u/Flaky_Performer7960

After engaging with a few people here, I’m learning that you can use the Tan Sau against a hook?

Using Tan Sau (palm-up dispersing hand) against a hook was discouraged when I learned Wing Chun and quite litterally by every online resource I see. The Hook travels laterally with a wide arc and heavy centrifugal force. The Tan Sau is a forward rising movement would get bypassed, collapsed or overloaded as the Tan Sau is quite literally not made to deal with hook, it’a optimized for straight punches down the centerline.

The only way I see a Tan Sau working is if you rotate your body towards the arm, but that breaks every Wing Chun principle and gives your opponent a better angle to hit you. Or you can face your opponent, but you Tan Sau is extending far outwards and you lose the control over the centerline, and because of its shape, they can easily Lap Sau to pull since you provide them with a lever.

And this leads me to alternatives against Hook Punches.

The Biu Sau Is the intended technique. You can fire it straight down the centerline towards your opponent’s face giving an offensive dimension to your defense, all while blocking the bicep and forearm by creating a wedge with your elbow slightly outwards.

Next is the Bong Sau. I was made to believe that the Bong Sau doesn’t work against a Hook? Even though it can be use as a high wedge to absorb the impact, when done properly it can redirect the force over top and create and opening below. And this is already common in boxing with the Philly Shell, and it follows the principle of the shoulder roll — the Bong Sau as a block also exists and is known as a frame. The Bong Sau is a very brain dead solution, if you do it incorrectly, you still have an effective block against that hook, if you do it correctly, you deflect and create an opening or even re-angle the opponent.

Can y’all point to me where I’m wrong here?

Beginners in boxing often flare their elbows when punching.

After working with many beginners, I started nerding about martial arts in general and introduced them to karate punches with hands on the hips.

And that pretty much fixes the flaring elbows. Punches starting from the hip entirely negates the want to flare one’s elbows when punching.

And then moving back from karate punches to a regular boxing guard is easy, and it fixes the flaring problem.

This works great for children too, I started teaching my little sister and training her to be a beast.

It always come down to how much kickboxing there is.

Good teacher? Oh, he did MMA, boxing and kickboxing.

Good school? They train, spar, workout like kickboxers with kickboxing equipment.

Good student? That student has kickboxing experience.

And yet somehow, people don’t realize that kickboxing is the thing that’s carrying the effectiveness — not whatever martial art the school is selling.

I watched a “effective kung fu” video recently, and the entire thing is literally just kickboxing — and no, it’s not that “the body can only move in so many ways”, they literally took kickboxing and practice kickboxing. they should stop pretending like they figured shit out on their own.

Another school calls itself “authentic Shaolin”, they literally just do kickboxing in shaolin robes.

Of course though, this isn’t the case for all traditional styles. TKD, Karate and their various sub styles have proven that their style alone can be effective without the need to blatantly plagiarize other martial arts and pretending that its their own.

And once again, ”styles converging” is not really a good excuse — especially when the most basic kickboxing technique is found in the most niche form of your martial art. A single frame of a video of your kata demonstration does not prove anything.

If you use they/them because you don’t know someone’s gender, it’s fine — it’s preferable over “her/him” or “she/he”

If you consistently use they/them for everyone regardless of their gender, it’s fine — but you’re weird if you do this because who tf does this.

If you use gendered pronouns for everyone EXCEPT trans people, then you’re transphobic.

If you use the pronouns of trans people but use they/them for cis gendered people, then you’re also weird.

I know Gunting is more FMA and not Wing Chun, but I’m pretty sure numerous knowledgeable people here also do FMA.

Why hit the arm and not the face directly?

I’ve been thinking about this, and my conclusion is that you hit the face when you decide to close the range and thus gain access to the face.

But when you parry/catch while keeping distance, you don’t have access to the face so you hit the arm instead.

Am I missing something? Please educate me.

