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| Traditional Kung Fu training, sparring and realistic resistance |
I am aware that the title of this article will annoy some traditional martial artists.
That is not the purpose of the title. I have practiced traditional Chinese martial arts for decades. Wing Chun and White Crane are not arts I observe from the outside. They are arts I practice, teach, research and care deeply about.
And that is precisely why I think we need to discuss one of the most uncomfortable problems in traditional Kung Fu.
Many systems that were developed, transmitted or remembered as fighting arts are today practiced in ways that provide remarkably little experience of actual fighting.
The problem is not necessarily Kung Fu itself.
The problem is what happens when a fighting art stops fighting.
The uncomfortable reputation of Kung Fu
Mention boxing, Muay Thai, wrestling, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu or MMA and most people immediately associate those disciplines with fighting.
Mention Kung Fu and the reaction can be very different.
Part of this is undoubtedly the result of popular culture. Kung Fu has been surrounded by films, legends, exaggerated demonstrations and extraordinary claims for generations.
But traditional practitioners cannot blame everything on misunderstanding or prejudice.
Combat sports continually place their practitioners in situations where their skills are tested against opponents who are actively trying to defeat them. The rules may limit what can be done, and competition is certainly not identical to uncontrolled violence, but resistance is real.
A punch has to land against someone who does not want to be punched.
A takedown has to work against someone trying not to be taken down.
A submission has to be achieved against someone attempting to escape.
Failure is immediate and difficult to explain away.
In many traditional Kung Fu schools, this feedback mechanism has become much weaker—or disappeared entirely.
You cannot learn to swim without entering the water
There are many ways to prepare someone for swimming.
You can improve physical conditioning. You can practice movements outside the pool. You can study breathing, body position and efficient movement. You can strengthen the muscles involved.
All of those things may help.
But eventually you have to enter the water.
Fighting presents the same fundamental problem.
Forms can develop coordination and preserve technical information. Partner drills can develop particular reactions. Pad and bag work can develop striking attributes. Conditioning can prepare the body. Chi Sao can develop sensitivity and certain Wing Chun-specific skills.
These methods can all have value.
But none of them is fighting.
At some point, if fighting ability is one of our objectives, we need experience against someone who is actively trying to prevent us from succeeding.
That changes everything.
Cooperative training creates a dangerous illusion
There is nothing inherently wrong with cooperative training.
In fact, it is necessary.
When learning something new, your partner has to give you an opportunity to understand the movement. Beginners cannot learn efficiently if every exercise immediately becomes a competition.
The problem begins when cooperation never disappears.
Consider the familiar martial-arts demonstration:
“If he punches like this, I do this…”
The attacker throws the expected punch. The defender blocks it, traps the arm, strikes, controls the opponent and perhaps follows with several additional movements.
Everything works beautifully.
Now allow the attacker to withdraw the punch.
Allow him to punch again.
Allow him to change levels.
Allow him to move his feet.
Allow him to resist the trap.
Allow him to hit you while you are trying to perform the technique.
Suddenly the situation becomes very different.
The problem wasn't necessarily that the original movement was useless. The problem was that the conditions under which we learned it concealed its limitations.
What happens after several generations without fighting?
This is where the problem becomes particularly interesting.
Imagine that a fighting system is transmitted by a teacher who rarely tests his skills against serious resistance.
He teaches the next generation what he remembers and understands.
Those students also rarely fight.
They therefore have fewer opportunities to distinguish between essential principles, useful training methods, personal habits, misunderstandings and movements that simply do not work under pressure.
Another generation passes.
Nothing necessarily has to be deliberately invented.
Small interpretations accumulate.
Techniques can become increasingly elaborate because there is no resisting opponent forcing them to remain practical. Explanations grow around those techniques. Eventually students may spend enormous amounts of time perfecting solutions to situations that rarely occur outside their own training environment.
The system can become internally consistent while becoming externally disconnected.
Theory begins correcting reality instead of reality correcting theory.
That is a dangerous moment for any martial art.
Forms are not the enemy
Criticism of traditional martial arts often goes too far in the opposite direction.
Forms are sometimes dismissed as completely useless because boxers, wrestlers and MMA fighters generally do not train traditional forms.
I don't think the issue is that simple.
Forms can preserve movement patterns, body mechanics, coordination, tactical ideas and elements of a system's technical culture. They can also provide a method of individual practice.
The mistake is expecting the form to do something it cannot do.
A form cannot make an unpredictable decision.
It cannot suddenly change distance.
It cannot become frightened.
It cannot become angry.
It cannot resist your technique.
And most importantly, it cannot hit you back.
Forms can be part of learning a fighting art. They cannot replace experience against resistance.
Chi Sao is not fighting
Wing Chun has an especially interesting version of this problem: Chi Sao, or sticky hands.
Chi Sao can be an extremely useful training method.
It develops sensitivity to pressure and changes in contact. It allows practitioners to explore structure, positioning, timing and reactions at close range.
But Chi Sao is a drill.
Chi Sao is not a substitute for sparring.
A practitioner can become extremely skilled at Chi Sao while becoming highly adapted to the particular rules and expectations of Chi Sao itself.
The same problem can occur with pushing hands, predetermined applications and countless other traditional partner exercises.
People become very good at the drill.
Then they mistake mastery of the drill for mastery of the problem the drill was originally designed to help solve.
