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Water Dragon
12-13-2002, 08:10 PM
How do you practice you're form work?

I never train sets anymore. Over the past 2 years I've slowly become very averse to them. I train my forms exclusively in single posture or free combo now.

I don't do every form every day, but when I do them, I do them till I'm blasted. I do the forms for what ever tech I'm trying to develop. Currently I'm on sweep kick, so a lot of sweeps and back kicks right now. Eventually, I'll focus on something else.

When I do combos, I simply link together the single postures into the combo I'm working on and train that until I lose my mind some more. Stance work revolves around the forms which revolve around the actual technique which revolve upon the "sparring"

I've actually notice that I'm getting better quicker since switching to this approach. Oh yeah, I also am now approaching my forms as a footwork/cardio exercise instead of a form. I like this a lot as well.

Thoughts?

Royal Dragon
12-13-2002, 08:57 PM
It's a darn good way to do it. When I was going strong, I used to do the full form for a good 40 minutes. then, when I was too tired to do the whole thing, I did what you do.

Then again, sometimes I only did what you do, and someties I only did the full form.

Many times, I wuld just turn the form into a sequentially pracited stance set. Ie. Hold the first postur of the form form 2-3 minutes (Up to 5 at my peak or 300 second counts), then move to the next posture and hold the same amount of time. Sometimes I did each posture in turn, and went back and did it again only on the other side, and sometimes I did both sides of the posture THEN moved on to the next. I was especially big on doing this with the Shaolin form Wu Bu Chuan for some reason.


I'm a big believer in variety. It's been scientifically proven the body develops best throuh variety of motion.

It's also been scientifically porven that I cna't spell to save my life!!!:eek: :D

Anyway, when you hit th next flat spot, you may want to go back to drilling entire forms again fo a spell. You may be suprised to see your progress pick up more than you think.

You have the right idea though. Having been there, dissasembling your forms and turning them into various drills works really good. It's meant to be that way.

SevenStar
12-13-2002, 09:07 PM
I do single technique drills and small combos. even when I practice forms, I break them down to train them. I find that I can focus on them better that way, and get all the technical stuff down.

Wu bu quan is a training set used by modern wushu. it has the 5 basic stances and is a good form to break down for stance work. the horse set is another one that is good for this.

yenhoi
12-13-2002, 09:42 PM
I only have 2 forms. I train them both many times a day. Sometimes I do them backwards, sometimes start at move #16, change the order of the sections, change the speed, lots of little changes. Sometimes I do just a section at a time, and drill it, I have yet to drill smaller parts of the form out of section, seems to me that would just feel weird, but Ill try drilling like, the 2nd half of the 1st section + the 1st half of the 2nd section, and stuff like that.

Im learning the third wck form now, so I think once I have the whole thing, I can make my own forms sort-of, mixing the sections from each form, or make one long form, or a bunch of long forms, mixing the sections etc.

Water Dragon
12-13-2002, 11:44 PM
So Yen, do you solely train sets than? Or do you break out the single postues as well? I've seen Wing Chun done before, but I don't pretend to understand it.

neptunesfall
12-14-2002, 02:33 AM
i rarely practice my kung fu forms. when i do, i'll practice each one 3-5 times, starting out slow like tai chi and increase speed with each repitition. i mostly stick SC forms/drills and my techniques.

yenhoi
12-14-2002, 03:24 AM
I mainly just do the forms. The first form is entirely one posture, with arm and hand movements (although lots can be going on all over,) The second form has lots of turning, and a couple steps, and really only two postures, and the third looks to have alot of steping and turning (I only have a very small part of it.) Lots of other postures pop up from here on. The staff form alone has multiple postures, Im sure the dummy has more then 2, and knives probably a couple also, I dunno about the last 3 forms tho, not yet.

So no, I dont do alot of breaking out the single postures. Lots of other screwing around tho. The first form can be done entirely on one leg, and you can do lots of different things with the other leg - hang it bended (chambered), hang unbent, straight out (ouch), holding the knee up and letting the rest hang, twisted around the supporting leg (eagle posture yoga style.)

A really cool thing we do is lots of chain punching, its really an endurance thing, like stance training for your arms.