I don’t practice aikido. I do MMA. However, I’ve had success with Kotegaeshi in sparring and rolling by learning the basic with YouTube.

But of course, you can’t get good from YouTube, and so I’m running into a few problems.

People now know that I can use wristlocks, and they know my set-up. And for some reason, simply flexing their hands straight out prevents me from executing the wristlock — of course, I just abandon the wrist lock and do something else.

So what I want to learn is how do I push through with kotegaeshi?

I think one of the problems is that I don’t want to just power through and risk injuring their wrist. So I’m wondering do you have a technique or sequence of technique that loosens up their wrist so that I can carry through with the wrist lock?

And no, I don’t intend on signing up for any Aikido classes just to learn 2-3 technique, I don’t think that it’s worth it especially since it forces me to cut my MMA training time due to my time table.

We’ve seen the crusade on this topic with the recents posts, time to put an objective end to it.

We’ll establish knuckles as the title defender and palms as the contender.

What are the arguments against knuckles? They are fragile, it requires proper alignment to not break the wrists, the forehead is hard, possible lacerations (from teeth) that could lead to infection.

What are the arguments for palms? Not fragile, requires minimal alignment, sturdy, doesn’t break against forehead, less lacerations.

It seems like palms are better than knuckles right? Not so simple.

Counter arguments for knuckles: extra range (3-5 inches is bi— a lot). Bare knuckle streets fights are a one in a lifetime thing so hand injury is a minor setback for the month (children end up in casts every week for some reason). Modern healthcare is good, infection is a minor inconvenienc. extra range. Oh, and the obvious stuff like knuckles are sharp and pointy, it hurts more, lacerates opponent’s face.

Random fun facts and closing arguments: palm strikes can be used for long range hooks (power slap?), hooks with knuckles lack range.

To nuance, both have same knockout capabilities, both have proven themselves in the ring. Knuckles can be used against the body while the palms for the face.

Finally, fight it out in the comments, and more pros and cons.

Whenever I see new Kung Fu content, and I follow through the explanation, despite the explanation being super complexe with the use of Chinese words and philosophy thrown in, everything shown just ends up being very basic — basic as in a simple explanation would have sufficed.

Kung Fu is legitimate, I’m not saying otherwise, the explanations do give you the answers nonetheless — but often times, the same concept is explained in a much easier way in other more straight forward martial arts/combat sports.

Moreover, many Kung Fu students seem to think extremely highly of basic body mechanics — maybe it’s because of the explanation. And I find it kind of laughable because they seem to believe to have unlocked some kung fu secret when in reality, it’s quite basic — I don’t wrestle, but the kids class next in he wrestling class next door also possess these “skills”.

Another thing is energy, people talking about energy a lot in Kung Fu. But when you think about that energy, it’s often times just you flexing your muscles — maybe it’s a way to visualize things and have better muscle control? Personally, I don’t need to visualize energy in my core to flex my abs; or to visualize my energy exploding to exhert sudden force.

For examples, I can take is “sinking the dantian”. For one, I don’t believe in the dantian, it’s a pseudoscience. So sinking the dantian is used to root yourself into the ground to be stable — this is often explained by having to move your dantian and feel the energy move to between your legs (this was how it was explained to me in Baqiquan). But the explanation could be much more grounded in reality; in MMA, you’re simply lowering your center of gravity, taking a wider stance to spread out your weight better — simple.

I don’t know about others, but personally, I like my Kung Fu without mysticism. I cringe at explanations in class. Maybe it’s because I’m a science major, I don’t know. Or maybe it’s because I have an MMA background and so going back over basic body mechanics that I already master feels boring.

Credit where it’s due, I think that visualizing energy helps certain people that wouldn’t have been able to do things if they had received the simple explanations.

I used to underestimate Choy Lee Fut for its swinging haymaker punches.

However, after looking at footage of sparring, fights — as well as haymaker knockouts in MMA, it doesn’t look that bad.

