OT: Western v. Eastern martial arts

[Omnirizon]

I'll say

[Sombre]

Hooray for MMA putting an end to the stupid "which would win in a 'real' fight" arguments.

[Panpiper]

By the way Lavaere, just a short addendum to what I said in my above post to you. I just looked up the exact nomenclature of Kapa Haka and I should amend to what I said. It is the Haka that is martial, not the Kapa. That said, it is performing the Haka in the Kapa that probably makes the learning of it more fun, so definitely take both seriously.

[Lavaere]

Originally Posted by Panpiper

By the way Lavaere, just a short addendum to what I said in my above post to you. I just looked up the exact nomenclature of Kapa Haka and I should amend to what I said. It is the Haka that is martial, not the Kapa. That said, it is performing the Haka in the Kapa that probably makes the learning of it more fun, so definitely take both seriously.

Yeah Kapa Haka is the whole think, where as the Haka is basicly the war chant/battle cry I guess. Of which some Haka Tane(Male) use Patu or Taiaha.

As for thanking teachers, that is so hard to do. Kapa Haka is very much a cultural thing here and everyone basicly learns some during there school years. And those schools that don't teach it will atleast make sure the one performed by sports teams is atleast known.
So you have school teachers, community elders, family elders, kapahaka groups I've been in. So many different instructors over the year.


Come to think of it I just remember one time when I was around 10. We were to perform a Haka with Taiaha. So the elder that was teaching us the song and action also went though action killing blows with the weapon. I remember him telling us.
Hit them with the shaft end and knock them to the ground. Then the other end which natually was a carved face, the protruding tongue be the spear part and go for soft parts boys. Eyes, Armpits, Groin, Belly and the such.
Now that there down take your Patu, not those wooden ones you have but you Jade Stone Patu and you can crack open there head. And being a Maori you go get yourself a good feed of brains and take there knowledge.

To bad when the English came to colonize New Zealand they gave us guns. So that we could shoot from afar instead of close combat.

[Wrana]

May only say that, with a caveat of my own practice being much more limited, what Panpiper had said is true both from a practice and historician perspectives.
About New Zealand martial arts I've heard it highly recommended from a researcher in such things, too.
And to summarize a question on technics, as a master of my aquintance said: "All men have two arms and two legs. And nobody is able to bend knees backwards. So there are only a limited number of effective technics, used by most schools". (with a caveat of different things being stressed, of course - and weapons produced in local tradition can influence technics to a degree. Still, technics of a Chinese *dao* broadsword can be actually quite similar to those of a Scottish one )

[Sombre]

Originally Posted by Wrana

"All men have two arms and two legs. And nobody is able to bend knees backwards. So there are only a limited number of effective technics, used by most school"

But that isn't true. Haven't you ever seen the film 'The Crippled Masters'? Have you never heard of Nick the BJJ legend that used to train with Billy Rush? He had no legs and tapped blackbelts all the time.

Here's a random story about him tapping Joe Riggs. 3 times. And Joe Riggs has excellent grappling.

http://www.cagepotato.com/2008/02/27...n-back-injury/

[Endoperez]

Originally Posted by Sombre

But that isn't true. Haven't you ever seen the film 'The Crippled Masters'? Have you never heard of Nick the BJJ legend that used to train with Billy Rush? He had no legs and tapped blackbelts all the time.

Here's a random story about him tapping Joe Riggs. 3 times. And Joe Riggs has excellent grappling.

http://www.cagepotato.com/2008/02/27...n-back-injury/

Nick is impressive, no doubt about that, and it was nice to learn about him.

The point of the part you quoted wasn't the existence of legs, though, but to point out there are only so many ways to lock an arm, and most of those appear in many different styles of martial arts.

[Agema]

Oh I don't know. Why not shoot someone from a distance?

I read "A History of Warfare" by John Keegan. It's quite interesting from the viewpoint that war in more primitive cultures was principally ritualised often with ranged weaponry, where both sides tended to try to avoid casualties even to the point where they might barely inflict any. Eventually one side would give up and go home. The suggestion he made was that was the original "natural" state, and where possible and without social conditioning or training humans want to revert to it.

[Panpiper]

John Keegan has a lot of respect from the circles I keep. And he is right, warfare aught by natural law be a matter of ritual posturing rather than coming to blows. It is a fact that it is extremely rare to 'win' a war. All one can really hope for is to loose less than the other side (and call that victory). The Allies 'won' world war two, but at what cost? Virtually the whole planet was war ravaged by the end.

Animals in nature will rarely fight (unless it is a carnivore killing prey, but that is rarely a fight). Two males squaring off competing for mates and status will posture and make noise attempting to intimidate the rival into backing down. Rarely will it come to blows, this because there is too much risk of injury. Even if one animal wins, it is likely to be wounded in the confrontation, which would severely impair it's ability to compete with any other male. Primitive human societies mimic this behavior for perfectly good reasons. It is our 'civilized' society that tends to habitually devolve into orgies of mutual murder.

[Omnirizon]

In agreement with K's post (and I suppose a little implicit disagreement with a bit of Endo's) a lot of Wu Shu martial arts stuff (maybe its specific to Wu Shu though) is just 'show'.

I have a hard time believing that a guy hopping on his butt while swinging a nine-link whip around underneath it has any practical application in an actual confrontation (unless its a break-dancing confrontation).