Stanley Henning bibliography

[Bob]

Nice find, very nice find, Tom. I like his recommendations about shuai jiao---if baji people took their shuai jiao component more seriously, [xiao baji is also call shuai jiao xiao baji], the ghosts and demons would indeed flee if not commit suicide outright. LOL

So, where do the Chinese martial arts go from here to survive in modern China and
find a niche in global culture, two interrelated aspects in modern society? As a
minimum, the direction taken must satisfy the desire of youth, both inside and outside
China, to compete and be recognized. Within China, it must also appeal to the
widest portion of the martial arts community, which means that practitioners of all
styles must be able to compete. To insure this happens it will be necessary to design
a training program that fully applies traditional Chinese martial arts theory and
skills (kicks, punches, siezing/grappling, throwing), and to determine rules and protective
gear suited for competition.

I envision an amateur level program that is similar to Mixed Martial Arts. All participants
would be required to have a standardized, basic foundation in Chinese
wrestling (Shuaijiao). Shuaijiao training would provide necessary freestyle full contact
experience in use of seizing/grappling, throwing, and falling techniques. With
this foundation certified, individuals would be eligible to compete regardless of any
other martial arts styles they practiced, which would supplement Shuaijiao skills
and add kicks and punches. To facilitate freedom of movement, minimum protective
gear would be worn, such as MMA style, not regular style, boxing gloves. This
would be an advanced form of Sanda, similar to MMA.

Only after developing a wide enough international following will Chinese martial
arts stand a chance to become an accepted Olympic sport. This will require several
years, but stands a good chance if the Chinese martial arts community displays a
unified effort to ensure its success. Optimistically speaking, even though Chinese
martial arts were not accepted as an official sport with Chinese characteristics for
the 2008 Olympics, the door is still open to enter Chinese martial arts in the future.
In fact, Chinese martial arts have an opportunity to regain their place as the main
source for East Asian barehanded martial sports by developing a program such as
that described above, which goes beyond both Judo and Taekwondo, and returns
to full traditional content, by combining all four basic techniques of kicking, punching,
throwing and seizing

[Andy_S]

So...how is this different from Sanda?

This started out as a fighting format wearing boxing gloves, and different people competed. What they found was that modern kickboxing techniques won over CMA striking technqiues, but that SC is perfectly serviceable for standing grappling. So we now have, not a modern FORMAT for contact fighting, but a whole new modern CMA that has sprung from that format: A blend of kickboxing training methods and technqiues; from CMA, we have the side kick and SC grappling.

I can't see how the above is an advance on the this, bar, perhaps, the use of MMA type gloves. And as we have seen with MMA...there is little use of 'traditional' MA striking techniques; boxing is trumps.

And this is not a particularly modern realization. Even in the Nanjing Kuoshou Insittute, home of the best of the best of old school masters, boxing was part if the curriculum.