Today, I will be writing about my personal experiences with training both Kodokan Judo and Wing Tsun Kung Fu. I'll be addressing my reasons for training them, the benefits I received from them and how they differ conceptually and in terms of practicality.
Let's start with Judo then! Initially, I started training Judo back in 2010 because I wanted to be able to defend myself when and if someone ever came up to me and wanted to fight me or to cause any physical damage to me, which is generally something everyone does not want to happen to them. I trained for a good 3 years, and the only thing I got out of it was confidence and fitness, neither of them being what I was looking for in the first place. Sure, the fitness was great. I got in some serious shape and lost about 1.5 stone due to some serious training. Unfortunately, fitness and strength wasn't going to stop me from taking numerous amounts of punches to the head...
So after having another art recommended to me by a guy, I decided to take my training a step further and began to cross-train in both Judo and Wing Tsun. As far as I knew, Wing Tsun was a self-defense system that focused mainly on striking and attacking. It sounded and seemed very practical and I eventually focused on it a lot more than Judo. After about 3 months of Wing Tsun training, I went back to Judo and felt a hell of a difference. My balance was improved, my ability to relax was much better than it was before, and I felt less of a need to use brute strength to beat my opponent. Aswell as my own observations, I was told by a friend of mine and a high ranked Judoka that I was "a lot more centered" since I trained Wing Tsun. I took a lot from Wing Tsun and applied it to my Judo training and it really did help! I often used a sort of Wing Tsun application called "bong sau' (wing arm) to cover my collar whenever my opponent went for a grab. Although this is not recommended against actual Wing Tsun students, it worked wonders against senior Judo black belts! (Actively creating the shape of a bong-sau and using it as a block is risky against real punches, not grabs.)
I then stepped away from my Wing Tsun training for a while and started training Judo full time again. I did it for another 4-5 months and eventually got tired of the idea of competition and, worst of all, egos. I didn't feel like I needed to prove my superiority over someone by trying to fight for grips and throw them into the floor. The ideas of agreeing to spar, jumping about trying to find the best way to grip someone in order to throw them with their full resistance against me, sloppily throwing both myself and my opponent to the mat only to stand up again and repeat the process...these ideas had no place in the world of real combat for me. Who's to say your attacker won't be throwing punches at your head instead of gripping you? Who's to say you'll be actually willing to fight someone? Fights are NOT spars, and should not be treated as such. Who's to say you'll be fighting just one person? You won't have the luxury of landing on a mat when you're outside getting your head kicked in by a gang of scumbags, sadly.
Judo is a sports combat. Great for fitness, confidence and a great ego boost.
Wing Tsun is a self-defense system. Great for protecting your face.
While I'd recommend cross-training in a couple of martial arts, I actually experienced one flaw while doing just that. I felt that Judo slowed me down quite a bit and messed with my muscle memory. When I returned to Wing Tsun, I simply could not use the correct muscular tension in my arms like I could before, no matter how hard I tried...this was not good. I was using strength rather than skill, and because of this I had to re-boot my central nervous system and relearn everything I knew before until it became instinctive for me to use the correct tension in my arms again.
It was rather odd because when I trained Wing Tsun before returning to Judo, my Judo was 10 times better. But when I trained Judo before returning to Wing Tsun, I had a lot of bad habits...
So, I learned that both of these arts differed in concepts. Wing Tsun teaches you to yield to a greater force, i.e: to use eccentric tension against your opponent's incoming force, to borrow the power of your attacker and fling it back into his center-line in the form of a punch (i.e. strike in the nose).
Whereas sports Judo teaches you to go against a great force with an even greater force, but disguising it by being in motion whilst off-balancing your opponent around the room to find the best opportunity to slam him into the floor. (Hence why Judo is a sports combat, not a martial art.)
Anyway, those are some of my current thoughts of the arts I have trained and learned from. Hopefully you've gained somewhat decent information reading them, people!
Judo never ever teaches to oppose force with greatre force, just the opposite. Teaches to use enemys force to drive him offbalance. Sports judo, becouse of competition system tends to have that kind os things such as force against force, is a shortcut to win, athletes compiting. But as a martial art judo teaches to use oponent force against him,.
ReplyDeleteJudo is a sport, and it's based on Jiu Jitsu, which is a martial art. So in writing this post, I was implying that sports differ from martial arts in terms of principle. I'm aware judo teaches you to use your opponent's force against them, but in a sports environment, us as judoka tend to ignore that concept and concentrate more on strength and good positioning.
DeleteYou're post is both right and wrong. In a strange twist in a newer post you point out a problem with Wing Chun, that is the exact problem you ran into with Judo. Let me explain.
ReplyDeleteJudo is a combat sport, but it is also a self defense system. In traditional Judo there were strikes and more real world street elements. It was designed as a self defense system for those with little strength. That has become more and more diluted over time. The martial art has been very much damaged by the popularity of MMA as many dojos have diluted even the sport of Judo to teach techniques that make more sense in the octagon then on the tatami.
Today you are better off finding a Jiu Jitsu dojo or one that teaches the more traditional eliminates of Judo or one that teaches all three. The one thing I will tell you for sure is if you are being taught to meet strength with strength you are being taught bad Judo. Don't take my word for it...
