So I just listened to the whole podcast. I have been studying xingyi for about 20 years, not as my primary martial art but I have devoured everything I can on the subject. I also train boxing and kickboxing with a bit of wrestling, and I do have a background in karate from back in my childhood. I love xingyi, however I have had to come to a conclusion: xingyi does not teach a person how to fight empty hand. Every instance I can find of a xingyi trained practitioner engaging in either competition fighting or realistic sparring, they look basically like relatively untrained kickboxers. That is, their fighting method looks like basic kickboxing (but not as good as a basic kickboxer who trains kickboxing at a kickboxing gym). You and your guest mentioned in the podcast that there are people who actually can fight with xingyi, and it looks like xingyi, because they are using the actual techniques and movements taught in xingyi, rather than just trying to tack some xingyi ideas onto kickboxing or some other martial art (or vice versa). But I tend to not believe it, because surely they would have appeared somewhere? It seems to me that xingyi requires a massive reinterpretation and translation of the techniques and movements learned, in order to apply them in actual sparring or fighting. Whereas kickboxing leads to the same end result but far faster and more efficiently. Nobody does piquan in a fight the way they practice piquan in the form. But a boxer does a jab in a fight the same way they practice the jab from day one in the gym. Also, some of the techniques taught in xingyi (as well as most other Chinese martial arts) seem to be wholly ineffective. Slapping the opponent's forehead, or slapping with the back of the hand on the opponent's face, for example, simply isn't going to do anything productive to a determined opponent. And the majority of xingyi "applications" I have seen appear to focus mostly on pushing the opponent away. But nobody bounces away 10 feet just because you do a double tiger palm strike to the chest or abdomen, or because you do an upward snake palm strike to the opponent's armpit. These are simply not realistic fighting movements or techniques. How to explain these things? Is the "real xingyi" just going to remain invisible and unseen by everyone, with unnamed "masters who can really do it" staying in the clouds of unverifiable claims? Or should we come to the hard conclusion that there are indeed systems of "martial arts" that simply don't work?
So I just listened to the whole podcast. I have been studying xingyi for about 20 years, not as my primary martial art but I have devoured everything I can on the subject. I also train boxing and kickboxing with a bit of wrestling, and I do have a background in karate from back in my childhood. I love xingyi, however I have had to come to a conclusion: xingyi does not teach a person how to fight empty hand. Every instance I can find of a xingyi trained practitioner engaging in either competition fighting or realistic sparring, they look basically like relatively untrained kickboxers. That is, their fighting method looks like basic kickboxing (but not as good as a basic kickboxer who trains kickboxing at a kickboxing gym). You and your guest mentioned in the podcast that there are people who actually can fight with xingyi, and it looks like xingyi, because they are using the actual techniques and movements taught in xingyi, rather than just trying to tack some xingyi ideas onto kickboxing or some other martial art (or vice versa). But I tend to not believe it, because surely they would have appeared somewhere? It seems to me that xingyi requires a massive reinterpretation and translation of the techniques and movements learned, in order to apply them in actual sparring or fighting. Whereas kickboxing leads to the same end result but far faster and more efficiently. Nobody does piquan in a fight the way they practice piquan in the form. But a boxer does a jab in a fight the same way they practice the jab from day one in the gym. Also, some of the techniques taught in xingyi (as well as most other Chinese martial arts) seem to be wholly ineffective. Slapping the opponent's forehead, or slapping with the back of the hand on the opponent's face, for example, simply isn't going to do anything productive to a determined opponent. And the majority of xingyi "applications" I have seen appear to focus mostly on pushing the opponent away. But nobody bounces away 10 feet just because you do a double tiger palm strike to the chest or abdomen, or because you do an upward snake palm strike to the opponent's armpit. These are simply not realistic fighting movements or techniques. How to explain these things? Is the "real xingyi" just going to remain invisible and unseen by everyone, with unnamed "masters who can really do it" staying in the clouds of unverifiable claims? Or should we come to the hard conclusion that there are indeed systems of "martial arts" that simply don't work?