Just a thought...

[Meat Shake]

Just a thought I had about the relevance to forms and fighting.... I mean doing only forms.

Lets use guitar for an example. Say you spend 8 hours a day playing air guitar, playing your heart out on your good ol air guitar. I bet you are great at the strumming motion and moving your hand up and down the imaginary fretboard. Now someone hands you a real guitar and asks you to play it. Well, you certainly can move your hands up and down the fretboard, and look like your playing, and even strum well if you knew the frets to press... but you dont actually know how to play guitar.

If you consistantly work on forms and never fight, your training is similarly relevant. You may be in great shape, you may be quick, but in a situation where you really have to fight, what happens?

[Becca]

An interesting point...

Last night in class, Sifu gave us a talking to about the need to put 100% into drills and not get into auto-mation mode. "If you go at it with all you have on Tuesday and Thursday in class, then get jumped in a dark ally Friday, no big deal- you did that yeasterday."

Broke down version: If you train to block half-@ssed punches with sloppy movements, you get pounded. Good training may not always save you but bad training will get you killed.

[Meat Shake]

This isnt a troll. Id seriously like to get some responses from the people who train only forms or point/light contact with no head contact.

[Becca]

You should have said that from the start. I don't spar much, so do I count as an air guitarrist? Of course, I don't focus only on forms... I treat them as a routine to teach my body how to move, then work them into something usefull in two-person drills.

[Xdr4g0nx]

an airguitarist who actually knows the cords and make them in the air will be able to play a guitar.
When I try to learn the guitar, in my younger days. I would make cords with my fingers in the air, the reason is that 1) i didn't have a guitar with me 24/7 and 2) I was not advance enough so my figures hurt like hell if i held cords for too long.
Same as martial arts 1) you simply don't have a sparing partner with u 24/7 to spar with and 2) if u are not advance enough you will not know what u are doing and end up hurting others and yourself.

[CaptinPickAxe]

air guitarist don't know the chords. They mock what they see musicians do and not to a "T". Air guitarist are the ones who sit in front of the mirror and try and look as cool as possible while strumming thier imaginary guitars. An imaginary drummer is a different story. Once you know the set up of your drums, then it is easy to imagine them while jamming out to a Tool song (if you can;) )

[shaolin kungfu]

AIR GUITAR RULES!!!!!!!!!!!



*runs off jamming on invisible guitar, while making guitar noises.

[SevenStar]

AIR VIOLIN RULES!!!

[Meat Shake]

Heh...
Ill let this thread move a minute first.

[Judge Pen]

Originally posted by Meat Shake
This isnt a troll. Id seriously like to get some responses from the people who train only forms or point/light contact with no head contact.

This leaves me out. :D

Seriously forms work alone isn't enough. Anyone who practices forms and fights often knows that.

[Musicalkatachmp]

hmmm...an interesting analogy...sounds like a good one to me, then again I have never played guitar...I have, however, tried to spar after only practicing forms and I was shocked...I thought I would be able to use at least a couple moves from my forms immediately...on the contrary I got my butt handed to me by some tae kwon do guy and used none of my techniques from the forms...it was a big eye-opener...but then again how often do you actually see a kung fu guy use something from his forms when he fights? I hardly practice forms anymore...I only did them b/c I had to to get my black belt...

[Meat Shake]

lol...
Well, we have to throw quotes around the "kung fu", but I know that a lot of the SD guys practice light contact animal sparring...
It looks rather silly.... But at least they are trying to use specific techniques from a form or 60.

[Xdr4g0nx]

MS equates airguitarists with doing forms, forms are a set of techniques put together by competent people. Therefore I assume that the airguitarists that MS is talking about atleast knows what they are doing. If he is talking about airguitarists that do not knows what they are doing than that is totally different from doing a forms its just me doing punches and kicks at random.

