S-Words

This is yet another article I meant to post a couple weeks ago, but again, as things have been busy, I’ve been lax. You can probably expect three or four more articles over the weekend as I’ve finally got a weekend at home where I can relax. And maybe even get around to watching Lost, since I’m still 5 hours behind on that.

Swords, Stabbing and Staples.

I experienced something involving all three of these about a month ago. It’s not nearly as dramatic as it sounds, and in lieu of making up a self-aggrandizing story about how I fought off 37 ninjas and happened to get cut in the process, I figured you’d all get a laugh out of the actual story.

I had a picture of the staples that I was going to post with this, but then somehow, it got deleted off my cellphone. The healed scar isn’t nearly as cool, but I may come back and edit the post to add a picture of that.

Regardless, as I’ve stated before, I take kung fu. Various swords are among the weapons our style of kung fu covers, one of them being the Dao. Here’s a picture of one from Wing Lam Enterprises.




To effectively work with these swords, aside from doing forms, the best way to do any sort of application (so as not to pose a danger to other people) is to fill up a milk jug with water, hang it off a tree branch or set it on a stationary surface and then cut it. Sounds simple, right? Right.

My instructor, Sifu, and I were doing just such a thing as he’s recently started to teach me Dao work, particularly forms that revolve around the tiger style. We were both being very careful in cutting the jugs, making sure no one was going to get hurt and so on.

Well, we had put the jugs we’d filled up in a pile, and were both bending down to pick them up, again, being careful. We both grabbed a couple, stood up and then apparently both stepped forward at the same time and his sword stabbed me in the leg, about six inches below my knee, to the left of the bone.

My first reaction was naturally one involving profanity as I jerked my leg back, but it really didn’t hurt that much. Without looking, I knew it would be cut, but our conversation immediately following the events went something like this:

Sifu: Oh, shit!

PreView: No big deal, Sifu, I’m fine, don’t sweat it.

Sifu: Look at your leg.

Preview: (looks at leg, see blood gushing) Hmm….we might want to get that looked at.

Sifu: Yeah, we should probably go to the hospital.

So we ventured to the hospital where I received 5 staples and a prescription for entirely too much pain medicine. That conversation went something like this.

Dr. Beardface (not his real name, but instead his most obvious feature): So, on a scale of 0 to 10, with 0 being no pain and 10 being excruciating pain where you can barely stand it, where does your pain rank?

PreView: I’d say a 2 at most. Not too bad at all.

Dr. Beardface: Hmm….well, I’m going to go ahead and write you a prescription for 24 Loratabs, and 24 Ibuprofen 800, and I’ll give you 4 Loracets to get you through till tomorrow morning.

PreView: Uh…okay. Isn’t that a bit much?

Dr. Beardface: Oh no, that’s normal.

And people wonder why we have a drug problem in this country. The prescription said to take 1-2 pills every 6 hours for pain as needed. I think in the next two weeks, I took a total of 10.

Sifu felt terrible about all of this – he was repeatedly apologizing, and I could tell he felt really bad, but it’s like I told him the first time I accidentally got punched in the face – as long as it’s not the crotch, I can deal with it. However, I can understand how he felt, because had I accidentally stabbed him, I would’ve felt horrible, too.

But…that’s really the end of the saga – got my staples out a couple of weeks ago and it healed fine. I never had staples put in before (plenty of stitches), and it was actually kind of cool. I’d highly recommend staples over stitches, any time, if they give you the choice. I’ve always had problems with stitches, but I didn’t have any problems with the staples…and it definitely looks cooler. And I can say I’ve been stabbed with a sword now, and I don’t know many people that can say that.

We’re still training, of course – although we did decide to take a break for a couple weeks on the swords. However, that’s about over, though, and I’m looking forward to getting back to slicing some more stuff up. Preferably not me, though 

-PreView


Keep Reading...

