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Kung-Fu fighters pop up from time to time in MMA style fights. Early on in the UFC, there were a small number of kung-fu fighters. But by the end of its first year, you didn't see any. Why?
Well there's a reason for that. The first UFC's were open to all. They were very much about putting style vs. style. So they had karate, Taekwondo, kung-fu, wing-chun, ...
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Your question isn't what you are really asking. Your question is "Can I learn Kung Fu without sparring", and that answer is yes. Sparring is not 100% necessary to learn any art. You can learn all the kicks, punches, blocks, stances and so forth without ever facing anything more than a heavy bag or possibly a human holding a pad/shield.
What you really want ...
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Can anyone learn martial arts techniques without sparring?
Sure! I mean, you can learn that they exist.
Can you learn how to effectively apply martial arts techniques without sparring?
Oh, no. Gosh no. No, no, no. Nope.
Sparring is how we turn things we know of into things we know how. Until you can do it in sparring it's all a bunch of theory. Not ...
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The claim
From Kalaripayattu Bangalore's website:
Marmas are the specific points in the body where the application of pressure or insertion of needles (Bhedan karma) will effect the flow of vital energy or Prana along a complex system of subtle channels calls Naadis. A knowledge of such specific points is called Marma Shastra.
Marmam has three ...
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It will be pretty difficult to do Judo alone. You can practice kung fu or any other martial art with forms (pre-arranged patterns) by yourself though. If you don't already know the martial art, though, you're setting yourself up for failure. Save yourself and any future teacher a few headaches and don't try to learn from DVDs or Youtube.
Don't get me ...
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KUNG FU, MMA, and UFC
Roy Nelson, a top tier UFC fighter, commented on his kung fu background:
The Lohan school of Shaolin, I actually got started in my Sifu’s garage. I think I was 15 1/2, 16. Kung-fu is the root for I would say 95% of all martial arts. I practice it every day.
(With Sticky Hands) basically you’re just working with their body ...
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Short answer: Yes, they teach foreigners. No, it wouldn't be possible for an outsider to become a monk there. You can, however become a disciple under a monk. And you can become a sifu of your own school while being a disciple of a monk.
At the Shaolin Temple at Songshan in Dengfeng, Henan, monks routinely take on foreigners for training. Usually the junior ...
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This is a common reason people get into martial arts. You're probably going to hear a lot of people tell you that's not a good use of martial arts, out of some general sense of "violence is wrong" paternalism.
What I will say, instead, is that not everyone's bullying situation is the same. One person might punch a bully in the nose and be left alone from ...
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I have not been impressed with the stories I hear from people who have gone to these Asian martial arts retreats. These camps seem like a way to separate Westerners from their money while providing a bare minimum of services. Much like the explosion of "teacher training" yoga retreats, they provide an experience, not an education.
First-Person Accounts
...
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Sanshou (similar to sanda) is a major competitive outlet for kung fu styles, allowing kicks, punches, kick catches, and throws. Several fighters with sanshou experience have fought in the UFC, most notably Cung Le. Zhang Tiequan appears to also have some sanshou experience, but today seems to fight primarily as a grappler.
There are a small number of kung ...
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Height gives a considerable advantage to striking martial arts. The first and most obvious advantage is that height means you can reach out further than your opponent, meaning you can hit him before he hits you.
But there are other advantages that you don't immediately consider:
If you have to punch upwards towards a taller opponent's head, you don't punch ...
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Protecting yourself from bullying has more to do about confidence than about martial arts. Learning martial arts will raise your confidence, but coming across as unsure and uncertain, even if you're a grandmaster, will still get you bullied.
Because of that reason, the style of kungfu matters less. The club you go to and your trainer matters more. Make sure ...
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Depending on your chosen style, going for a 90 degrees angle right from the start may not be the proper position for the horse stance. In shorinji-ryu karatedo, for instance, we usually go for about 45 degrees with the knees about shoulder width.
Although we eventually end up going lower as a training exercise to build leg strength, we don't advocate doing ...
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Source: Black Belt in Ju Jitsu
First, I completely agree that learning to fight won't fix your problem; it'll probably just get you into trouble. However, learning a martial art is a great way to build confidence and THAT can definitely help with the bullying (speaking from experience here). One thing to note though, is that NO martial art is "fast and ...
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Interesting... I very much like @DaveLiepmann's answer, and agree with his message if not always his way of saying it. I do want to expand a little on it.