But this is why it’s interesting to me. It’s the only style that opts from swinging punches as opposed to straight punches used by literally every other style.

So now I’m wondering, what are the drawbacks?

I’ve noticed that some fighters are able to time and land a straight punch through all the swing, though they get hit by the follow up swing right after.

Moreover, after taking in the style for a bit, I think that the style is kind repetitive — without the element of surprise, it seems like I could easily time the attack. The volume of strikes is definitely impressive, though the punches are objectively slower than a straight punch, so if the volume fails to act as a deterrent, it seems like it could fall short against other trained fighters that are familiar with the style.

And yes, a huge part of Choy Lee Fut’s success seems to stem from the element of surprise as most Muay Thai fighters aren’t used to it. Though following Marco Tentori’s fight career, it seems like opponents become used to his style, and he slowly moves towards more conventional fighting techniques — this makes my hypothesize that surprise plays a big role CLF’s initial success.

All and all, I’m talking about sport. But if I were to speak about street, it’s definitely effective. You have the element of surprise, the sheer volume and knockout power, even if you were to be mugged by a Muay Thai fighter, you’d stand a chance with it. I’m tempted to say that it’s better than Wing Chun — I’m doing MMA, but I have done Wing Chun before.

I don’t know what kind of feedback I’m looking for with this post. I guess that if you have experience in it, give me some pointers, some details, try to sell me the style more, correct me, corroborate with me, whatever you want.

— oh, and I don’t really care about discussions about sparring much — with my MMA background, I’d surely be able to make it practical myself even if the CLF school doesn’t spar.

I practice MMA for self defense as I believe it offers the best combat skills — emphasis on combat as in fighting.

I don’t compete in any major events; simply sparring and occasional competition within the gym.

However, I am also aware of its limitations, as in the lack of weapons and all of the self defense aspects outside of combat/fighting.

This is why I’m considering Krav Maga, though I have questions.

To me, it doesn’t seem like Krav Maga is worth going full-time for. When it comes to “illegal” and ”dirty” technique, it doesn’t seem like it takes much skill esp considering my background — I might be over confident, but assuming I trained Krav Maga for 2 weeks, I feel confident that I could eye gouge and bite better in a grappling situation than the average Krav practitioner (considering my BJJ and Wrestling knowledge from MMA), eye jab better (considering my boxing skills) or groin kick and knee stomp better (considering my Muay Thai/Kickboxing)

Next, when it comes to other aspects like strategy; it doesn’t that complicated. From what I’ve read, using the element of surprise and sudden agression, either strike first or defend while moving in then strike, then strike until knockdown before creating space, getting out of danger, then assessing the situation. Strategy isn that hard to learn — not just for me but for anyone — the same way I can learn a game plan and strategy with a few sparring sessions in MMA, I could do the same with Krav Maga.

Then, I guess that weapons would take more time, though I’ve done Kali and HEMA Sabre — with the combat skills developed with MMA as well, I feel like I could also pretty much learn Krav Maga weapon skills (outside of guns) pretty easily.

It seems like you are all very focused on wrist grabs for some reason, but cross training with Judo within MMA, I’ve developed grip fighting skills that I believe would surpass the more general grip fighting skill set that Krav Maga offers.

Moreover, Krav Maga doesn’t seem to offer much prolonged combat skills — something I’d probably need in case the initial encounter fails to wrap up. So I’m somewhat treating Krav Maga as a plan A, then MMA as a plan B in case I’m swept into prolonged combat.

As of right now, I’m planning to only take a mont. I’m asking this sub because I feel like if I were to ask the head coach, they try to talk me into continuing — it’s understandable since it’s in their interest to have me pay — so that’s why I’m here to see maybe more objective point of views.

Side note: even though I only plan to take a month of class, I’d still be practicing it alone and incorporate the techniques into my person training regime.

TLDR, I feel like I could learn everything from Krav Maga in only a month. Does Krav Maga offer anything more? Can my MMA training cover for most of Krav Maga?