Monday 9 March 2015

Week 1 (9.03-15.03.2015) WUSHU

Last semester I prepared the presentation about kung fu. Now something similar but much more popular and more modern. Let’s talk about wushu and sanda

What is Wushu ?

Currently Wushu is one of the most popular sports in China and is becoming more and more popular over the world. Wushu is divided into two different types:

Taolu – competition based on the presentation of the forms.




http://chinwoo.com.au/v7/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/taolu01.jpg

Sanda – full contact fight
Sanda is also separated to Qingda – this is light contact version of it



Wushu comes from a very old tradition of Chinese martial arts. It allows to  systematize a lot of different styles of martial arts and perform tournaments.
You need to remember that Wushu is a sport system, it has a lot of rules that allows to choose the best of the best

 

Taolu

Taolu competition can be played in two ways. Using a compulsory routine or an individual routine. The first one is a set of moves/forms that were prepared in the past. This is a set that each competitor must do and allows to judge the same set for each person. The individual routine is prepared by each competitor by himself. It is judged mostly but its difficulty but also there are rules how to prepare a set and what it must contain.
One of the most recognized for the Western civilization type of Taoulu is Taijiquan, better known for most of us as T`ai chi. I think now everybody has some idea what it is about. A funny thing is that we associate it with old people, but in China this is very popular sport for young people from elementary to high school.
I think that you shouldn’t consider Taoulu as  a fight tournament. It is much more like acrobatic connected with forms from various martial arts system. In some way it can be applied in real life, but is only a good show for audience.

Sanda

Making things very simple Sanda is something like Muah Thai but you can throw with your opponent. This little twitch changes a lot in matter of fight strategy. The second “change” is that the fight is not performed on a standard ring but on a 8x8 m mat on a small platform. Each fighter can win a fight in two ways:
KO
Gaining most points

Points are gained for:
The biggest number of points is for throwing the opponent out of the mat
 Overthrow the opponent on the mat
Adavantage in the fight (like in box or kickboxing)

A fight has 3 rounds, each of them is 3 minutes long, and trust me, this 3 minutes are long as hell cause of very different variants of the fight, we have standard boxing, kicking, throwing. A clinch is a very important element of the fight cause it allows to throw or undercut the opponent. This requires a lot of strength and endurance.
In China you can find a lot of different Sanda schools. Each of them is connected (very often) with a different traditional Kung fu style. But the best schools often join different martial art styles. It allows them to prepare their students for different situations.
As for now there is a very big gap between Chinese and the Western one.
SOURCES
2.       http://pzwushu.pl/
3.       http://centrumwushu.pl/

28 comments:

  1. @Dawid: Your post has a few bugs. Remove the HTML comments (e.g. ) and it should be fine. I hope that I'm not the only one who see them.

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    1. Missing text in the brackets: < ! -- [if !supportLists] -- >

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    2. Thank you for the tip :)

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  2. Nice article @Dawid but – as @pc-s12432 said – your text has some formatting problems ;)
    Martial arts aren’t my cup of tea, nonetheless this is great to see how much you are crazy about that. Good for you!

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  3. Are you sure wushu is more popular that kung fu? Maybe you meant that it's most popular in China? I've never heard about wushu unlike the kung fu... In my opinion kung fu is more popular in the world. It's also a part of the culture e.g. lots of movies, books etc.

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    1. Yes but kung fu it is not a sport.
      Wushu is a sport formula that is becoming more and more popular. Kung-fu is way of life, it is more a philosofy than a sport. Kung fu is about getting every move to perfecton and wushu is a sport that was created on kung fu. This is a big reason.
      The reason why you here a lot of kung fu is because for Western people it is the same thing :)

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    2. Hello Dawid,
      In my opinion every sport is a lifestyle - especially if you want to be good at this.
      I feel that wushu is now a days mostly an exhibition and part of history lesson rather that a sport. But basically almost all asian, primal, martial arts was developed to protected against the invaders - so it should be more effective than impressive.
      Take care :)

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    3. Thanks for your reply Dawid. You didn't explain the difference between kung fu and wushu clearly so I checked the Internet. Kung fu doesn't even mean sports, It determines high level achievement in some area. Someone identified kung fu as martial arts years ago and mostly because of films everybody does.
      http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kung-fu

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  4. Coming from someone whose experience with martial arts starts and ends with boxing - a sport that is ridiculously western-centric - I found the article equally interesting and hard to follow.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ccoj5lhLmSQ

    What I found most striking is that tai chi is a form of martial arts. Around my neck of the woods there are a lot of Asian people practising it. I often see them around the park at dawn looking incredibly focused, collected, and frankly, amazingly cool.

    Thing is they all look to be in their sixties and move very slowly. I always assumed it was just what Chinese people of certain age did to stay active. Something that young people can do but don't because it's associated with retirees. Sort of like Nordic walking which became very popular around Europe, but way cooler and mixed with martial arts.

    A quick Google search turned up a lot of videos of people actually fighting and it's no joke. Are you skilled in this form of fighting?

    Also, according to Wikipedia "t'ai chi ch'uan" translates, among others, as "supreme ultimate boxing" which I find hilarious.

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    1. Yes, tai chi is a martial art, and it is preatty efective, but it is not focused on harming others :) It is - even for you - connected with elder Asians because they know that it has a very big and possitive influence on their helth.

