Since the dawn of time, physical combat has played a role in nearly every culture and civilization across the world. Differences in cultures and societies bring many different combat disciplines, commonly called martial arts, to the forefront.
Martial arts have been widely popularized by action movies featuring martial artists as heroes or villains. Perhaps the most popular is Bruce Lee, who led the wave of martial arts films in the West and created a fascination with the discipline.
When you spar, how hard should you and your partner hit?
The short answer is – as hard as you want.
If you’re preparing for a full contact match, then at least part of
your training will need to be full contact. Most martial artist don’t
compete regularly in full contact though, and many of them don’t
compete at all. For them, sparring full contact probably isn’t what
they want to do . . . but then they miss the benefits of full contact
training.
If you were to translated literally, Wing Chun means “beautiful springtime,” or “forever springtime.” Wing Chun is Romanized in several different ways “Wing Chun”, “Wingtsun”, “Ving Tsun” or “Wing Tsun.” In Wing Chun there are several ways of defeating the enemy: striking, kicking, joint locking, controlling, throwing and the use of weapons are the most common.
I recently had a couple of students in my Wing Chun class ask for training in swordsmanship. Now, Kung Fu has a lot of weapons forms, but they tend to be stylized, rather than sparring formats. I originally thought of teaching them Kendo, on the Japanese forms, but having just taken some Tae Kwon Do classes of my own, I decided to look a little further afield. I found the Korean cognate of Kendo, called kumdo.
I’ve known Helen for years and she’s been in charge of a Kuk Sool Won class for the past two. Helen’s great, she’s tough, she’s smart, and her school turns out responsible martial artists that can throw one of heck of a punch. I was in the area and due to take Helen out for lunch, so I showed up early and attended one of her late morning classes. I was a little surprised; it’s been a while since I’ve done any Kuk Sool Won training and I certainly didn’t remember some of the drills we were using. After we’d showered and settled down at our favorite Thai place, I inquired about it.