The distinction matters.
The problem with complicated techniques
Real resistance tends to simplify martial arts.
Under pressure, we have less time to recognize situations, make decisions and execute complicated sequences.
This does not mean that sophisticated techniques are impossible. Skilled fighters can perform remarkably complex actions.
But those actions normally emerge from enormous amounts of practice against increasingly unpredictable resistance.
Without that testing, martial arts can move in the opposite direction.
Techniques become longer.
One attack produces three blocks, two traps, a joint lock and several strikes.
The training partner conveniently remains in exactly the correct position for every movement.
The sequence becomes impressive precisely because nobody is trying to stop it.
This can produce something that looks extremely sophisticated while depending entirely on cooperation.
What about “internal” training?
The internal martial arts create another potential misunderstanding.
Relaxation, efficient structure, coordinated movement, breathing and the reduction of unnecessary muscular tension are all worthwhile areas of training.
But relaxation does not mean physical weakness.
Softness does not mean an absence of strength.
And efficient movement does not eliminate the need to develop physical capacity.
Muhammad Ali provides an interesting analogy.
Ali could appear extraordinarily relaxed while moving. His movements were fluid, economical and sometimes almost effortless.
But that relaxation did not come from avoiding demanding physical training.
It existed on top of enormous physical preparation and countless hours of boxing practice.
His softness contained strength.
That is very different from simply moving softly and assuming that power will eventually appear.
If we want to generate force, the body must be capable of generating force. If we want to maintain structure under pressure, that structure eventually has to experience pressure.
There is no contradiction between efficiency and physical development.
Knowing the principle is not the same as being able to use it
Traditional martial artists talk constantly about principles.
Structure.
Rooting.
Relaxation.
Timing.
Distance.
Centerline.
Whole-body power.
These concepts can be useful.
But intellectually understanding a principle and expressing it while someone is trying to hit you are completely different levels of knowledge.
It reminds me of language.
Someone can learn how words are pronounced without understanding what those words mean. From the outside, it can sound convincing.
Martial arts can develop the same problem.
A practitioner may demonstrate beautiful structure during a drill. But when the situation becomes unpredictable, that structure disappears.
The solution isn't another explanation of structure.
The practitioner needs opportunities to discover what maintaining structure actually requires under pressure.
Sparring is not magic either
None of this means that sparring solves every problem.
Sparring is still a constructed training environment.
There are rules. There may be protective equipment. Both participants know that they are training. Certain dangerous actions have to be restricted. Psychological and legal circumstances are entirely different from those surrounding real violence.
Competition also doesn't automatically produce good history, good teaching or intelligent people.
A skilled fighter can still believe a false lineage story.
Sparring cannot determine whether Bodhidharma created Shaolin Kung Fu or whether a particular Wing Chun lineage existed three hundred years ago.
Those are historical questions requiring historical evidence.
But sparring answers a different and extremely important question:
What happens when the other person doesn't cooperate?
For a fighting art, that question cannot be avoided forever.
Resistance should be progressive
Throwing beginners into uncontrolled fighting isn't intelligent training either.
There should be progression.
First we learn movement.
Then we practice it cooperatively.
Then the partner introduces limited resistance.
Then increasing resistance.
Then unpredictability.
Eventually the practitioner has to attempt to maintain the principles of the system while another person is actively trying to prevent that from happening.
The progression might be summarized as:
cooperation → resistance → unpredictability → pressure testing
Different schools can implement this in different ways. There is no requirement that every traditional martial artist become a competitive fighter.
But if we make claims about fighting effectiveness, there must eventually be some meaningful method of testing those claims.
Otherwise we are simply assuming that our training works.
I made the same mistake
This criticism is not directed only at other people.
For years, I practiced and believed many of the same things I am criticizing here.
I spent enormous amounts of time on methods that I later realized I had misunderstood. I confused proficiency in exercises with the ability to use what those exercises were supposed to develop.
Eventually I changed the emphasis of my training.
I did not abandon Wing Chun or White Crane.
The forms remained. The principles remained. The traditional exercises remained.
But they stopped being the final measure of success.
Instead, the questions became much simpler.
Can I maintain my structure when someone is trying to break it?
Can I generate power against resistance?
Can I hit someone who is trying not to be hit?
Can I respond when the attack is not the one I expected?
Can I remain relaxed when someone is actually trying to hit me?
Can I still use the principles of my martial art when things become chaotic?
These questions are much less comfortable than arguing about lineage, hand positions or whose version of a form is more authentic.
But fighting arts need uncomfortable questions.
So, why does Kung Fu suck?
It doesn't have to.
Kung Fu does not fail because it has forms.
It does not fail because it is old.
It does not fail because its techniques look different from modern combat sports.
And preserving traditional training methods does not automatically prevent a martial art from functioning.
The problem begins when the training method becomes more important than the ability the method was supposed to develop.
A beautiful form cannot prove fighting ability.
A sophisticated drill cannot prove fighting ability.
A lineage cannot prove fighting ability.
A theoretical explanation cannot prove fighting ability.
And repeating that a technique is “too dangerous for sparring” certainly cannot prove fighting ability.
If fighting effectiveness is part of what we claim to teach, eventually reality must be allowed into the training room.
Kung Fu does not suck because it is traditional. It sucks when tradition becomes a substitute for testing whether what we practice can actually do what we claim it can do.