Can Kung Fu REALLY be used in a fight?
It is hard to believe but true that 90% of people learning kungfu today, including in China, do not know how to use their kungfu skills and techniques in combat. Most revert to karate, taekwondo or kickboxing techniques, and many fight like children. If you have read my webpages, you would find this concern is a major theme I have often stressed, but it is a delicate issue and I do not want to offend many kungfu instructors.
The main problem is that the methodology linking set practice and free sparring is generally lost. Going straight from set practice to free sparring, which 90% of kungfu practitioners do, will result in cases similar to yours. It is not feasible to explain the methodology in a short e-mail, and it is difficult to learn it without a master's personal tuition. Nevertheless I shall try my best to answer your questions. You may also have some useful information on kungfu combat if you refer to my webpage http://www.geocities.com/~wahnam/.
I am extremely lucky to have been trained in the traditional Shaolin way, whereby we have to go through numerous stages from set practice to free sparring so that eventually we can spar in typical kungfu way. I hope to share this methodology with deserving students, and may plan an intensive course in Malaysia, but those who wish to participate need to be instructors or have practised kungfu for at least three years.
Timing is a crucial factor in combat. Many people think that to win in a fight all you need is techniques. In fact timing is more important than techniques. There is a kungfu saying as follows: bai fa bu ru yi kuai, which means it is better to be fast than to learn hundreds of techniques. If you are fast enough to strike an opponent, it does not matter what technique you use. On the other hand, even if you know a lot of techniques, they will be quite useless if you are too slow to use them. But timing is more than just speed. Sometimes if you are too fast, it can be detrimental.
Timing does come with practice, but you must practise methodically. If you practise haphazardly, as many students do, you will still end up bouncing about trying to avoid kicks and punches, although with experience and improved speed you may succeed in the avoiding. But soon you would be out of breath and eventually you would still lose the combat, but even if you win you would be reverting to karate-style punches and kicks, forgetting about all the kungfu you have learnt.
Actually you are lucky to realise this pathetic situation after only a year; many others, including "masters", keep on this pathetic situation for life, and if they do not have opportunities to test out their sparring effectiveness, or ineffectiveness, they may imagine they are doing wonderful kungfu. Those who have some inkling of their combat ineffectiveness would, in an attempt to cover their inadequacy, turn aggressive whenever sparring is suggested, or mystify kungfu as such a deadly art that sparring practice even among classmates is forbidden.
Genuine kungfu exponents are calm and gentle, as they do not have to prove to others and, more importantly, themselves that they can fight, because they know they can. Sparring using kungfu patterns must be learnt methodically and systematically; otherwise students will revert to the more simple karate-style punches and kicks, or to the most natural way of fighting as exhibited by children. Kungfu fighting is not natural fighting; it has to be learnt and acquired, and to be practised and practised methodically and systematically until it has become second nature.
There are many steps between set training and free sparring. Thus, if an instructor or even a "master" asks you to practise sparring just after the set training stage, you can reasonably suspect that he does not know the essential intermediate steps. Set training is to familiarise you with the form and practice of kungfu techniques; free sparring is to put these techniques, as well as appropriate tactics and strategies and other combative factors like force, timing, spacing, judgement and decision--making into action against an opponent or opponents.
Many useful tactics and strategies have been generalised into kungfu principles like "using minimum force against maximum strength" and "avoiding his strength and attacking his weakness". Methodologies like specific techniques, combat sequences and sparring sets are employed to train combative factors to prepare for free sparring. As there are more things to learn and practise in kungfu than in other martial arts, it is logical that it takes more time. A kickboxer can fight reasonably well after training for six months, a karate or taekwondo exponent in three years, but a kungfu practitioner would need more time. This does not mean that you can't fight until after practising kungfu for more than ten years -- as some "masters" buying time to cover their inadequacy may suggest. In fact if you have practised genuine kungfu -- any style of kungfu including taijiquan -- for a year or two, you should be able to provide some decent defence against any assailant irrespective of what martial arts the assailant may use; otherwise you should examine whether your art is genuine kungfu.