MMA vs Boxing vs Kung Fu vs My Rambling

[JowGaWolf]

So I think my MMA sparring partner is out sick, but my boxing sparring partner was available for sparring. I'm not sure but I think I'm going to ask him if he want to train together when I'm in. He can do some of my training. I think I surprised him today, usually I move slow but he got a small taste of the speed and it was more than he expected. I say this, because I usually walk around like an old man whose back is stiff and I'm usually moving slower. Usually no one is there when I'm working on speed, so it was just a different look for him. Not bad for an overweight 50 guy with a rusty back.

He's going to be a good sparring partner for learning how to close the gap. Normally I'm the one moving backwards when sparring, but this time it was him., something new for me to learn how to deal with. My endurance was better than his by a long shot, so I feel good about that since that wasn't always the case. I think I'm at a point where I can toss light hands with the more advance boxers there. They were there tonight, maybe next time I'll ask if they want to spar. Hopefully they box for fun and not for competition. If they box for competition then sparring against a kung fu guy may not be the best thing for them. Not sure if I want to play in the Boxing sandbox either. I fine without doing any kicks but I don't want reduce my striking to a point where I'm not doing kung fu. Those guys train hard and I'm not sure if they have light sparring setting either lol.

I definitely want to spar against he Muay thai guy and lady that trains there. They got some really solid kicks. I'm not sure what to do about those kicks yet. That's almost a completely new skill set for me to defend against beyond the leg checks. If I get a chance so spar against them then I want to use as much kung fu against those kicks has possible. I also want to try to neutralize a lot of it with my footwork. Oh back to the Boxer. I punched him in is thigh today lol. He totally wasn't expecting that lol. Leave it to a kung fu guy to do that. In all reality, I think that's the next technique I'm going to practice on the bags.

 

[Kung Fu Wang]

It seems to me that you have formed a good "fighting club". This is what I did when I was young. In my fighting club, I was lucky to have a professional MT fighter. I have developed a lot of MT experience by sparring with him.

In another thread, "Does Karate need to evolve", IMO, all MA systems should open their doors, invite other MA systems into their fighting club.

If you can spar 15 rounds daily, you will be very good after 3 years.

 

[JowGaWolf]

It seems to me that you have formed a good "fighting club". This is what I did when I was young. In my fighting club, I was lucky to have a professional MT fighter. I have developed a lot of MT experience by sparring with him.

In another thread, "Does Karate need to evolve", IMO, all MA systems should open their doors, invite other MA systems into their fighting club.

If you can spar 15 rounds daily, you will be very good after 3 years.

I hope it continues to grow with similar types of people who enjoy training and don't feel the need to knock each other out. I'm assuming we all have jobs and don't want to go to work with a black eye.. Like I was showing the boxing guy how to cut angles and I ended up cutting the angle too soon and he said it felt like he could hit me. I didn't argue I knew right away if he saw that he could hit me then it's because I tried to cut the angle too soon / too far away. We didn't have to go through the "Prove it" debate. It didn't mean that the technique doesn't work. It just meant that I screwed it up. It happens and we learn from it. So far there is no ego. Just people training.

I agree with you. All MA systems should open their doors and invite other MA systems to spar with them. There's stuff that I've learned from my MA sparring partner about BJJ. He didn't teach me any technique but he explained how what I was doing was slowly getting me into trouble. Now I have to find out something else to try as I try to understand what he's doing and which movements I should be most concerned with. I'll enjoy it while I can since everyone is much younger than me by 20 or 30 years lol.

 

[Tez3]

It seems to me that you have formed a good "fighting club". This is what I did when I was young. In my fighting club, I was lucky to have a professional MT fighter. I have developed a lot of MT experience by sparring with him.

In another thread, "Does Karate need to evolve", IMO, all MA systems should open their doors, invite other MA systems into their fighting club.

If you can spar 15 rounds daily, you will be very good after 3 years.

We tend to have multi art seminars here with instructors from different styles teaching a basic or two from their style. It tends to be more practical than inviting people to where you are, often they are for charities making it even better. I think there's a lot more interaction between styles than many think.

It's where I found doing CMA was difficult if you were used to Japanese styles.

 

[Oily Dragon]

It seems to me that you have formed a good "fighting club". This is what I did when I was young. In my fighting club, I was lucky to have a professional MT fighter. I have developed a lot of MT experience by sparring with him.

In another thread, "Does Karate need to evolve", IMO, all MA systems should open their doors, invite other MA systems into their fighting club.

