core training well developed, it’s just choreography. That’s the real “secret” in kung fu and Tai chi. It’s long, boring, grueling, daily foundational work. Just like horse stance in karate. All the legit masters I knew sat in a deep horse stance at least 1-2 hours every day.
Most famous Tai Chi teachers spent hours a day standing still in various postures, because they understood that was the essence of the style. It helps develop not only slow twitch fiber strength but a fully relaxed musculoskeletal and nervous system. Practicing daily for years fosters a totally unique state of being that can’t simply be taught. It’s an old joke in Tai Chi classes when new students are sweating and struggling their to stay still in a challenging Zhan Zhuang posture the teacher will casually say, “relax” and the veteran students will laugh. Because they know it’s easier said than done and takes time and dedication to learn how to simply “relax” enough in Tai Chi to derive the greatest benefits of the style.
My Yin Style Bagua teacher has always emphasized daily, Standing Strengthing as absolutely essential to the style. He says without it, you have none of the core strength inherent in the style to apply its uniquely powerful strikes. The postures were designed to lengthen not only muscles the tendons as well. It takes time and consistent practice to literally grow into the most powerful use of Bagua’s hand strikes. You can tell how dedicated a student is by their hand postures. The other YSB teachers my teacher knows vary greatly in strength and fight capability based on whether they train Standing Strengthening daily. The ones who don’t, have no power and can’t stand against the ones that do.
Part of what I love most about Yin Style Bagua is it’s incredible array of techniques and adaptability for all ages, sizes, stages of health, there’s something in it for everyone, to always keep training. So there’s countless chin na techniques that anyone can learn and apply for basic self defense, in minutes. And there are many uniquely deceptive and effective hand strikes, counters, etc.
But without devoting at least 2 hours of training a day to Bagua, especially starting with the Standing Strengthening exercises and circle turning, you’ll never feel the true strength of the style. When able, I will train Tai Chi and Bagua about 5 hours a day. To me that’s the minimum to really feel these styles in a way that they can provide the best health benefits and be applied in a fight.
I think the most common misunderstanding between mma and us older traditional fighters is the assumption that if I’m learning Tai Chi I can’t also be learning or already have learned boxing, Muay Thai, etc.
I learned in high school with karate, and kung fu in college, most styles aren’t effective unless you commit several hours a day to training them, refining your technique and taking every opportunity to spar/pressure test against other styles.
So again, brilliant post as usual. Just didn’t want people thinking Tai Chi is just a collection of techniques that can easily be learned in a day. Or that Bagua is just cool, flashy hand strikes. They are what you put into them.
"I learned in high school with karate, and kung fu in college, most styles aren’t effective unless you commit several hours a day to training them, refining your technique and taking every opportunity to spar/pressure test against other styles.
"
Couldn't have said it my self. I have repeatedly that it takes a lifetime to master just one style. You see a lot of people think that they have a black belt means they have mastered the style when they essentially only masted the basics and then that is a guess at best because they are still required to perfect the techniques. They may be good but they are far from perfect.
Weili style is mostly Muay Thai, what actually seems to rustle the jimmies of chinese nationalists, "how dare she uses that unrefined martial art of that brown skin asians?"
I won't agree with you bro, actually Muay Thai is probably the most popular striking martial art in China. And I don't see any people are not happy with her Muay Thai style.
There's two types of martial artists in China:
The ones that have done their own research in comparing styles, techniques, and success rates in the streets, military, and competition - that REALLY want to learn how to fight, and don't care where the origins of their instructions come from, as long as it works effectively and reliably..
The second types are about fantasy fulfillment and ethnic pride, without any regard to the practicality and proven effectiveness of said style.
These are the ones ALWAYS getting rude awakenings.
Xu Xiaodong should be a national hero!
@@AaronXu70 That's exactly how it is except for the fact that they now have Sanda, a rip-off of Muay Thai with added Judo/Sambo elements. Sanda/Sanshou is the most popular striking art in China because it is show-cased as Chinese Kung Fu. Sanda is a relatively new art that gained popularity in the 70's because prior to that, Kung Fu representatives were continually getting destroyed by Thai fighters.
The Chinese often looked down on the Thais and other SE Asians because they believed for the longest time that their "profound martial arts" were superior - that is until the Thais badly embarrassed them by KOing their representatives in the first rounds. So how do the Chinese beat the Thais? They copy their art, add unfamiliar rules and grappling (which are normally illegal under Thai rules) and call it Chinese Kung Fu. They are excellent copy-cats yet too proud to admit it.
@@Krypteian
Spot on. I tell the Kung Fu defenders:
EVERY traditional Kung Fu style has failed to represent itself well in combat sports - while the traditional art of Muay Thai which is the "safer" sport offshoot of Muay Boran, has proven itself time and again.
Sanda is a fairly modern creation since the 1920s, that's evolved since then. It's China's early form of "MMA".
It CANNOT be considered a traditional Kung Fu style.
The crazy ethnocentric nationalists love to think it is.
@Michael Terrell II
What history of being effective?
Unproven folk stories from snake oil salesmen?
Do you realize that there isn't ONE successful Chinese MMA fighter with a traditional Kung Fu background, that utilizes these skills to become a top contender or champion - from the countless traditional styles and countless practitioners?
Where's the effectiveness?
The Chinese have been mislead by their own generational sham artists.
the guy who used that aikido move seems to be an perfect example that the skills of the fighter are making the difference in a fight and how someone is practicing to fight. oh wow my English here is pretty bad im sorry for that hope u can understand anyway lol
Weili Zhang fight style for mma:
Kung fu Sanda
Shuai Jiao ( chinese Wrestling)
Brasilian Jiu jitsu
As a Tai Chi guy from the states, there are some Tai Chi schools that still "teach" the combat aspect of the forms. By "teach" I mean they run occasional compliant drills and sometimes do push hands in a way that allows actual application of techniques. Unfortunately, that isn't a very effective training method for learning to fight. I'm planning on joining an MMA gym after this coronavirus blows over (hopefully soon) and I think seeing some more of what you've been talking about can help me bridge the gap. I would really appreciate if you were to go into a bit more depth in showing Tai Chi techniques you've used like you did here with the takedown in this video. Every other video I've seen explains the techniques like my Tai Chi teachers did, without resistance and outside of a sparring match or an actual competition, so this was very refreshing. Thanks for the video!
Hey Ramsey as a follow up to dino's question I ask you this.
Where do you think all those poppy and snappy strikes come from in those kung fu movies?
Ur right about some mma schools never sparring mma, spent 5 years did grappling and kickboxing tournaments and didn't even know mma with both could be used together.
The rolling in line we see in training videos, along with jumping up rolling backwards ect.
Medicine balls, all of this stuff seems like enough training for regular people to fight at a little higher level.
All I can say is if you really want to learn how to protect yourself start with boxing, it will teach you everything that is essential. Blocking, cutting angles, putting your opponent into your power, and so much more. I started with boxing and then went to muay thai, I would say I have more of a Dutch style of fighting now and I find it overwhelms most people who have only done muay thai.