Cultural Exchange

Part 1


Part 2

Boy am I gonna' be late for work...

I've been reading posts from our friends over at Formosa Neijia, some guys that are living and training in Taiwan. It has been very interesting reading about life and martial arts in the heart of traditional Asian fighting systems. Among other things they have discussed range from racism against whites or mixed race couples and children, racism against qualified black business applicants in Taiwanese companies, the current state of martial training in Taiwan as well as mundane but everyday things like choice of cola's and soft drinks available. Please check out their link on the right side of this blog...Formosa Neijia--
With this in mind, I found this great BBC documentary on martial arts in Taiwan. Here are the first two segments, I will post the second two tomorrow.
Enjoy...

Sudden, Unexpected Violence

Early yesterday morning I had a bad dream before I woke up. I dreamed I was in a building with military guys and we were pinned down by sniper fire. I awoke unsettled and made tea and turned on the news: Over twenty shot dead at Virginia Tech. I kid you not, it took a while for the parallel to sink in. Don't know what to think, perhaps there is a collective conscious that we tap into at times.
Nearly every violent event I have been in has been sudden and unexpected. One day when I was about eighteen, I picked up some beer (of course I was underage) and auto parts and was headed up to our car club to tinker with my '70 Cuda. I rounded a corner and a big Lincoln was stopped in the road. I honked. I looked at traffic that prevented me from going around. I honked again. Boom-- both doors flew open and a huge Samoan looking guy and his equally scary girlfriend came rushing up to my window screaming at me. I reached over and grabbed a big wrench I had in the car and got it ready in case they reached in. The woman yelled "he's got a knife!" and the guy went to his trunk and pulled out a huge bumper jack and swung it towards my car. I jammed it in reverse and burned it backward, pulled into traffic and zoomed around him. As I passed, he smashed out the passenger window. All I wanted to do that day was work on my car and have a few beers. Now I found myself on the sidewalk with a huge guy wielding a bumper jack coming towards me, and I got ready to fight. In an instant a cop pulled up and seperated us. The cops believed my story, clearly saw the evidence but I was out a window and they didn't even try to arrest him. Sudden, unexpected violence.
The other day one of my friends looked down. I asked what was up and he told me about his friends in Seattle. They (three friends) had gone for a late night hamburger and were in a drive through. The guys behind in the next car kept messing with them in some way. The driver of my friends car got out and a hassle insued. Everybody was out of both cars and the friends got the worst of it. One was stabbed. The other was hit with a hammer. The third wanted to settle it until the other guys chambered a handgun. End of fight, trip to the hospital next. Sudden, unexpected violence.
Now I've been in my share of fights, some of which I probably started. But that is very different from these other types of violent encounters, where weapons are involved and people really, really get hurt.
While most of us who train in martial arts have an edge in a scenario like this, there are times when we must swallow our pride and simply walk away. However, when our back is up against the wall and there is no other way out, we gotta' turn on the predator, the wolf, or tiger, and fight like hell.

Flexibility And Stretching Ideas

Well, old age creeps up on the Rats every year. Four of us are looking down the road to 50 years-old pretty soon, and I know my flexibility is slowly starting to get worse. I think the reason I am getting so hooked on Bagua is that the twisting and turning motions stimulate my back, hips and spine in ways that other arts or exercises don't. After doing a good session of Bagua it almost makes you feel high. I believe this is caused by the manipulation of the spine and results in some kind of release to the central nervous system. Or maybe we could call it Chi.
I felt somthing similar after my first trip to a chiropractor about ten years ago. While he was working on me I thought the results would be minimal, because I was involved in deep stretching in Karate. Boy was I wrong. The next morning I walked around in a buzz like I had just come down off an acid trip. People told me that was toxins in my body that were broken free and working their way out.
Bagua brings on a similar stimulation and release, and If I can keep moving in my older years like I still can today, I will be pleased. That is clearly one beauty of the internal arts, the low-impact individual practice does no harm on the body and greatly strengthens it.
Here's Mike Martello again, this time with some very nice stretching movements and some fighting application-- enjoy...

