gongfu

 Wrestling is a very important part of kung fu. Most of the wrestling in kung fu, is designed to break brones, dislocate bones at the joints, destroy muscles/tendons and even to kill other people should the real need ever arrise in some practioners life in some generation. Contrary to the propaganda, it isn’t something new to kung fu, in fact, it is probably the oldest form of empty hand gong gu. What is new, is the idea of training wrestling against wrestlers of other styles. Which is a seperate topic. The joint locks of jiu jitsu and judo are derived almost directly from gong fu, as well as the throws and ground mechanics that were the original root of those arts. They are really something quite different today, but kung fu is still passing on those concepts.

  The first part of wrestling in gong fu is standup throwing. You should be able to knock someone down/throw someone, pretty easily without training specifically for wrestling if you really do gong fu. Not only are your legs hard to interupt in rooting, but the postural stances of gong fu are easily used in turning to overturn/toss/take someone to the ground. Once a person is on the ground, what comes next in gong fu, naturally is controlling them, by locking the joints. Once a person is face down, on the ground, and immobilized, they can be arrested, spoken to submission, or injured so that they are unable to present a threat. Many standup qin na techniques will take someone to te ground, making them less capable along the way and finally taking them out of service before, or immediatly after they hit the ground.

 This is important to note, since if you were to use kung fu wrestling as sport, it would immediatly lose it’s essense. Certain softcore techniques have been taken from gong fu, and added to the San Da arsenal. Why not the good ones?

 There are two reasons.

 Most people that really teach gong fu don’t teach competitive fighters.

 Most competitive fighters don’t use techniques that could easily damage a persons body permanently.

 Forcing someone to go down involuntarily isn’t particularly hard. The problem is, if they struggle, they will be injured badly.

 Here are some examples of very basic, simple standup techniques in Chinese martial arts that employ “grappling” skills.

 Hopefully I can figure out how to transfer video from my camera into a readable format to post on this blog soon!

 Person dressed in white, and person dressed in black. We will use this simple system for the sake of illustration.

 Person dressed in black, puts arms on white’s shoulders and gets in close to prevent him from striking and presses forward to off balance him, which he is about to follow up. White feels his hands under blacks arms, while stepping into black and “locking” his legs to root. White continues his hands behind black’s shoulders and around to the front of his throat, locking them. He forces his hip into black’s pelvis below the center of gravity, if heights permit, and turns his body, to fold black backward while pressing his hands forward on black’s throat. All happening simultaneously, and almost impercievably fast. Black’s neck/back could be broken, if something went slightly wrong.

 Black grabs whites shirt in the center of his chest. White grabs black’s hand whith his left, and steps outside of black’s right foot, while knocking his elbow towards white’s right in with the right arm from underneath and continues  the motion to grab the his face, and turning the entire body at the hips, and folding down at the waist to the left, planting him on the ground, on his back, and probably the back of his head/shoulders first while wrenching the arm, so quickly, he cannot defend once he is locked and so that he cannot adjust himself in the air.

 Two examples of simple gong fu wrestling that cannot be used in any type of freefighting situation except a real fight.

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