Formosa Neijia

Some threads over at EF are about videos of posters that show them sparring. Often, the posters ask other people to comment on their performance. Whenever I read those questions, I often wonder where the teacher is and why they aren’t answering students’ questions.

Sparring, in general, is a touchy subject and is likely to draw some pretty sharp comments from people. Still, I think it’s absolutely essential that we bring this subject up.

The main thing that I want to say about sparring is that if your teacher isn’t sparring with you fairly regularly when you’re deemed ready for it, then the chances of you ever figuring out how to fight with your style is effectively zero.

Sparring isn’t just something that can be brushed aside for people claiming to study MA as fighting arts. If fighting is the focus of the class, then regular sparring with other students AND with your teacher is an absolute must. If hard, regular sparring isn’t taking place, then the truth needs to be told that fighting really isn’t the emphasis of the school, no matter what rhetoric is being spouted or what the teacher’s background is.

Sometimes people make comments that you can do that outside of class on your own, or that learning to fight with the material is your responsibility. Fair enough. But if that’s the case, then fighting isn’t really the focus OF THE CLASS is it? People can’t have it both ways.

Back when I studied with him, my choy lay fut (CLF) teacher made it clear to me on day one that his art was about fighting. After I agreed that I understood that, ten seconds later we were doing some hard sparring. He said that he wanted to see what I had so he could see where he needed to take me. He knew I had MA experience and he was willing to put what he had on the line to test both himself and me. I had never experienced that before. It both awed and spoiled me. I will never forget him doing that and I will always respect him. Unfortunately, practicing with him spoiled me since no one else has ever been willing to teach the way he did.

He taught me forms, stretching, exercises, drill, etc. But hard sparring took priority over everything else. I would learn a form, then learn how to break down the moves in the form. Then I was expected to drill those moves extensively and finally, I was expected to perform them under pressure through sparring with him. No pads of any kind were allowed. The rule was hard contact to the body, medium to the head. (Now you know why I’m not too bright!)

We sparred almost every class and he basically used fighting to teach me CLF. It was the main way that he communicated to me. I was expected to watch how he performed the moves as he hit me (that happened A LOT) and I was then expected to mimic his movement, rhythm, etc. He would feed me stuff so that I could practice my blocks and occasionally leave me holes that I was expected to attack. If I didn’t attack or didn’t do so with sufficient power, I could expect a pretty nasty punishment.

He was an expert in the five animals of CLF and the drunken form. He shocked me by being able to not only use the moves in the forms, but he could visibly switch from one animal or style to another and fight in a completely different way. I learned to greatly fear his tiger for its power. I had more than a few claw rakes across my chest. I also greatly feared his snake style because I found it way too fast for me to block. I also had lots of deep red bruises from his snake strikes.

He pushed me VERY hard sometimes. We fought for over an hour straight sometimes and I could barely keep my hands up, let alone block anything. When I complained, he said that he was serious about me doing the conditioning exercises on my own time. If I had done more of them, he said, my conditioning would have been better.

On Saturday mornings, he would get all of his students together (we all trained privately and separately with him) and would invite anyone else who wanted to come to a long sparring session. We would get paired off and spar each other until he thought we needed a break. This experience brought me into contact (pun intended!) with many different styles and how they reacted in combat. I got to fight judo guys, taiji guys, lots of different karate styles, praying mantis, long fist, bagua, etc. Busted lips and heavily bruised forearms were the norm after this, but it was totally worth it for the experience.

The result of all this sparring with him was that I gained an excellent impression of EXACTLY how CLF was supposed to move in combat. There were no illusions of what worked or what didn’t since we were expected to make it work on a daily basis. Nor were there any questions of having to put it together ourselves and wondering if we were getting it right or not.

After all, if I was expected to put all this together myself, then what would I have needed a teacher for?

Do teachers really expect their students to reinvent the wheel from scratch when they claim to teach fighting?

I’m not sure myself if fighting will be the focus of any future class that I teach. I’m getting old and the health aspect is becoming more interesting and important to me.

But if people are really interested in learning to fight, then hard sparring with your teacher or with students that he has sparred with extensively is absolutely crucial. You simply will have no idea how it’s done, otherwise.

Unfortunately, teachers who are willing to put in the time and effort to bring students individually to this level are few and far between.

But if you can find a teacher willing to do this, you will never forget it. I know I won’t.