Royal Dragon
12-14-2002, 03:07 PM
Yeah, I really like Wu Bu Chuan. I do it with the Tail bone tucked and shoulders rounded more like a traditional set. It can be both modern Wushu, or martial depending on how you play it. I adapt ti to my needs often. becaue it's a modern set, I feel no guilt with changing it around as I see fit. I add posture that help my back, or change and substitue postures if I feel I need to work a different area.

I haven't done the horse set in years. To be honest, I can't remember it all that well. Sad aint it?? It was a simple a set too. Now I do a set from the Northern Tai Tzu called Kuang Yun Chuang. It is for training horse stance and structure and is 6 postures of horse stance altering from the Iron Chair, to a higher Horse with different hand positions.

I also like to work San Zhen, and 4 Corners from the Souther Tai Tzu. They are very good for basic fundementals, and structure development too.


It seems all my favorite forms and drills right now are all for developing basics, structure, mechanics or fundementals. I really don't do much else any more. I really should tape myself doing my Shaolin forms before I forget them all from not doing them.

SevenStar
12-14-2002, 03:47 PM
san zhen? Any relation to sanchin?

Royal Dragon
12-15-2002, 10:13 AM
The evolution goes from Tai Tzu's San Zhen---->to Ngo Chor's Sam Chien-------> to Karate's sanchin.

Before Tai Tzu had it, it was belived to be from the northern Shaolin Temple.

Our version is rather simple. It has 3 versions that are practiced back to back to back once you are good at doing them as seperate sections.

The Ngo Chor guys have advanced the practice quite a bit I'm told, and the form's evolution is said to be the most complete in thier lines. I think they have 11 sets of San Chien, we only have the 3. I think the Ngo Chor guys do teach a version of our set as thier basic form of it and then expand on it from there. A version of my first San Zhen is in the Ngo Chor book "Five Ancestor's Fist".

If you look at Ngo Chor's history, they claim Tai Tzu to be a fundemental core foundation of thier art, so it make sense that they would have expanded on the Southern Tai Tzu's base sets.

Also, if you read thier book, they claim th Karate styles got sanchin from them, and then did thier own thing with it.

What I have is suposed to be the Southern Sung dynasty version of San Zhen. I suspect it was incorperated into the art, rather than developed by it's founders.

jun_erh
12-15-2002, 10:40 AM
I'd like to try like in the new KFQ magazine with shot puts in each hand. I guess for like an internal style it might be counterproductive, but the forms I know are hung gar so a pretty good fit I guess. I tried it out a little in the sports store but it felt a little sort of melodramatic, a la late 70's kung fu training scene.

Oso
12-15-2002, 02:28 PM
Once a week, every set, 1-5 times depending on how well I feel
I performed it. I will do the first one at a moderate speed trying
to follow the combative flow as I see it. If I screw it up then the
next time(s) are slower until I get it right then the last time will
be fast again. If I'm just going for cardio then I do every form
3-5 times as fast and as low in the postures as I can w/o a lot
of attention to fine detail.

During the week I may do a form a couple of times or a couple of
forms at a time just to play with them.

I will also run different sequences out of the sets by themselves
to examine application or just because I like the movement.

hmmm, just remembered something I'm doing that relates to
this a bit.

I'm doing a summer camp for kids next year and am developing a
short set out of the 3 lung shou pai animal forms I have. The
camps are only 1/2 days for 5 days so I plan on teaching an
'animal' a day with different exercises disigned around the concepts of each of the 5 animals. I am picking 3 moves from
each set and linking them to each other and will teach 3 moves
a day and combine them each day for the full 'set' by the end of
the week. This is for 3rd, 4th and 5th graders and I didn't think
that I could succesfully teach any of the forms in a week. That
and with a 5 day camp the 5 animals just kind of fell into place.



Matt

SevenStar
12-15-2002, 03:56 PM
That sounds cool - how did you end up doing that?

Oso
12-15-2002, 04:10 PM
Seven

Doing what?

the camp or the combining of the forms?

Matt

yu shan
12-15-2002, 04:48 PM
Form work,

We train the original side (bung lu) as a single-side to the form. Get this down good, then we teach two-person hand drills out of the form, on to two-person kicking drills. Then we break the form up into mini-two-person exercises, get all this down, then your taught the two-person form. There is the original side (bung lu) and the other side , receiving side or (ling chuan). Alot goes into just one form. You will know your form inside and out...then on to fighting with the theory of the form.