Reality vs. Non-Reality
Without getting into hundreds of years (Possibly thousands) of philosophical debate on what is and what is not real, let's consider Objective vs. Subjective reality.
For ...
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Yes, I've been to China to train at the Shaolin temple at Songshan mountain in Dengfeng, Henan, China.
I did this only for a couple of weeks, mostly just for fun. My wife (then girlfriend) was training at a school in Houston where the head instructor was an actual Shaolin monk who had moved to the U.S. to start up a school. So the monk offered to arrange ...
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It depends on context, skill and time spent training.
If they just start training they're a student 学生(xué'shēng), when they become an official disciple they'll be called 徒弟(tú'dì).
Then when they become an instructor/teacher they'll be called 老师(lǎo'shī).
When they take on disciples of their own they'll be 师父(shī'fu) and when their skill is widely ...
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What you are asking for is a tall order. If you live on the ground floor, noise issues are more easily addressed because you don't have to worry about impact noises with the floor. Impact noises are the hardest to control, and they radiate through rigid structures like floor joists rather well.
I have no affiliation with the site, but there are a great ...
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I've only started practicing Payattu*, and the students did try to convince me that such a technique exists.
Of course there is no way laws of physics can be bent in such a manner, this technique is a myth. I did try to find out where these stories came from.
First you have to understand that Payattu is thousands of years old (9th century CE). This ...
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I had a Trig professor in college who asked us on day one, "What do math and sex have in common?" The answer was, "You cannot learn them through reading about them in books, and you cannot learn them through watching other people do it. You can only learn them through participation."
Martial arts is so varied that one has to first ask, "What do you want to ...
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Well the short answer is: Why not try it for a month and see whether or not it's something you're capable of doing? Because you won't know until you try.
One of the main concerns of practicing more than one style at a time is that you might confuse them, and it will annoy your teachers as well as perhaps slowing your progress. This is a bigger concern for ...
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Your option to learn new things is pretty limited.
Forms have some, limited value
Since you've mentioned kung fu as one of the directions you might go, there's plenty of video online of various forms and lots of books to back it up that you can do. This might help you develop leg strength and coordination, but your options for learning how it flows/...
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I know one person who went to train in bagua and tai chi. He went to a relatively small training camp, got some good basic skills.
But. That was 6 months of his life spent doing nothing but martial arts training. A lot of that was conditioning. Although he got a good set of basic skills, I can't say it'd be much different than if he spent the time here, ...
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It is the same as asking if you can learn a language without having conversations with real people. In a sense, yes, you can learn to read and write that language from books and instruction. But you'll be in for a heck of a big surprise if dropped into a city where people speak that language for real -- everybody will talk so much faster than you imagined ...
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What is the most effective method for the roundhouse kick?
You've got a one-adjective criteria there, and a vague one: effective.
Overall effectiveness might reasonably be defined as what helps you win reliably, or perhaps you'd prefer something less reliable if it meant the average or median injury you sustain is less even though the worst case outcome's ...
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There are all kinds of places on the body where fighters can get hit (the nose, the jaw, the solar plexus, the thigh, the liver, the kidneys, etc.), and each one of those triggers not just pain but subconscious, automatic physical reactions and altered psychological states. The pain is really the least of anyone's problems in this situation. It's the other ...
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There are a few things you might try. I will mention up front that this is from a Hapkido perspective, and if you have a variation of the stance that isn't quite the same this won't perfectly fit. The wushu horse stances I've seen are similar to ours, except that you tend to go much deeper than we usually emphasize.
Let's look at the basic elements of a ...
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I have two methods I rely on when I become a counter-puncher (or counter-thrower, or passive grappler).
The first is to simply attack constantly. You will become tired. That's okay, you'll get in better condition. You will make mistakes. That's okay, mistakes are what practice is for. Start every round (against competent, non-noob partners) with an ...
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There are no such things as "street fighting" martial arts. Each martial art has its own story for how it came to exist and how it has evolved over the years.
Wing Chun kung-fu, for example, is often called a "street fighting" art, but it is nothing of the sort. The founder of that art had a specific purpose in mind for it, and that purpose was to allow ...
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Disclaimer: I've spent too much time over thinking the differences between Japanese and Chinese martial arts
To quote Bruce Lee's opinion on the styles, getting hit by a Karate punch is like getting hit by a crowbar, while getting hit by a Kung Fu punch is like getting hit by a ball on a chain. Both hurt. You don't want to be on the receiving end of ...
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