richard@aplvax.UUCP (06/15/83)
There has been a lot of press coverage lately about Wing Chun style Kung Fu. It appears to me to be a quite natural and effective style. Particularly appealling are the simultaneous defense and attack moves and the absence of high kicks. I have had some Tae Kwon Do experience and have always doubted the effectiveness of some of its flowery and aerial kicks. Though pretty, these moves seem too slow and uncontrollable compared to direct linear moves. Does anyone have any thoughts or experiences regarding Wing Chun or other aspects of the martial arts? I would love to locate a Wing Chun teacher in the Baltimore, Maryland area (or the northern D.C. suburbs). - Rich Greenberg Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab
israel@umcp-cs.UUCP (06/18/83)
Well I don't know too much about Wing Chun Kung Fu, but I would be interested if someone more knowledgable were to post some information about it. I study a Japanese style of Karate called Goju Ryu in the Washington D.C. area. Go means 'hard' and 'Ju' means soft, so Goju Ryu is "the way of hard and soft". This means that there are both "hard" techniques (meaning power-oriented and straight-line techniques, e.g. Taekwondo and Shotokan) and "soft" techniques (continuous, smooth and circular techniques, e.g. Kung Fu, Aikido etc.). We do high, fancy kicks to advanced students, but we primarily emphasize hand techniques and the basic kicks (front kick, round kick, side kick). One major difference is that we highly emphasize breathing. Goju ryu is symbolized by two major katas, which are breathing katas. The kata sanchin is a hard breathing kata and is taught at the green-belt level. This kata is one of the hardest katas to do, though it is extremely simple technically, having no kicks in it at all and primarily using a thrust punch and middle block. The reason it is so difficult to do is that the kata takes about two minutes to do, and requires complete tension and lockout of every single muscle in the body, including arm and leg muscles, neck muscles, stomach and buttocks, etc. Along with this breathing is consciously controlled by forcefully expanding and contracting the diaphragm, which results in the breath coming out with a roar. Because the stomach is completely tightened, it pushes up into the bottom of the chest cavity, limiting the amount of air that can be taken in with the breathing. The tension and the breathing result in making it a very difficult kata to do correctly. (I've rambled on this long enough, so for more information see the latest issue of "Black Belt" magazine, or an issue of Kick Illustrated a few months back with an article called "Sanchin: the Kata and its Principles".) The other breathing kata is called Tensho, which is taught at the purple belt level, and is a soft breathing kata. It is similar to sanchin, but is done with less tension, and more relaxed breathing. Because of these things, I feel that we are more similar to Kung Fu styles than are most Japanese and Korean styles of Karate. I include under Korean styles of Karate, Taekwondo and Tang soo do. I have heard that some (or all?) Korean stylists consider their arts to be separate arts from Karate, but based on what I've seen of the arts, I would call them Karate. By the way, the above letter can be construed as an emphatic yes vote for net.rec.martial. Since we need to get the discussion rolling, the above paragraph is a deliberate attempt to get it going by picking a fight. I would like some Korean stylists to say how they feel on this subject. ~~~ Bruce ...!seismo!umcp-cs!israel (Usenet) israel.umcp-cs@Udel-Relay (Arpanet)
wfs@mgweed.UUCP (06/24/83)
Wing Chun Kung Fu In response to the request(s) for information on Wing Chun schools in Canada; I neglected to mention that the Kung Fu directory only list schools in that area. July issue of Kung Fu, has a more complete directory with all or most of the states listed with variouse styles of Kung Fu in it. Rjk of Montgomery, mgweed is the local Guru of the system here at Montg; is on vacation until Aug. 1, '83. I will try to press upon him, the fact that there are those of us that want net.rec.martial. In the mean time we will continue to post-news on the subject!!