Best Style?

[Shah]

I have been interested in KF for quite a time but only started training CLF half a year ago. I was wondering what is the best style to study? I have heard great praises for Southern-Chinese praying mantis but it's grappling and weak leg work (especially in the northern) are a turn-away. I have always felt an affinity towards the snake style but the meticulousness seems overbearing. Monkey style seems great and exciting and very on-the-fly, but is it just good for show?

Thanks in advance :p

[Crimson Phoenix]

don't try to find the "best style" in your area, aim to find the best teacher...

[GreyMystik]

are you unhappy with your clf training?

[Sho]

It's more about the training attitude than the style. If you train hard, you gradually become very proficient. Every style and system has its own pros and cons, therefore it's deceptive to believe in a superior martial art. The most important thing is to feel confident about your school and instructors so that you feel satisfied and content about your choice, as some schools might not fulfill your needs. For example, it's quite unlikely that a person who wants a ring fighting career, joins a contemporary wushu academy and starts practicing taolu (forms) - a better solution would be to attend classes that offer sparring (am I right or am I right?).

In short terms: Choy Lay Fut rocks!

:D

[Shah]

Sho, you are right, as always:D ... but I was just intersted at peoples opinions on what they think is the best style and how do they base they're opinions

[Firebird]

i agree with crimson phoenix.
It isn't the question which style i would like to study but more which styles are possible to study.
And if you have the choice between some styles, choose the one with the best teacher.
Don't care about nice, acrobatic movements.
Look at how the sifu moves ( if he is rooted to the ground).
There are hundreds of styles because every human is different. Different physical condition, sights , caracters ,... .
And You have to choose which style suited best for you. Maybe You study another martial art than Kung Fu .

[Fu-Pow]

Choy Lay Fut IS the best style!!!!

Oh..and Chen Taiji is ok too.

Everything else sucks and is fake chop suey crap.

[Sho]

Good cook = good food
Good teacher = good students

And of course I'll have to agree with Fu-Pow. ;)

[firepalm]

CLF definitely a very good style but it suffers from the same problem as South Mantis, too many of it's practitioners spend most of their time b!tching about lineage & that sh!t.

As someone posted look for a good teacher, if I can add, that can deliver the goods. Too many so called 'traditional' teachers only give partial 'Kung Fu'. I know of several CLF teachers (and other styles) that spend most of their training doing nothing but forms. In which case how are they any different then someone teaching contemporary wushu, the only difference is the content.

But then it also depends on the student are they willing to commit whole heartedly to their training. In this day & age of many distractions it is my opinion that there are even fewer good students out there then there are good teachers.

Just my two cents.
:cool:

[Sho]

I'm sure they're all decent people IRL even when it comes to the history of CLF. They just want to share their own opinions with other people. That's one of the (dis)advantages of the internet - ability to exchange thoughts anonymously. At least it's the minority of all CLF practitioners that argue about its history on public forums, or is it not? Most of the (average) CLF practitioners haven't even heard of the name Ching Cho Wor Seung, so I hope you don't get the impression that all CLF practitioners are a bunch of angry hippies ranting about whatever and not concentrating on their training. I'm not pointing my finger at you, firepalm, I'm just saying this to everyone who might have fallacious impressions about the CLF family.

Peace.

[Fu-Pow]

Ahhhh....return of the GGM.

[extrajoseph]

Originally posted by firepalm
CLF definitely a very good style but it suffers from the same problem as South Mantis, too many of it's practitioners spend most of their time b!tching about lineage & that sh!t.

Firepalm,

I must take some blame for the “b!tching about lineage & that sh!t” in CLF. Since Frank McCarthy’s outburst nearly 2 years ago, I was curious to find out the historical truth and I used this forum as part of my research and this gave rise to a lot of heated discussions, some were quite personal.

However, slowly over time, we found out who were behind the scene promoting GGM and why. As Sho mentioned, it is only a very small number of people involved, but because we were very vocal on this forum, it seems like there is a big fight going on in CLF.

