http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XG366AHzI2U shaolin dont usualy enter contact sports or exibition matches Vs other styles. it is rare to see footage of it. here is a little trivia, who can name the form the monk is using to defend and counter with?, peace.
it is a type of snake form, but also something else is woven into the style, im not sure what it is, but yeah its a snake style defence, but the way i have been taught snake is different to him. the stance looks like a snake form position, but his movement is very different when he is on the counter. his skill is good though, dont forget shoalin train in iron palm and sand palm methods, so each time he blocks the high hicks with his palms, it will hurt the other guy. peace.
The high kick he blocked with both knees and both palms was particularly well done. That one sure looked like it woulda hurt the kicker.
I dont see the point of training in martial art if your going to spend so much time retreating retreating retreating. In Aikido there is no retreating. The defender is trained to move into an attack and get control of it.
^^^I think Chi said this was a sparring match. If that's the case, they weren't trying to take each other's heads off The Shaolin guy seemed to be using a lot of what we in our Taekwondo class used to call "feather blocking". It's basically a really quick easy slap that directs the blow a different direction. A person could throw a super hard punch, but a simple feather block (which requires little effort) could be used to make the person punch across their body (IE -- right arm towards the left side of the body) thus making it take longer for them to turn around to a defensive position, and opens them up for attack. Taekowndo is a bad assed martial art though. There's a lot of power behind those blows assuming you're quick enough, accurate enough, and have the balls to commit to the attack. Most of the time I see taekwondo fighters doing a lot of half assed offensive moves which are nothing but weak flailing in the general direction of the target. It's as if they don't expect the blow to connect, so they hold back.
I took Taekwondo as a kid, it was a lot of fun for me and a great way to get exercise and jump up and do high flying kicks. The only people that were ever scared of me was my family(of me hurting myself). In all the real fights I've ever been in, I got one kick off and then it either turned into a grapple or a few punches exchanged, followed by a grapple, or the other guy caught my leg and did bad things to me. One time a guy caught my leg, I turned it into a grapple and somehow wound up on the ground with both my legs wrapped around his torso, completely pinning his right arm. I pinned the left arm and had free reign with my left. Well my point is, the way of hands and feet is a great sport. I guess if you ambush someone with a charging kick you could really badly hurt them, but would just get charged, so what's the point?
I am used to Judo, did it for some years. Just take the opponent and slam him/her/it on the ground, and than secure.