Martial Arts vs. Mixed Martial Arts (MMA)

In a time when mixed martial arts is becoming the rage, with the UFC making millions of dollars per pay-per-view show, gaining a fan base in 36 countries and growing, multiple smaller organizations popping up all over the country, and more states sanctioning mixed martial arts (Arizona’s governor just signed a bill today calling for the regulation/legalization of MMA), I’m often disturbed by the fact that many mixed martial arts fans and practitioners believe there is no place in today’s society for traditional martial arts.

Now, I train in a traditional martial art, and I’m a huge MMA fan. I train in Ninegate Kung Fu (full name is a lot longer). Our form of kung fu includes a number of animal styles, as well as non-animal based forms, various weapon forms and a number of different forms of meditation and internal training.

As you may have seen on this blog, my kung fu school had a two-day seminar on groundfighting and throws. However, during this time, we also personally trained with my teacher’s teacher (the grandmaster), and his # 2, as well as two women from the school in Buffalo, NY. We worked on a stick-fighting form that finds its basis in a monkey style, as well a number of two-man drills designed to both improve our stance-work as well as general strength and agility. These drills mainly drew from tiger and dragon forms.

We also worked on internal training referred to as iron shirt, where you work to strengthen your chi (seriously) so that you can harden your torso to withstand really hard hits (even from some weapons). You may be skeptical, and I understand that, but I’m just using it to illustrate, because it is this sort of training that many MMA fans and practitioners have a problem with.

In addition to all the kung fu, I love MMA. I love watching it, discussing it, writing about it on the blog, guessing on outcomes of future matches, everything. I respect many of the fighters’ skills, fighting styles, strength and conditioning, and I think many mixed martial artists are some of the toughest athletes out there, period.

To give you a bit of background on MMA (since my background article on MMA keeps getting pushed back), mixed martial arts fighters usually combine a mix of various martial arts and fighting styles to put together an effective striking game (often with boxing, dirty boxing and kickboxing) and ground game, often in addition to a submission fighting style (like brazilian ju jitsu), and many times a strong wrestling background.

Contrary to the original UFC, in today’s UFC there are many rules, weight classes (like in boxing and wrestling) and heavy regulation in the states where it is sanctioned. Fighters must undergo pre and post-fight physicals, often including things like MRIs and CAT Scans, and many fighters after each event face medical suspensions after fights. In fact, it’s rare for a fighter to not face some sort of medical suspension, even for something as simple as a black eye. Safety is paramount.

The reason behind the different styles is to give fighters a chance to get out of a situation using as much of an arsenal as possible. Fighters can fight on the ground or standing up, and referees are closing watching to see if a fighter gets knocked unconscious or choked unconscious, for example. And there are ringside doctors present to respond to any apparent injuries, and talk to the fighters after the fight. Again, safety is paramount.

So – after all that, you’re probably asking yourself what the debate is about. For example, there’s a video on YouTube of some people from my school breaking concrete bricks with palm strikes (Technique called Iron Palm). Now, in the comments section, some people were very impressed, and others offered really intelligent comments such as “Well, I guess you’ll be ready if a brick attacks you in an alley,” and other great gems about how any MMA fighter could grab us in the clinch (a muay thai kickboxing technique) and knees us a couple times until we passed out because we couldn’t do anything to defend ourselves because bricks don’t hit back.

Now, first let me say – I think all kung fu and martial art practitioners are aware that there will likely never come a time when a brick attacks us in an alley….maybe someone wielding a brick….but I would also go as far as to say that all martial arts practitioners know that in a fight, no opponent is going to stand still for us to hit them. So what then, you ask, is the point of doing something like breaking bricks? Well, it’s a great exercise for toughening and strengthening the hands as well as practice proper breathing and technique. But what real world applications does it have? Well, at the higher levels of Iron Palm training, the strength and speed with which you break bricks translates into being able to break/crack bones.