[old jong]

If you compare some kind of guitar practicing with forms, forms would translate to playing scales and arpegios on the guitar.
Very good things to increase technique and overall mastery of the instrument.
Fighting would be,using the skill developped with scales and arpegios to play actual tunes or improvise.;)

[SevenStar]

Originally posted by Xdr4g0nx
MS equates airguitarists with doing forms, forms are a set of techniques put together by competent people. Therefore I assume that the airguitarists that MS is talking about atleast knows what they are doing. If he is talking about airguitarists that do not knows what they are doing than that is totally different from doing a forms its just me doing punches and kicks at random.

but knowing the form doesn't equate to knowing how to fight, or how to play a guitar, which is his point.

[Xdr4g0nx]

I'm not arguing with the point, I agree that doing just forms is not enough (I also believe that no forms at all is not enough, but thats another post). I'm just saying that his example is flawed thats all.

[Meat Shake]

Alright, we'll try a new example.
You play football. (American)
You pretend to throw passes. You pretend to catch the ball. You pretend to hit other players at full contact. Sure, you understand parts of the game. Sure you can run well. But what the hell happens when you have to play another team and make contact? You get clobbered.

[Xdr4g0nx]

Ok I can live with that :p

[joedoe]

Why don't you use an analogy that is closer to the subject - like boxing? You can shadow box all you want but until you step into the ring you can't claim to be able to box.

[Chang Style Novice]

Air Guitar does totally rule. (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0963726455/qid=1085111890/sr=8-1/ref=pd_ka_1/002-8645155-5046460?v=glance&s=books&n=507846[/url) I'm about halfway through right now. I don't agree with Hickey on everything, but even the stuff I disagree about is very thought provoking, and the SOB can write a sentence like nobodies biz.

And yeah, forms are useful but at most only a small part of the training equation for fighters.

[Fred Sanford]

I train only forms and from my perspective if I was to spar, all those crazy punches and kicks would scare the bejesus out of me. I'd probably curl up into a ball and start suckling my thumb.

everyone knows that kung fu people don't actually spar. Our art is on a higher level.

yea those people who actually spar scare me.

Are you scare?

[MasterKiller]

Originally posted by Meat Shake
Alright, we'll try a new example.
You play football. (American)
You pretend to throw passes. You pretend to catch the ball. You pretend to hit other players at full contact. Sure, you understand parts of the game. Sure you can run well. But what the hell happens when you have to play another team and make contact? You get clobbered. At the same time, NFL mini-camps are the equivalent of drills and forms. They don't wear pads, don't hit, and mostly just run through the motions at 1/2 to 3/4 speed. They don't hit 100% power 100% of the time because injuries are likely to occur at that level, which would prevent them from playing. So, both types of practice are necessary.

[Meat Shake]

of course both types are necessary.

[Banjos_dad]

I think Old Jong had something. Forms is like playing scales or exercises. Fighting is improvising, selecting from the different possibilities & arranging them into an order that works in that particular context.

My first teacher often repeated... "You are how you spar." In reference to sparring, but also applies to bag drills, pad work, etc.

If I had to do one or the other I'd do practical training & sparring. But I like doing forms too & the exercise is good, the stances build strength.


I wonder if forms were a mnemonic aid when learning to read & write was a luxury for a lot of people.
My Chinese history is bad. It's a huge subject. In some other cultures reading & writing was a skill practiced by the religious or government apparatus, not so accessible to a wide %age of the people.

[cerebus]

Well, actually basics practice would be more like practicing scales.

Forms are more like old, established classical pieces of music.

Sparring is, of course, improv as you mentioned.

[Chang Style Novice]

Well, it's still an inexact analogy (as I pointed out elsewhere, all analogies are inexact, so this really isn't so bad.)

Let me point out some places where it breaks down.

Most importantly, sparring is a blend of cooperation and competition. You NEED a partner. Musical improvisation can be accomplished solo. Of course, it is possible to have a 'head cutting' contest in music, and it happens a lot.

I'd say that unrehearsed shadowboxing is a better analogy for solo improv.

Forms are indeed, 'sheet music' as opposed to sparring's 'jamming.'