"To understand what is meant by gentleness or giving way, let us say a man is standing before me whose strength is ten, and that my own strength is but seven. If he pushes me as hard as he can, I am sure to be pushed back or knocked down, even if I resist with all my might. This is opposing strength with strength. But if instead of opposing him I give way to the extent that he has pushed, withdrawing my body and maintaining my balance, my opponent will lose his balance. Weakened by his awkward position, he will be unable to use all his strength. It will have fallen to three. Because I retain my balance, my strength remains at seven. Now I am stronger than my opponent and can defeat him by using only half my strength, keeping the other half available for some other purpose. Even if you are stronger than your opponent, it is better to first give way. By doing so you conserve energy while exhausting your opponent." -Dr. Jigoro Kano (the founder of Judo)
Judo is often translated to "gentle way," but this is a over simplification. Ju literally means "to give way" do literally means way (but in the sense of a way of life) when translated literally "to give way way" it doesn't sound as good in English as it does in Japanese.
Another sign that you were learning bad Judo is that you mentioned egos. That's a key sign that you are in a watered down MMA centric gym. Ju is not just a fighting concept it is a life philosophy. If you are not being taught the philosophy with the sport or if those in your dojo do not show it, you are in a bad dojo.
You mention how Wing Chun is getting damaged by bad training. Well, Judo came to this country long before Wing Chun and has had a lot more time to go through the transformation you are only just now seeing. I'm sorry you had a experience with a bad Judo Dojo, unfortunately there are more good then bad today.
*there are more bad then good today (I transposed the words sorry)
DeleteThanks for your reply! I agree with everything you said. In the katas there are indeed atemi-waza (strikes), which means the empty-hand forms that make up Judo are based on self-defense concepts, i.e. defending against a strike using kuzushi and a throwing technique.
DeleteAlso that's a very nice quote by Jigoro Kano and it sort of relates to Wing Tsun (aswell as other martial arts I'd imagine). If you rob your opponent of their balance, their ability to hit you hard reduces substantially and it's much easier for you to strike/throw them.
On a different note I have to say, I wrote this post a good while ago and I just had a read through it again. I wasn't as specific as I'd like to have been in writing it, and I'm not sure the Judo club I trained in was "bad". It was just thoroughly invested in Judo competition and tournament fighting, very very sports orientated. The instructions weren't that specific and no-one ever went into detail about technique, not like in BJJ or Wing Tsun.
It is quite a shame that bad clubs exist out there though. I know plenty of "iffy" Ninjutsu, Jiu-jitsu, Wing Tsun and Karate clubs out there. I just avoid them and focus on my own training, and everyone should :P
You are 100% right about atemi-waza. I was trying to explain this to someone just yesterday in a conversation about Ronda Rousey. He was talking about the criticism of her strikes. I was explaining to him that she doesn't use strikes like a boxer would instead she is using atemi-waza slightly adapted for the octagon. ]and that people criticism her striking because they don't understand it's purpose, which is not to knock someone out, but to throw them off balance enough that they have to lock up. (the knock out last weekend was purely coincidental.)
DeleteI think the point I didn't make well above is at the highest form of Judo competition meeting strength with strength does not go well. If you are facing a well trained Judoka (particularly from Korea or Japan) they are hoping you will meet strength with strength and doing so will only be playing into their setups. When I call Judo Clubs "bad" I think that is a little bit of snobbery on my part. It's just hard to see something you've dedicated a lot of time too damaged by diluted teachings.
One quick story and I'll stop spamming your blog. I have a friend who trains in Wing Chun. Not understanding Judo or Jiu Jitsu he wanted to show me something. So he asked me to put my arms out which I did. He then pushed down on the and asked "How would you respond?" I moved my arms down and rotated them above his pushing his arms down from the top with his strength and stepped in. I didn't finish with a throw because it was never intended to be sparing. His eyes got big and he said "That's basically how we are trained. How did you know that?" I explained to him that that response is the core teaching of both Judo and Jiu Jitsu.
I use that story a lot, barbecue it illustrates that at their core all martial arts are the same. Unfortunately when they come to this country they get watered down with McDojos and improper teaching. When someone finds a good teacher of their own style they look at all the bad teachers of other styles and think they have found the best or only true style. The truth is when you take a deep look at your own style you often found what you have. The problem isn't the style but how hard it is to find a good teacher of any style.
I hadn't noticed that about Ronda's strikes actually, I just knew striking wasn't her forté (being a Judo olympian and that) and didn't want to criticize her too much on it. I'll have to take a closer look at the way she strikes though now that you mention it ;)
DeleteDon't worry about the spamming, it's good spamming. :P What you've said about good teachers as opposed to good styles is exactly the way I feel about martial arts too. I mean, for me I was never really attached to Wing Tsun as an art, but after spending a few years learning from and training with my instructor, I realized the amount of skill I'd obtained and my ability to think critically was thoroughly increased. And it was all down to the high-quality instruction I was given and my years of focused repetition of the techniques I was taught.
So I guess any and every martial art can be put to good use once you've been given specific instructions on how to use them from a decent teacher ;)
Thanks for this article very helpful. thanks. aikido
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