About Chinese martial arts and Sanda

First of all, you have to understand why our ancestors created martial arts. It's not for performance, nor for practicing and playing with each other, but to kill the opponent and protect one's own life. The original martial arts cannot be called martial arts. It seems more accurate to call it boxing (of course it also includes kicking skills), because there was not much truth to "martial arts" at that time. Being able to kill people in actual combat was the last word. Later, people's thoughts developed. Merely killing opponents was no longer the pursuit of practitioners. Martial arts began to be combined with philosophical ideas, and slowly developed from simply protecting oneself to cultivating the body and mind and improving the state of mind. The goal is to better integrate people into nature. Blend into the environment. Martial arts at this time is the true meaning of "martial arts". Integrating into nature certainly also includes eliminating threats in the environment, that is, killing opponents. In other words, the development of mature martial arts has not weakened its lethality at the beginning of its creation.

And everyone knows this. After all, it is not a war era anymore. Social security needs and the uneven quality of people determine that martial arts education and publicity cannot highlight actual combat capabilities. In the United States, every citizen can legally own a gun. As a result, Americans have not become safer, but shooting incidents have become more frequent. Martial arts is like a gun in people's hands. If everyone knew that it was a gun, not a toy, and everyone could own it, then one can imagine the security situation in China. Therefore, when it comes to promoting Chinese martial arts, the value of martial arts for fitness, mental cultivation, and performance is intentionally magnified, which is conducive to preserving and promoting Chinese martial arts, while ensuring social security. Such publicity and promotion does not mean that the true lethality of martial arts has been lost. It still exists, it's just no longer disclosed casually.

Third, Chinese martial arts has a unique feature: it has routines. This is not found in other martial arts and boxing techniques in the world. Muay Thai, Judo, Karate, Aikido, Taekwondo, Capola, and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu all only have moves, not complete routines. Routines make people feel like doing morning exercises, consisting of fixed actions connected in series, repeated over and over again. But if you study in depth, you will find that routines were not created by our ancestors to exercise our bodies: each type of boxing has a step-by-step routine, and each routine has its training effect. For example, Chen-style Tai Chi practices soft power in the first step, and soft strength in the second step. Practice explosive energy. The routine is composed of various Sanshou moves with slight changes in the series strokes. After the changes, the routine becomes concealed. To outsiders, the routine you practice is just a combination of some movements. As for the use of these movements, only experts know. The so-called insiders look at the door, while laymen look at the excitement. Each movement of the routine has offensive and defensive meanings when taken individually. As long as it is restored to its original appearance and the master plays it on demand, you will be able to understand how to use it. Learning routines is like studying a book of offensive and defensive moves - how to practice and how to use them has been clearly written in the book. As for how you use them in actual combat, it depends on whether you can be flexible. It would be very funny if we practiced dogmatism and followed the routine completely. . . This move must be followed by that move, it will be weird if you don't get hit.

Fourth, we must know that compared with Sanda, boxing, Muay Thai and the like, traditional Chinese martial arts, in addition to routines, the most important thing is that it also has ideological connotation. And the core ideas of each boxing type are different - for example, "Xingyiquan has its own fallacy." Chinese martial arts do have a strong self-protection value. In terms of practice methods, in addition to ensuring the power of actual combat, they also It takes great care of the practitioner's body. Let’s take Xingyiquan as an example: Xingyiquan pays attention to three do’s and don’ts – don’t practice if it’s offensive but not defensive, don’t practice if it’s defensive but not offensive, don’t practice if it’s both offensive and defensive but not good for the body. Therefore, masters who practice Tai Chi can generally live to be 90 years old, and those who practice Baji, Bagua, and Xingyi can generally live to be over 80 years old. These enlightened people not only live a long time, they can still have strong hands and feet and flexible body movements at an advanced age, which is really not easy. Bajiquan master Li Shuwen was still able to chew railway paving stones with his teeth when he was 80 years old. His health was not that good. However, not many Muay Thai masters live past the age of 50.

Fifth, as someone above said, Chinese martial arts is not suitable for the ring.

Because its actual combat thinking is to kill the opponent, it is best to solve the problem with one blow, saving effort and trouble - later will lead to change. If you hit the button in the ring, sometimes it can be regarded as a sign of noble martial ethics, and sometimes it can be regarded as an insult to the opponent. Killing or not killing involves very complex issues of dignity, morality and martial arts. You cannot expect everyone to do so. People who enter the ring have a high level of ideological awareness - some people learn martial arts just for its lethality, without considering the ideological connotation at all. Such people have emerged one after another throughout history. Of course, not everyone can have a high level of ideological awareness, which also determines the difficulty of developing martial arts ideas - it requires mind cultivation, a solid foundation, and a certain amount of philosophical thinking to understand some of the mysteries of moves. High requirements are not suitable for today's fast-paced life and simple mentality. Therefore, Taekwondo can be popular in China because it deliberately lowers the threshold of thinking in publicity and at the same time turns destructive boxing into a competitive fighting style.

Finally, it should be noted that traditional Chinese martial arts is not mysterious, but it is not like a ring event like a martial arts conference, and it is not a street fight. Traditional martial arts emphasizes the close integration of technique and body skills in moves, and also emphasizes efficiency (hitting the head in actual combat is of course highly efficient). Martial arts tournaments do not allow attacks on the head, and at the same time, points are scored rather than killed, so many technical moves cannot be used at all or cannot display their characteristics. However, it is difficult to learn traditional martial arts well because you need to lay a solid foundation first and improve your mental quality. These are boring and time-consuming compared to actual combat moves. If you want to practice martial arts moves with strong lethality, you need more time and perseverance. Because Chinese martial arts and martial arts from other countries have one thing in common, that is, all movements must be trained into conditioned reflexes of the body.

It should be added that the traditional martial arts in Chinese martial arts have actual combat value. Simplified routines and performance competition routines are only used for promotion and have almost no actual combat value.