Modern Wushu for modern times

First and foremost, before criticizing negatively the art of wushu,  one must study its history way back during China's dynasties up to why modern wushu was made.

Modern wushu received lots of negative criticism from people who viewed it as just a flashy gymnastic performances.  Well, modern wushu was created primarily as sports.   Its movements differ from most traditional wushu styles because just as I've said, it is for sports, for competitions.  Its movement and timing satisfies the criteria needed to get a score from the judges.  If you don't want to join the competitions and you just want to use wushu for self defense, then go for Traditional wushu.

In old China dynasties, people have to defend themselves during war (Imperial guards, civil war, etc), that's why most chinese learn tradtional wushu as a necessity for their everyday lives.  Nowadays, in our modern times, not all people have to defend themselves in an everyday basis.  It's like a pager turned into a mobile phone.  Modern people want everything fast and quick results, not all of them have the dedication needed for traditional wushu.  Traditional wushu, to make it perfect, needs a lot of time of practicing.  But, not all people have that amount of time.  That's where modern wushu fit in.

I beg to disagree to people saying it can't be use in a fight or as self defense. Forms, whether it's a traditional or modern, has nothing to do with your skill in fighting.  It's in the way you power train.  Plus, you should know how to apply every single part of your form.  For example, a simple leg sweep movement, which both modern and traditional forms have, even though you know how to do it, if you didn't train your leg to be strong, it will be useless in a fight.

We, in our organization, we learn both modern and traditional wushu.  We combine modern wushu forms with traditional training.  Modern wushu forms for competitions since we also wanted our students to experience joining in National Wushu Championships. Though modern wushu form may look choreographed and flashy; but since we power train them in a traditional way and we taught them the application, their punches and kicks in a fight will still be deadly.