On the whole, the CLF fraternity is quite united. As we can see, during the whole debates over nearly 2 years, none of the senior teachers currently teaching in the west, other than Sifu Dave Lacey, joined in the dog fight either here or elsewhere, and behind the scene, both in China and in the west, there are moves to heal the wounds on all sides.

Like any big groups, there will always be politics in CLF, but as far as I know the lineage controversy is quite tame compared to others. Everyone is keen to promote CLF worldwide because it is such a good CMA system and we don’t want to see it fall apart just because of some branch politics.

We need to see things in perspective - a lake without ripples is a dead lake, but we are very much alive and going strong, so it is only proper that there are some stirring in the troops as we keep on trekking on....;)

[firepalm]

hahaha.... hey Fu Pow how's you're kip up coming along?

[extrajoseph]

Originally posted by firepalm
Too many so called 'traditional' teachers only give partial 'Kung Fu'. I know of several CLF teachers (and other styles) that spend most of their training doing nothing but forms. In which case how are they any different then someone teaching contemporary wushu, the only difference is the content.

Firepalm,

I have to disagree with you here but please don’t take it personally.

Even though the CLF curriculum has many forms, we don’t just do forms all the time. Most schools I have been to have the following minimum contents in their teaching schedule:

1) Warm up.
2) Basics.
3) San Sou.
4) Forms (fists and weapons).
5) San Da (fighting)

Some schools have wooden dummies and Qigong as well.

Over time, the more senior students gravitated towards where their interests lied. Some are into forms, some into fighting, some into Qigong and healing and some into a mixture of one or two or three mentioned, that goes with teachers as well.

You may have only witnessed teachers who favoured teaching forms, but take it from me, there are many others seriously into fighting as well. For all we know, they may have separate San Da classes not open to the public. IMO, it is not a good idea to generalize about any TCMA school, in particular CLF.

[firepalm]

X Joe, didn't see your last two posts. Don't get me wrong, I do believe CLF is a good style (did myself years back) & am not generalizing regarding a CMA. I guess my post was more in response to Fu Pows statement,
"Everything else sucks and is fake chop suey crap."

It is however true that some CLF teachers & others style's teachers that I have witnessed spend the majority of their time on forms. This doesn't mean all do, I stated 'several' not all.

Finally while I may not always agree with all of your posts in terms of content I do appreciate your passion for your art. :cool:

[extrajoseph]

Originally posted by firepalm
I guess my post was more in response to Fu Pows statement,
"Everything else sucks and is fake chop suey crap."

Fu-Pow lives too close to the Canadian border, unlike his follow country men, he cracks jokes sometimes. :D

[Sho]

About forms in our CLF classes (which we seldom practice). Our training curriculum mainly consists of these elements:

- Warming Up (every class)
- Basics (2 days a week)
- Two-Person Drills (4 days a week)
- San Shou Combinations (4 days a week)
- Sparring (once every week for 2 hours)

And.. we dedicate only about 20 minutes (of a single class) to forms training which is only on Saturdays.

So basically, our classes aren't forms-oriented. If we want to practice forms, we do them on our own, at home for example.

[Ravenshaw]

I honestly think that style is a personal thing. If I fight two Hung Gar stylists, for example, they will be similar but not the same. One's ability has so much more to do with how/how hard they train than the style.

For example, a tall person might capitalize on his reach by studying Northern Shaolin just as a stocky person might prefer a closer-ranged Southern style such as Hung Gar. If they train hard, they will be good regardless of style. It also has a lot to do with personality and, of course, the quality of guidance in the school.

In the context of the Chinese martial arts, there are better fighters and better schools, but not better styles.

But that's just my opinion.

[Shah]

A lot of the stuff that was mentioned here goes over my head (GGM, Qigong, San Shou) and I am unfamiliar with a lot of the styles you mentioned (Hung Gar, I heard of Shaolin but don't know what it's about) But I think CLF is a very good style since it maximzes speed and power due to it's very flowing motion, also it isn't very energy consuming and doesn't have irrational movements. The only thing that I lament is that it doesn't have usage of pressure points (or does it?) :D

Also CLF is good because it isn't just waving your hands in the air but has real fighting in it. Isn't that what MA is all about.

