Chinese Martial Arts
Chinese Martial Arts, commonly known as Wushu, can be categories into Taolu (routines) and Sanda. Many traditional Chinese martial arts practitioner had been doing taolu for years, yet they have no idea that taolu is the fundamental and preparation for sparring. It is a training for “手、眼、身法、步”, which aids the body to unify coordination to prepare one subconsciously to spar, instinctively.
The modern wushu training, aka sports wushu, had already diverted from the origin of Chinese Marital Arts. Even if you are doing traditional taolu training, you are merely doing performance in mimic of “intention” in martial arts. The true wushu, does provide one with effective combat, but it has to be found within a complete system, e.g.: Wing Chun.
Wing Chun Kuen is a complete system that not only focus on taolu, it has combat application training as well.
Wushu is not just a combat art. Wushu also focus on training one’s body, mind and soul. If one only emphasis on the destruction training and never train in the cultivation of body wellness and mental preparation, then one got only an estimate of 30 years wushu cycle. When old age comes, you will find yourself with many internal injury.
Different style/family of Traditional Wushu has its unique combat training, e.g.: tai’chi’s “eight doors force”, wing chun’s “inch force”, fanzi quan’s “whip/lash force”, all has a single strike power as a effective combat application. It is very different from Sanda (散打), which only train in mass energy to strike and very much limited to competition stage.
With the current promotion of sports wushu, many who train in traditional routines thought that they are equipped with combat skill, but do not know that without combat training of the system that you are trained in, you are just a performer.
But I urge all to not look down on sports wushu training. Although it is not a complete system with combat skills, the mind set that they are put into, does give them an equal opportunity of converting to a good traditional combatant, with better effectiveness as a full fledge complete traditional wushu practitioner.