If you can spar 15 rounds daily, you will be very good after 3 years.

Somewhere I have a book (I think San Shou by Cung Le) that basically says this same thing. It might be in the intro or something but the gist was that well trained fighters learn everything they can get their hands on, and make it part of their regular routine.

For Le it was Vietnamese kung Fu that sparked interest in other arts that eventually launched his full comp career, leading further to MMA fame.

That journey was the important part, no one piece really dominated, and if he'd stayed in one school or another he never would have evolved into the great fighter he is, able to write a whole book discussing sport vs Chinese boxing/wrestling styles, in vivid full color detail.

 

[JowGaWolf]

@Kung Fu Wang oh I forgot to tell you that I did circling arms with the Boxing guy. He didn't know what to make of it. He didn't even try to punch ha ha ha. I'll have to try it again with the mma guy again. I think I'm getting a better feel for it. I started with small arm circling and then moved into large arm circling. I might be able to use it with my long fist strikes. It feels like I may be able to hide my striking and grappling in the same movement.

 

[Bill Mattocks]

In another thread, "Does Karate need to evolve", IMO, all MA systems should open their doors, invite other MA systems into their fighting club.

No, they should not.

 

[Kung Fu Wang]

It's where I found doing CMA was difficult if you were used to Japanese styles.

What kind of difficulty? Could you share more thought on this?

 

[Kung Fu Wang]

I did circling arms with the Boxing guy. ... It feels like I may be able to hide my striking and grappling in the same movement.

That's the purpose of the "circular arms". The moment that your arm hit on your opponent's arm. the moment that you can reverse direction, wrap his arm, and change a striking game into a wrestling game.

A left arm inward circle followed by a left arm outward circle can be used to achieve am arm wrap. I'll call it "the bridge between the striking art and the wrestling art".

 

[Kung Fu Wang]

No, they should not.

What's your reason behind it?

 

[Bill Mattocks]

What's your reason behind it?

Karate is to teach karate. BJJ is to teach BJJ. Etc. If you want to learn them all, sign up for them all. We've had this discussion before. You seem stuck on the belief that all MA schools are 'fighting schools' designed to churn out ultimate MMA fighters and nothing else. There are certainly fighting schools. There are also a lot of traditional schools that teach a particular style of martial arts and have a far different focus, and that's fine. They don't all need to be the way you insist they must be.

 

[Tez3]

What kind of difficulty? Could you share more thought on this?

I think it's because while the techniques in Chinese martial arts are as effective they are performed in a softer manner, perhaps a little less directly too. It's hard to explain, it just felt we were doing the opposite in CMA to what we usually do, if that makes sense?

 

[Kung Fu Wang]

I think it's because while the techniques in Chinese martial arts are as effective they are performed in a softer manner, perhaps a little less directly too. It's hard to explain, it just felt we were doing the opposite in CMA to what we usually do, if that makes sense?

I believe the soft part of the CMA is used for defense and set up. When you use right hand to grab/pull your opponent's right arm to your right, you then use left hand to grab/pull your opponent's left arm to your left, use his left arm to jam his own right arm, so you can free your right hand to punch on his face. Your double grab/pull movement can be soft, but your punch is still hard.

 

[Jared Traveler]

I'm not sure how to use Kung Fu against Muay Thai body kicks, but I could give you some insite on the fundamentals to using Muay Thai to defend body kicks.

I would think that would be an important starting point to developing a Kung Fu game plan. What the thais do at a basic level, is simple and effective. It also leaves a lot of room for creativity and adaptability.

If you want to know the most fundamental, basic way the Thais deal with these powerful kicks, let me know.

 

[Oily Dragon]

Karate is to teach karate. BJJ is to teach BJJ. Etc. If you want to learn them all, sign up for them all. We've had this discussion before. You seem stuck on the belief that all MA schools are 'fighting schools' designed to churn out ultimate MMA fighters and nothing else. There are certainly fighting schools. There are also a lot of traditional schools that teach a particular style of martial arts and have a far different focus, and that's fine. They don't all need to be the way you insist they must be.

I kind of agree.

I mean, if you want your karate school to invite other schools that's great. If you don't, that's also great. Some schools want one thing, some want to mix things. It's all good (as long as you're not pumping out Youtube videos on how deadly your one art school is).

If you really really want to find out what's valuable, do an open invitation tourney or something.

Everybody's a winner, baby.

