OT: Western v. Eastern martial arts

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[K]

Just to drop a line here:

The only difference between martial arts is the situations where they are designed to be good.

For example, kendo takes place in open ground along two axis and so is straight up superior to rapier fencing in an open field or something.

By contrast, rapier fencing was designed so that people could fight duels in alleys on one axis and it is flat out superior to kendo fencing in that situation.

My opinion for why Eastern arts are exoticized is because in the East orders of fighting monks and nobles trained from the age of 6. By the time they were adult they had enough skill that horribly inefficient but nice looking moves were possible with a young adult body and decades of training. Think gymnastics for a Western comparison.

The West never developed the same kinds of arts because of the simple "gun/bow > fists/sword". Heck, the history of the crossbow is fascinating because it was outlawed for hundreds of years because peasants could learn it with little or no training and kill armored knights.

So in a RPG, every martial art should have a situation bonus. Pirate Cutlass fighting should be better on ships and english military academy fighting should be better in closed circles and eastern wakizashi fighting should be better in house-to-house fighting.

[Endoperez]

Originally Posted by K

My opinion for why Eastern arts are exoticized is because in the East orders of fighting monks and nobles trained from the age of 6. By the time they were adult they had enough skill that horribly inefficient but nice looking moves were possible with a young adult body and decades of training. Think gymnastics for a Western comparison.

The West never developed the same kinds of arts because of the simple "gun/bow > fists/sword". Heck, the history of the crossbow is fascinating because it was outlawed for hundreds of years because peasants could learn it with little or no training and kill armored knights.

The eastern martial arts weren't and aren't "horribly inefficient with nice looking moves". I can only speak for tai chi, because it's the only one I've tried myself, and it can be brutally effective, if the practitioner is taught to use it that way. In the week I had to learn it, I spent about as much time learning applications as I did learning the form.

In the west we had knights who were trained from childhood not only to fight, but to improve and keep up an impressive physical ability. Among other things, they practiced getting on and off a horse. Speaking of gymnastics...

And finally, even if the papal ban was made, it didn't get enforced, and it certainly didn't last for hundreds of years.


I agree with your post otherwise: different martial arts mostly differ in the time and place they were developed. Styles' effectiveness should be situational. Unless it's hard to implement, in which case gameplay triumphs over theoretical realism.

[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).