      I'm never trained Tai Chi, but I've learned style that has some inspirations from it :)

      Yeah, to be honest you can call Sanda as Chinese box, and I know that for someone who is focused on our version of box it is a joke :) But remember that Sanda has a lot of boxing elements, they went just a bit further

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  5. I agree with my colleagues, formatting is far from perfect :)
    Personally, I had some contact with Taolu, it's really hard. Looks simple, but needs hours of training. I used to train very similar type of martial art so I can compare it quite easy.
    In my honest opinion Wushu in general isn't my cup of tea. I'm too big for it:)
    Anyway I would like to see more videos from Taolu in post.
    Can you compare Wushu with Kung Fu?

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    1. Taoulu for me is definition of perfection, every move needs to be perfect to create, make a perfect form.

      It is hard to compare Wushuand Kung Fu. The simplest way is that: wushu is a sport, kung fu is a way of life. Wushu means "martial art", Kung fu means "perfection".
      Wushu was created for competition Kung fu developed from desire to become a perfect martial artist. Word "art" is esencial in this case

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  6. Very interesting. A specially that I'm not familiar with ANY martial art. I was considering joinig a aikido team once (the beginners of course, or noobs if you wish). But it was a long time ago. My friend has 3rd dan in aikido and I saw him fighting. Incredible! But it's like 20 years of hard work. Definitely not for me ;-).

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  7. As I said last time I used to train Aikido ;) I know it's not related (Aikido comes from Japan, WUSHU from China) but just FYI ;)
    Well... frankly speaking I do recommend every kind of activity. Nowadays we spend too much time sitting (desk-work, watching TV even travelling.)
    Currently I have some break from training (I attend to gym), but by the end of the next week I will have been back to it ;)

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    1. Yes activity is very important now days, I think that martial arts are one of the best forms of activities, they develop everything like strenght, endurance, body feeling.

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  8. This is not my cup of tea really, anyways, martial arts are really more popular in the east. People treat this sport with proper respect and profoundness which creates a huge difference between them and Europe. I would love to see true asian fighters in asian-like surroundings training and fighting with each other. It’s probably more popular for men, rather than for women, but obviously there are some female fighters which enjoy these kind of sport activities. I’m not really keen on training myself this way and it’s not only for lack of competence, but for lack of time as well. Anyway I always appreciate and wish persistance to people who do so, keep it going!

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    1. Someone wise said that there is never lack of time, there is only lack of will. I'm starting to agree with that. I alwais complained that I have no time for things like that but one day I said "enough". Strange cause now I have time for training almoust every day :)

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  9. A friend of mine was a big fan of wushu. Once I was on a tournament. It was very impressive how agile was the competitors. Wushu is very dynamic and acrobatic. You need some space to do it.

    Could you tell me, if there is a name for this kind of sword in wushu! As I remember it's made from thin metal and is very flexible.

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    1. You have "Dao" - short, one-sided curved sword
      Jian - double-edge sword

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  10. I'm not a huge fan of martial arts. I didn't hear about Wushu before but rules seem to be quite simple. Thanks Dawid, it was very interesting presentation. It was great to learn something new :)

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    1. Nice to read that ! Thanks for your time

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  11. As I (and many other people) said - I'm not really into martial arts. Recently I saw on kwejk.pl video clip of two women competing in wushu competition (something similar to that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXtB1UshqmI), but still it looked interesting for a moment, but it didn't keep my attention for a longer time. I'm glad that you're still a martial arts fan, I assume that you train a lot, but for sure you won't make another apprentice out of me.
    I don’t know if you are familiar with, but you can learn a lot from National Geographic Channel - “Fight Science”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCm5WiHda-0. They even made a full movie where they compared many styles and tested which style has the strongest punch, strongest kick, which is the fastest etc. even is there a thing called deadly punch, so if you didn’t see it – it’s a must-see for you.

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  12. I was training Jujitsu for three years when I was younger and even got the first two ranks. Eventually I gave it up when I understood that on the street what will get you out of trouble is the ability to run fast ;) Most defense techniques I learned depended on my opponent doing one particular move which was very unlikely to happen in a real life scenario. Nonetheless, I admire people who really get into martial arts just for the fitness and learning to control your body.

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  13. I am not familiar with or very interested in martial arts, but thanks for the presentation - always good to learn a few things.

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  14. I a fan of mixed martial art. I watched the lastest mma competition which took place in Arena in Poznań. That's my hometown. Sometimes I watch american wrestling, for me it is like a play, not real fight! But it is a good entertainment.

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  15. Actually I don't know much about martial arts but, it's a coincidence that not longer than few days ago I watched some movie about Kung Fu and Shaolin Monks and also Wushu was presented. I was amazed by this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BYMjsexKM4 - these girls are crazy :-) That yt video in your article is also cool :D sky is the limit! Anyway hahahaha you should all check this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1eFdUSnaQM - I am definitely a fan of star trek fighting style. This is how I do.

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  16. To be honest I have never heard about wushu, so I am glad that you have prepared this article. However I am not a big fan of these kind of sports – fighting is not really my thing. I find it a bit primitive and I don’t understand why do people engage in such activities. Fight sports and tournament seems so pitiful for me. I prefer peaceful sports where you don’t hurt anyone, for example yoga. Of course I understand that some people want to know how to protect themselves and they attend fight sports classes but this is a different story.

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