 

[Kung Fu Wang]

I'm not sure how to use Kung Fu against Muay Thai body kicks,

For CMA, one tries to catch his opponent's kicking leg,. The front kick is hard to catch. the roundhouse kick and the side kick are easier to catch.

Some CMA guys like to use one arm to catch a roundhouse kick - block and wrap. Some CMA guys like to use both arms to catch a roundhouse kick. Both arms can be used as a trap. The upper arm block the kick. The bottom arm catch the kicking leg from underneath.

 

[Steve]

Karate is to teach karate. BJJ is to teach BJJ. Etc. If you want to learn them all, sign up for them all. We've had this discussion before. You seem stuck on the belief that all MA schools are 'fighting schools' designed to churn out ultimate MMA fighters and nothing else. There are certainly fighting schools. There are also a lot of traditional schools that teach a particular style of martial arts and have a far different focus, and that's fine. They don't all need to be the way you insist they must be.

I don't think @JowGaWolf's goal is to be an "ultimate MMA fighter." I think he's just working out his kung fu against people trained in other disciplines. I may misunderstand, but that seems like what @Kung Fu Wang was getting at.

 

[JowGaWolf]

Karate is to teach karate. BJJ is to teach BJJ. Etc. If you want to learn them all, sign up for them all. We've had this discussion before. You seem stuck on the belief that all MA schools are 'fighting schools' designed to churn out ultimate MMA fighters and nothing else. There are certainly fighting schools. There are also a lot of traditional schools that teach a particular style of martial arts and have a far different focus, and that's fine. They don't all need to be the way you insist they must be.

I took his comment to mean something different. Like when I spar against MMA it's not so I can learn how to do MMA. When I spar against BJJ it's not to learn BJJ but how to better understand Jow Ga in the context of applying it against BJJ. Like I literally told my sparring partner not to teach me any BJJ just so I'm not picking up and mixing BJJ concepts and thinking that they are Jow Ga concepts.

My ability to be successful with Jow Ga is directly related to me sparring against other people who don't use Jow Ga. This experience helps me to better understand Jow Ga kung fu. I don't there's a need to be "a fighter" in order to take advantage of sparring against other systems. My students directly benefited from me fighting against other students. What I learned through sparring I shared with them. I was also able to give better application examples than the ones that were originally taught to us. Out of the many Jow Ga schools out there I was one of the few instructors who could pull out a video and show the application of a technique and describe how that technique was applied.

However, I do share the same belief /opinion that BJJ a school that only teaches BJJ should only do BJJ. Karate a karate school that only teaches karate should do karate. I strongly believe that too many people jump from one system to another system too quickly. If I have a problem with ground fighting then I should dig into Jow Ga Kung fu deeper to see what the Jow Ga answer to ground fighting is. I should only absorb something from another system after I have spent quality time and effort searching in my own system and determining that no answer exists. But that's just me. My goal is to be a good representation of Jow Ga Kung Fu, not MMA, not BJJ.

I also don't think every student needs to spar. Some people just aren't that interested. But if a person is going to teach and carry the system to the next generation then, yes. Sparring is going to be a big help but there's more to it than just sparring. I know a lot of Jow Ga people who spar and still can't do Jow Ga. I also knew a Jow Ga Instructor who wanted to take Sanda after sparring with Sanda. Instead of him trying to make his Jow Ga better he just wanted to do Sanda. The teacher of the school kicked him out when he the student told him that he wanted to train Sanda for a while. If I show you a video, you will see that he never did any Jow Ga. He used a lot of his Boxing techniques to go against Sanda. Boxing vs Sanda? Sanda won. Jow Ga never showed up. If a school is going to spar with another school then that school school explain to the students how it will benefit their training. If not then you risk losing students and validity even among the students who don't want to spar.

 

[JowGaWolf]

I don't think @JowGaWolf's goal is to be an "ultimate MMA fighter." I think he's just working out his kung fu against people trained in other disciplines. I may misunderstand, but that seems like what @Kung Fu Wang was getting at.

That's how I took it too.

 

[Jared Traveler]

For CMA, one tries to catch his opponent's kicking leg,. The front kick is hard to catch. the roundhouse kick and the side kick are easier to catch.

Some CMA guys like to use one arm to catch a roundhouse kick - block and wrap. Some CMA guys like to use both arms to catch a roundhouse kick. Both arms can be used as a trap. The upper arm block the kick. The bottom arm catch the kicking leg from underneath.

What is CMA?