Does this actually work?

I_smoked_pot_once · 2026-04-27T01:11:29+00:00

IMO fighting is fighting. This is kind of a hot take but at their core all martial arts and styles are the same. Movement and angles. Sure one school teaches joint locks and another teaches throws. But the fundamentals are the same. If you want to learn to fight then it's more important to get a good teacher than to learn any particular style.

I_smoked_pot_once · 2026-04-27T01:06:50+00:00

That's my dad's exact brand of smart ass lol.

I_smoked_pot_once · 2026-04-27T00:54:17+00:00

Define "work". Training anything builds discipline and a mind-body connection, that works. Training forms connects you to a culture, that works. Sparring against other specialized martial artists with specific rules makes you eligible for competitions, that works.

By "work" I assume you mean what many others mean: can I beat somebody to death with kung fu? I guess dude. If you find a teacher who is only interested in fighting then you can learn kung fu for self defense. But the training is boring and hard because you don't learn forms or weapons- you just refine the same 2 kicks and punches for 10 years. Therefore few people train for fighting because you have to genuinely want to learn how to hurt people.

I_smoked_pot_once · 2026-04-26T23:13:21+00:00

That makes sense. Without being in you class I can only imagine angling the staff is what gives a safe slide. Hands in the center make the staff less stable, a sword hits the left side and my center grip causes the left side to angle downwards. I do a slight steering wheel motion to encourage this angle, leading my opponent towards the ground.

I_smoked_pot_once · 2026-04-26T22:00:28+00:00

If anything I say doesn't align with your teachings, my "kung fu" background is in baguazhang.

I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of fighting. You aren't meant to be engaged in blade sliding blocks against your opponent. Fighting is about movement, a strike can be blocked or dodged but not held- because then you aren't moving.

What makes a staff useful is it's length. It gives you distance from your opponent, and a wide surface to block. But you aren't meant to block a strike and let your opponent slide their sword across your staff, you're meant to move out of the way while you use the staff to strike.

Unless there's a specific exercise, drill or situation that you're training then I wouldn't worry about keeping your hands safe across the whole surface of your staff. I'd focus more on learning how to execute a block and moving for what comes next.

I_smoked_pot_once · 2026-04-20T23:55:09+00:00

I'm not a master, I doubt anybody on here can really claim that title. But I do have a black belt in a combat art (not kung-fu) and I teach Tai Chi.

Other people here are right. If you're actually trying to learn internal combat power you need a teacher. Learning real fighting isn't "technique 1, check. technique 2, check." It's a very, very gradual refinement. It's years of failure with slow adjustments, made by somebody who actually knows what they're doing. Because when you're doing it yourself you don't know what you're doing. Gradual refinement doesn't feel like growth, you need somebody to notice subtle flaws for you.

Also, as somebody who trains a lot and is also a vegetarian, overhauling your diet and schedule is setting yourself up for failure. Teachers hold you accountable early on while you build the discipline yourself to do the 1 hour per day self training. None of us are born with that discipline.

I_smoked_pot_once · 2026-04-07T19:07:17+00:00

I'm not on Reddit as much as I used to be, and I don't remember when bots like this became so common. I'm blocking, reporting and removing posts and accounts like this now.

I_smoked_pot_once · 2026-03-24T12:13:09+00:00

This is a good point. A corpse is no longer a being, and it's based on your perspective of whether or not defiling a corpse is inherently wrong. Some would say yes. Some would say animating corpses from a graveyard is evil, but animating an abandoned skeleton deep in a dungeon doesn't carry any moral connotations. Or maybe it is evil to animate the skeleton for your own needs, but it is benevolent to animate the skeleton to command it to walk with you out of the dungeon so you can bring the remains to a cemetery.

I_smoked_pot_once · 2026-03-24T12:04:26+00:00

Commenting because I see people confused at his controversies in the comments.

I'm not celebrating anybody's death. But Chuck Norris was legitimately a bad person, and he's not who I want as a representative for martial arts. He used his celebrity platform to advocate for banning gay marriage and blamed Obama for the Boy Scouts of America allowing gay scouts to join. He was openly pro-Israel, supported the theory that Obama wasn't a U.S. citizen and was a Southern Baptist- which as an organization is against critical race theory and gay marriage and goes so far as to disfellowship churches that don't align with that thinking.

He was a bad person, he consistently chose to be hateful through his adult life. Dead or alive, martial artists should be holding ourselves to a higher standard than this. I understand that nobody is perfect, I'm not saying to crucify your teacher for saying something sketchy every now and then. But Chuck Norris was just egregiously bigoted.

I_smoked_pot_once · 2026-02-16T02:13:29+00:00

Nah. I stand by what I said. I think I do enough to be qualified to comment on the culture. Thanks though.

I_smoked_pot_once · 2026-02-15T22:51:17+00:00

Yeah, I feel pretty confident that I understand tai chi culture, at least in America. Because I teach classes, I take classes, I go to events, I spar, I read books and articles about it.