MMA is a combat sport….let that soak in for a minute….a sport. And there are rules in sports. Now, in my kung fu training, we train for real world applications, not tournament style fighting. Now, I am in no way saying my kung fu training is better than MMA training. It’s just different. In MMA, you don’t train to gouge somebody’s eyes out before you break their neck (a technique we were practicing during the throws seminar). And in kung fu, you don’t train to fight for three five-minute rounds. In kung fu, you don’t specifically train to improve your cardio like in MMA. Again, one is not necessarily better than the other, they’re just different. It’s a difference of training for real-world applications versus combat sport fighting.

Do the two cross-over? Obviously. There are certain techniques within traditional martial arts that cross over well to MMA, and there are plenty of MMA techniques that could cross over to a real-world situation where your life is being seriously threatened. But let’s get back to basics for a minute – MMA stands for Mixed MARTIAL ARTS. It’s still martial arts training, but with a different goal.

I know that this kind of seems to come out of nowhere, but I guess I’m upset by people constantly debating which is better – not unlike the boxing versus MMA debate. A lot of purist boxing fans believe that MMA is a flash in the pan, and that even though boxing pay-per-view numbers are falling, champions like Floyd Mayweather pull down $20 million a fight whereas the highest paid champion in the UFC only made about $1.1 million for a championship fight, and that his actual fight fee was $400,000 – the rest came from sponsorships and a share of pay-per-view buys. So – which is better? Again, I like both. They’re just different. A combat sport is a combat sport to me, whether it’s boxing, martial arts or mixed martial arts. I don’t know if it’s just because I appreciate it more than others, but I’ve seen some awesome mixed martial arts matches, some awesome boxing matches and some awesome martial arts fights (granted, these were tournament style, not life-or-death, but they were still based solely within one martial art).

So…until more training options are available in my area, I’ll be training solely in kung fu. Once the options open up, I’ll add some more styles, but I think I’ll always practice kung fu.

With the rise of MMA, I do feel that some true martial arts styles are losing their luster, even in popular culture. Take martial arts movies, example. No longer do we see movies like “Enter the Dragon” or even Jet Li’s epic “Hero.” Instead we’re given mostly comedy martial arts, mainly in the form of Jackie Chan, or sensationalized pieces of shit like “Never Back Down” (which, for the record, I’m sure I’ll still watch).

But that’s a topic for another day, and another post. For now, I’ll leave it that I love kung fu and I love MMA, and I think there is plenty of room in the fight world for both.

-PreView

Keep Reading...

Kung Fu Seminar this weekend

The Kung Fu school I train under is hosting a couple seminars this weekend - for details, see the info below. I know that there is often not much room for more traditional martial arts in today's mixed martial arts world, but the techniques used in takedowns and groundfighting all have very useful real-world applications. So if you're interested, drop me an email for more info, or feel free to post a comment. (And by the way, I'm not the contact person listed below, so if you call him - he's actually my teacher - he may not immediately know what you're talking about if you mention that you saw it on my blog.)

Throwing methods and groundfighting techniques from traditional chinese kungfu

Ground fighting:
The cost for this seminar
is $20. Instruction will
begin at 1:00 p.m. and
end at 4:00 p.m.Saturday.

Throwing:
The cost for this seminar
is $20. Instruction will
begin at 1 p.m. and end at
4 p.m. Sunday.

Attend both seminars
and save $5.
For questions and
registration, contact
Patrick Dillon,
anson@windstream.net
or phone 606-584-0216.

Sat.,April 12
and
Sun.,April 13,2008

Limestone YMCA, 1080 US 68 South, Maysville, KY.
Contact Song Mountain Monastery for more information,seminars,
and other instructional work at ninegate@gmail.com or go to
www.ninegatekungfu.com

So there you go - I've been training under this style for just over a year now, and it's a lot of fun and a great workout, and the instructors are very patient and very eager to teach.

-PreView

END
Keep Reading...