Is kung fu stupid?

Question

I'm not against traditional martial arts; I think karate is awesome. However, kung fu appears to be absolutely worthless as a self-defense system. I know many styles of king fu exist, but they all appear to use odd (and ineffective) movements. In the early days of MMA (which was then called "NHB"), the kung fu guys always got beat up. In modern MMA, you almost never see kung fu.

Answer 1

Levin | 64 opinions shared on Sports topic.

Guru

I mean, it's a bit pointless having a debate about this, because people obviously have their own opinion, and dare I say, prejudices.

You just have to remember that MMA is a sports fighting context. Now you will always excel in the context that you train in. If you can do planche pushups and one armed pushups, the guy that has trained for the same amount of time in bench presses will probably always beat the other guy at bench pressing. In the same way, fighting in that environment, it requires a certain amount of skills and conditioning for that context.

As someone that practices Kung fu, and also does sparring and wrestling, the fact is, doing those latter two things, they're in effect different skills, and I don't use kung fu in them, barely at all. Does that mean that kung fu doesn't work? Well, in genuine fighting, you could actually seriously harm someone fairly quickly, if your intent is fighting all out, let's say you feel you are in mortal danger. There are parts of the body that you can't start hitting all out, and limbs simply snap when you twist or put pressure on them from a certain direction. Take the knee. You might say, well, in a real fight, no one is going to leave themselves open to having someone stomp or put pressure on the knee from the outside. The point is, kung fu fighters are adaptable, if they see that opportunity, then they will take it, and the knee will collapse fairly easily. But you can't do that in an MMA fight. The other thing is, the kung fu fighters want to close the gap and bridge. You can't do that with gloves. And you can't do that with sports fighting because in reality a fight should be over fairly quickly, if you're going all out.

The other thing is, tremendous respect to MMA fighters, they're well conditioned and pragmatic. And kung fu fighters could learn a lot by incorporating a lot from that training.
Also, to give credence to what you say. Actually, a lot of kung fu practitioners are shit. My kung fu instructor himself used to say that 99% of MMA guys could beat kung fu guys. The martial art is just the tool. It's up to the person to make something useful and practical out of it. To condition himself fully, to toughen himself, to strengthen himself, to spar, to wrestle, to fight with people who will put him under genuine pressure. It's just basic common sense. The guy above looks to be demonstrating some kind of throw. But just putting your arms up like that is not actually throwing. To get good at something, you need to train against pressure 1000s of time. Forms just demonstrate some archetypes or ideas. About 10% is practical, much of it is interesting but you couldn't pull most of it off. You need to spar and wrestle against pressure to see what will work. Most Kung fu practitioners are crap because they don't do this. They just go through forms. spiritually cogitate, and expect to be able to fight. But if people use the tools properly... I've been on the receiving end. And some of those guys are fucking tough. And a lot of them had come to kung fu at the end of the road after having studying myriads of supposedly more practical martial arts. Many of them were boxers, thai, karate practitioners. They obviously saw some merit in it.

Now, I would take self defense to mean actual situations on the street. Most of it is either idiots shooting their mouths off. Or the MMA context which, as I say, most of them are far toughter than the average kung fu guy - so respect to them, but still a sporting context. I think in a genuine self defense context, my stuff is practical and nasty as hell.

Levin

1 y

Besides, it's not like other better regarded arts are perfect either. All this fucking bullshit of knife and gun disarmament in krav maga. Going to the ground in jui jitsu. There's also a lot of rehearsing of overly elaborate things that clearly wouldn't work in those kinds of arts, too.

The main thing in situations like that is keeping your head and trying to avoid ego fights where you absolutely can. That's where I think some kind of spiritual development tools are useful. I also don't like all this still beating people when they're clearly out in MMA. This is very low behaviour, in my opinion.
ComradeCarabao

1 y
Everything has its place (I guess), but I just don't think in a street fight or an MMA contest, kung fu is a good choice. Does that mean I don't respect what they do? No, most kung fu practitioners can do things I can't. Replying to another commenter, I was candid about karate/MMA bias, so you do have a point of sorts. However, my biased opinion wasn't just pulled out of thin air; I've seen what works, and I've seen plenty of what doesn't work.
Levin

1 y
Well, sadly kung fu has a very low image. I've seen a lot of those videos on youtube, too, and it looks bad. But bear in mind, things aren't always as they seem. About a few percent of kung fu instructors and practitioners are really fucking good. But that's not a sufficiently high enough percentage to inspire any kind of confidence from outside observers. But it should show, in my opinion, that it can be highly effective. Sadly, its own practitioners have let itself down. In the same way there a lot of very poor mcdojos in general, to be fair. I do think every art has its advantages and its shortfalls. There's things I don't like in karate (just looking on the surface), but there is no way I would like to be on the receiving end of those blows, which look devastating (incidentally, I bought a makiwara, that I really should install - this looks interesting too https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyd1aHE5H4c) Also, there's a focus in kung fu on athletics, almost gymnastics movements, too. Nice to be able to do, but pretty much no direct relevance to fighting. Kung fu Wushu is what the Chinese government pushes. As you know, there was a purge of the practical combative side there, and many fled to such counties as Taiwan.
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ComradeCarabao

1 y
Karate had a bad name for a long time, too; I blame this on the abundance of karate schools that focus on "point fighting" and lack of hard sparring. However, when karate is trained in a manner similar to kickboxing, it proves itself to be valid. When I see kung fu, the problem is with the techniques alone; I'm not convinced that bad schools are responsible.
Levin

1 y
Again, real fighting is not sports fighting. You can't castrate someone and then expect them to demonstrate anything worthwhile. Most people who are actually decent people don't want to permanently harm people. If you want me to step into a ring, then I probably won't perform too well, because I don't have sufficient experience. If someone is trying to kill me, then you can bet my response will be totally different. If you want to get into real fights, then your attitude should always be that you can kill someone. That's not some mystical woo he-man shit, you see it all the time. People bang their heads and it is over. Anyone with any kind of moral character does his best to avoid all the ego shit.

This does get conflated with the fact that 99% of practitioners are indeed, shit.

If you don't have any respect for the art, then that's fine and totally justifiable. Unfortunately, kung fu practitioners have to live with this. The best thing one can do is to focus on their individual training and get better, and avoid all this kind of thing.

Answer 2

Levin

Besides, it's not like other better regarded arts are perfect either. All this fucking bullshit of knife and gun disarmament in krav maga. Going to the ground in jui jitsu. There's also a lot of rehearsing of overly elaborate things that clearly wouldn't work in those kinds of arts, too.

The main thing in situations like that is keeping your head and trying to avoid ego fights where you absolutely can. That's where I think some kind of spiritual development tools are useful. I also don't like all this still beating people when they're clearly out in MMA. This is very low behaviour, in my opinion.

Is kung fu stupid?

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