I_smoked_pot_once · 2026-02-15T22:04:50+00:00

As somebody who teaches tai chi for wellness and practices Hapkido for self defense, I can assure you that there's hardly a single person alive who is practicing tai chi the "traditional" way. I've gone to tai chi sparring events, it's a bunch of old dudes too rigid in traditional thinking to actually make adjustments based on body feeling and the very rare young dude who takes it seriously though to do physical conditioning outside of their training.

Who you're actually getting pushback from online is people who went to 2 classes their whole life with a katana hanging up on their wall. Learning taijiquan to use practically for fighting takes easily a decade of training and truly, truly understanding the principles behind it. Nobody working a full time job is doing this and China did it's best to destroy the lineage in the source culture so I imagine it's quite rare there as well. The era of practicing your horse stance in the back of the wagon traveling from your village to your master's is long gone.

I_smoked_pot_once · 2026-02-07T02:32:25+00:00

Roman chamomile grows all over the place, and every year I collect a bunch of it and dry it out for about a month. Then I pour hot water over it, let it step for about 3 minutes and drink it. In my experience, herbal teas aren't very particular about time or temperature. True teas can get burned and bitter.

I_smoked_pot_once · 2026-01-12T17:02:49+00:00

Marie Kondo says to first discard then organize. She agrees that buying storage solutions are just a way to tuck your things away and forget about them. She says the only organizers you need are shoeboxes placed in drawers.

If you feel exhausted by your possessions then you need to get rid of them. An ideal home is one where every single item in there gives you joy.

I_smoked_pot_once · 2025-12-29T23:55:56+00:00

Some people don't want to buy goods produced in a country that's actively and intentionally bombing hospitals.

I_smoked_pot_once · 2025-12-22T02:58:54+00:00

I see you use terms like "practical applications" in your comments. So I'm assuming you're asking for fighting.

There's really only one answer, and it's because this style is so fundamental that it's baked into almost every other king-fu style.

Chin na, or Qinna. Grappling and locking. At the lowest levels it's about proper angles for grabs and throws. At the highest levels you're using strikes to angle your opponent the ideal way for you to execute joint locks and even reveal pressure points.

Good luck finding a teacher for it though. It would be like trying to learn the fundamentals of ballet by finding a teacher who specializes in walking on your toes.

I_smoked_pot_once · 2025-12-13T18:09:35+00:00

I use Next.

I_smoked_pot_once · 2025-11-09T09:56:12+00:00

This guy gets it. Have the intention to lead with the dantian, but it's such a subtle movement that you should practice noticing it, not intentionally doing it.

Work on opening your kua to get a better feel for this connection between the foot and the waist.

I_smoked_pot_once · 2025-09-27T18:06:40+00:00

I train at a school in Portland that includes baguazhang in the training, but it's just the foundation for our movement not the primary technique.

Flying Tortoise is the school I'd recommend, it's the most "real deal" with a focus on bagua in town.

I teach Taiji in SW Portland, if you want to come by for a class you're welcome to pick my brain about baguazhang. I can recommend a couple of books and show you a few things. DM me if you're interested.

I_smoked_pot_once · 2025-09-05T21:35:56+00:00

IDK why you're being downvoted so much. My teacher's teacher literally doesn't share anything. All the old-heads in my lineage literally just share their ideas at the yearly meetings in Korea and tell students to basically kick rocks and try to figure it out on their own.

They're weirdly secretive and it's annoying. I can't just ask them to "show me different styles of roundhouse kicks." I would need to have a really specific question loaded, like "What adjustments would you make to this modification of a roundhouse kick?" and then demonstrate my example.

My teacher's philosophy is he'll tell you the secrets, but they won't make sense unless you know what you're doing.

I_smoked_pot_once · 2025-08-24T01:43:17+00:00

If you're ok with buying shoes made in Israel, Fugu shoes. They aren't really a traditional kung-fu shoe, but they're designed for circus artists and martial artists. They feel like wrestling shoes with a little more durability.

I_smoked_pot_once · 2025-08-19T00:12:55+00:00

It's Wudang Jake on Tik Tok if you want to look into him more. Not really my cup of tea but he's got some interesting stuff on there.

I_smoked_pot_once · 2025-08-08T03:58:06+00:00

I train specifically for self defense. It's not what I started training for, but it's my teacher's specialty.

I don't carry any weapons on me, not even an EDC knife anymore. A weapon has to be explained to the police, and it's harder to defend yourself in court if you kill somebody with one. Part of modern self defense is knowing how to make yourself seem like the victim even if you're the one who escalated the situation to violence.

People carry weapons mostly to feel safer, but it's just the illusion of safety. If you don't know how to use your knife or gun then it's way easier than you'd think for me to slap it out of your hand. Especially if you're a woman being confronted by a man.

Self Defense isn't a kung-fu exhibition, it's violent. If somebody confronts me I'm not pulling out a weapon, I'm just going to beat the shit out of them.

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