[Sho]

Originally posted by Shah
The only thing that I lament is that it doesn't have usage of pressure points (or does it?) :DIt does. ;)

[Shah]

sweet

[Fu-Pow]

CLF uses pressure points. In fact its not nearly as effective if you don't use them.

In addition there are other weak points in the human anatomy that can be capitalized on.

There's a good book that outlines a lot of these points...

It called "Anatomy for Healing and the Martial arts."

Very cool book and intro to pressure points and anatomy.

[extrajoseph]

In advanced level CLF, there is a Copper Man Dummy (Tung Yan Jong) where you concentrate on striking the acupressure points.

[BearBear]

i've heard some styles have copper man dummy and i heard before that choy lay fat has it too..

is this the mansized dummy? and i heard that they put wax or sumfing? over it and fill it with water and when u hit the point spot on where the hole is water come out... don't know ifthat is true or not but i recall reading that...

can u tell us more about the CLF copper man dummy .. design, pics.. uses.. does it have a set form(s) .. etc.. is it common? or is it like one of these things that exist but in modern times few schools do?

i think i read many years ago a doc fai wong article on copperman dummy and clf fan or double fan form...

thanks

BB

[Shah]

So what is Qigong? I heard that Jackie Chan doesn't believe in it? So is it some sort of philosophy?

[Sho]

Qigong is the so-called hippie side of kung fu. It basically consists of meditation, relaxation and breathing exercises. Qigong practitioners aim to feel qi sensations in their body so that they can use it for various purposes, such as healing or hard qigong exercises (ie. breaking rocks with their fingers).

qi = air, vital energy within the body
gong = skill cultivation (lit. work)

[GreyMystik]

qi gong, or chi kung as it is sometimes spelled, is literally translated as "breath work" or "breath exercise"
so technically, it has to do with training the breath and energy flow. some forms of qi gong are mega-esoteric, and some are fairly simple, but the primary goal of them all remains similar, as far as training the breath/energy of the practitioner. there are methods of qigong for martial art, as well as some that are essentially designed to maximize health benefits. there are also spiritual qigongs, and the "falun gong cult" was a sort of qi gong "sect" if you will. they had their own exercises, i don't know much about them otherwise.

[Shah]

so what is Lo Han?

[premier]

Shah:

You have extremely skilled sifus and si hings, who could answer your questions, if you just asked them. So why don't you ask them?

[Sho]

The Chinese word 'lohan' is derived from the Sanskrit term 'arhat', which denotes a person who has attained enlightenment.

[Captain Chicken]

I would like to suggest a different idea as to what style to chose. There are many different types of Kung Fu because there are different types of physical and psychological people. I do not say that any one stule is better than another, or that my style is better than your style. What I say is that I would not do well in a mantice based style simply because of the way I think. I would similarly avoid any grappling martial arts because I prefer to hit and run rether than let the opponent grapple and counter grapple me.
I base my observations on my chess playing. I knoiw I play a better game and have a much better chance of winning with certain openings, and with others I truly stink.

[extrajoseph]

Originally posted by BearBear
i've heard some styles have copper man dummy and i heard before that choy lay fat has it too..

is this the mansized dummy? and i heard that they put wax or sumfing? over it and fill it with water and when u hit the point spot on where the hole is water come out... don't know ifthat is true or not but i recall reading that...

can u tell us more about the CLF copper man dummy .. design, pics.. uses.. does it have a set form(s) .. etc.. is it common? or is it like one of these things that exist but in modern times few schools do?

i think i read many years ago a doc fai wong article on copperman dummy and clf fan or double fan form...

thanks

BB

Sorry I didn't see your posting until now.

Yes it is man size and it makes a noise when the right spot is hit. It is not done with water I am sure of that, it would be dangerously slippery if the water got onto the ground.

The simple one looks quite abstract with lots of small plates that flip over when you strike them. The more expensive one looks like a full size acupuncture model.

There is a set that goes with the dummy, but it is not very well known . I have never seen it done, only heard about its existence from my teachers.

There are separate dummy forms (2 in all) for the fan. I have been told there are altogether 18 dummy forms in CLF. We are full of dummies! :D