WORKING OUT COMBAT SEQUENCES FROM SELECTIVE SETS -- OVERVIEW
How did kungfu masters in the past spar and fight? Did they practice free sparring?
Of course they sparred. Without sparring they would not be able to fight, no matter for how long they practiced their solo kungfu sets. And kungfu masters in the past fought extremely well. They fought using typical kungfu skills and patterns.
If any patterns were not useful for fighting, they would have been eliminated and not passed down to us. The way kungfu masters sparred and fought was recorded in words and depicted in pictures still extant today. We also know from direct experience. Both in our own training and in actual fighting, we have found that using kungfu patterns, including stances, gives us great advantages in combat.
Here is a brief explanation of how kungfu developed. Untrained persons fought like children -- punching wildly, grappling and wrestling each other and rolling on the ground. Soon frequent fighters discovered that it was more advantageous to strike than to grapple. Hence the earliest fighters fought like Boxers.
Later they discovered that kicking was more advantageous than striking. So they fought like Kick-Boxers. Next, they discovered that they could catch an opponent's legs and throw him onto the ground. They then found various ways to pin him down. They also discovered ways to lock an opponent while he was standing.
Master fighters discovered that by gripping special points and tendons, they could control their opponents. During these developmental processes they discovered that by adopting certain stances and using certain movements, they could execute their attacks and defences more effectively. Over many centuries these advantageous stances and movements developed and stylized into kungfu patterns. The masters also developed effective methods of training.
The videos below show some of the lessons where participants worked out combat sequences of their own from their selective sets to meet specific combat situations. The videos were taken impromptu and are released here without any editing.
- Working out Various Ways of Combat
- Combat Sequences from Dragon Form
- Counters against Boxers and Muay Thai Fighters
- Dragon-Tiger Patterns against Kick-Boxers
- Dragon-Tiger Patterns against Holds and Throws
- Swimming Dragon and Taming Tiger
- From Linear to Sideways Attacks
- Swerving Dragon and Phoenix-Fist
- Tiger-Claw and Single-Legged Crane
- Hard and Soft of Tiger-Crane
- One Mile, Hundreds of Miles
- Being Fast Without Appearing to be Fast
- False-False Real-Real
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