New Feature: Cute Hippie Chick Of The Month

Ah yes, spring is here and, well... time for a new feature.
Lively discussion in a previous post has reminded me that while winter brought cold mornings and a foot of snow on the outhouse, warm weather brings out the beautiful girls. With that in mind Dojo Rat will begin a new feature: "Cute Hippie Chick Of The Month"
No offense to hippies, cute people or wives intended...

South Bronx Bagua

Here's another video from the brothers over at "Black Taoist" and their student Lance "Hispanic Palm" from an apartment deep in the South Bronx.
While these guys may at times lack polished perfection, they more than make up for it in street practicality. The internal arts are often esoteric, with instructors coaxing students into "feeling the attacker's energy" and such. What it often boils down to is, in western terms, "muscle memory".
As I've suggested before, I am dissapointed with students (and their instructors) that are competent at doing their forms but have no clue how to apply those skills demonstrated in the forms. One high level Tai Chi instructor I know has told myself and other students that; (A)"just do it for many years and you will understand it, and (B) you have to be Chinese to understand it". Another told me "There is no application, it's all circles".
Screw that. I realize that the western mind has an overuse of mechanistic analysis, but that's how we "Get'er done". When a student sees application for an obscure technique in a form it re-wires that same technique through the brain in a seperate path to the same end goal. When the end goal is viewed in different ways we all have a deeper understanding of what we are trying to accomplish.
With that in mind, aside from my regular Monday-Wednesday workouts with the Dojo Rats, I've been teaching a beginning Yang-style Tai Chi Chuan class on Thursday nights for over a year now. Several of the students (of which there are usually six to eight) have had previous but limited Tai Chi practice. The rest are middle aged adults with no training. The group is diverse and new people drop in all the time, so I have to balence the training so nobody feels left behind. Most of the group has a good handle on the long form now, and as things have progressed I have brought the partner training up to 50% of class time now. For instance, I've been starting each class with the long form, for the calming meditative qualities. Then we go into form correction and problems people are having. The last half of class is push hands. Now they are familiar with the basic rooting and yielding drills and have moved on to the Yang-style push hands pattern. Like a lightbulb going off in their heads, they now see how ward-off,push, press, rollback, rooting and yielding from the form really work.
Last class I took it further and demonstrated some joint-locking techniques that can be integrated with push hands training, but they're not quite ready for it yet.
The point is, they now have a much better understanding of their form since they have viewed applications, which gives them incentive to go further.
That's why I love the guys at Black Taoist; they try to get down to what will work on the street...

Compare And Contrast:

1986 Chengdu Leitai Fights


Typical American Streetfighters

If people will forgive the repost of the second fight (from "Bareknuckle Boxing" see archives), I thought this might be a good comparison.
The 1986 Chengdu Leitai fights were described as the first sanctioned Chinese martial fights since 1949. The fighting style appears to be Hsing-I, and generally sucks pretty bad. This is the kind of scene that really gives a bad image to traditional martial arts and opens the door for criticism by the MMA crowd.
Moreover, The Chinese fighters in this video would be clearly outmatched by either of the undiciplined streetfighters in video #2.
To be fair, there were video's of other fighters at the Chinese tournament, some with better skills, but not by much. Admitedly, the Chinese fight is a regulated tournament fight while the second fight is unregulated, but as far as technique that shouldn't matter.
The general feel I get is that western boxing has got pretty damned good hand techniques. I know that for myself, boxing drills greatly improved my Karate sparring. The only thing I would worry about is injuring a hand, as many boxers do without hand wraps. Generally, one can hit a lot harder than the structure of the hand is designed to take-- which may be a good argument for open hand striking.
And lastly, it is true that most of us practice martial arts for the art, or health and often fighting skills are only one piece of the puzzle, but none-the-less an important one...

April Fools

OK, I had to roll this clip for April Fools Day. I ripped it off from Tim (Cartmell's) discussion group, where it was introduced as a new form of "Drunken Master Boxing". It's really good, hope you all enjoy...
--P.S. -- The Boxer's name is Emmanuel Augustus