Away from the temple :(

[螳螂(Mantis)]

Hey my name is Taylor and I'm fairly new to the praying mantis system. I took about a month of lessons down in tampa last summer and I got hooked. I love Kung Fu and if I had a choice I would be practicing and studying 2-3 times a day like I did in the summer time. Unfortunately there isn't any Kung Fu temples around my home town and I only get to take lessons when I go to tampa. I hate not being able to be with other students and my sifu. I still want to learn so what should I do? I don't think I can teach myself here. Are book and video lessons any good?

[syn]

I would say videos are better than books because if you don't have a feel for the style quite yet the transitions can be hard to figure out. Just make sure they're reliable and done correctly.

[螳螂(Mantis)]

Thanks. But how can I know for sure I am doing the form right? I'm use to other people watching and telling me if my foot work is wrong or my back needs to be straight. It's kind of hard to imitate these video teacher's who make everything look so simple.

[Yao Sing]

First off you aren't going to find any training videos on Wah Lum. Isn't there anything in your area?

How often do you get down to Tampa? That's a long way to go. Gainsville is a little closer and there's a Wah Lum school there.


Wherever you go you should work out a deal to get as much as you can once or twice a month and work it on your own in between.

So, if you're in Tampa for the summer you can train there and when you're back home make a trip once or twice a month to the Sifu in Gainsville.

That would be better than doing all your learning from video tape.

[MantisWarrior]

i m in the gainesville wah lum school. join us young mantis hopper and prepare to hop....and learn kung fu. we also have a pretty small class so close training. usually about 8 to the max of 12ish people

[螳螂(Mantis)]

Thanks for the offer to train in Gainsville. It really is quite an honor and all but Tampa is where my father decided live after the divorce. I live in a small town called Shalimar in the panhandle are. There isn't a single Kung Fu school for at least 100 miles. One day I hope to open up my own down here if I can find some way of learning enough to become a sifu (wich is going to take a while at this rate.) This isn't just a Wah Lum school either. To be specific it is Wah Lum Tam Tui, which was created by Si Jo Lee Kwan Shan when he combined his family's style Tam Tui (seeking legs) with the wah lum system. I would be happy to take lessons from any Kung Fu school though because I'm going to learn a lot of different styles as I grow older. I'm sure Shoalin has some videos or something.

[MantisWarrior]

lol just to let u know wah lum pai is wah lum tam tui northern praying mantis kung fu.we just call it wah lum for short or else having a conversation would take a long time saying that full name. lol. right now the grandmaster is grandmaster pui chan. he teaches at the heardquarter in orlando. along with her daughter si fu mimi i believe that's what i heard at least. how old r u btw? and i guess it wouldn't hurt to come down to g'ville to train for a few days, it sure is a heck of a lot closer than tampa. beside we train in an open field like real men and women do :D jk but yeah we do train in an open field

[螳螂(Mantis)]

Oh I guess I can see the point of Wah Lum Pai being used as a nickname for our system. I have to admit Gainsville sounds pretty good. I'm just about 15 years old now and I dobt my mom would drive me all the way to gainsville for Kung Fu. But as soon as I hit 18 I am free to do whatever I want (which includes college, Kung Fu, and hanging out with freinds.) I want to train in the open feilds just like they do in China. It's kind of funny, I'm so obsessed with Kung Fu and the chinese culture but I myself do not have an oriental background. People joke around a lot, about me and swearing that I must have been brought up by chinese parents. I don't know why but it seems like some people born into a trade and no matter what, they can never be thrown off of the path they choose to walk. For example, some people are born to be doctors or police officers, others are born to be theives and criminals, but for me and some of you guys, we were born warriors and it's our one true passion in life. Yah I know the last few sentences don't have anything to do with the thread and all but I've been dieing to share my new insight with others.

[Corwyn]

Taylor,

Welcome to the world of Wah Lum. You are kind of in a hard spot not being able to train regularly. But I have 2 pieces of advice for you. (* note this is from a beginner)

1) Don't mix styles! While EVERY style has a horse stance or a hill climbing horse stance (though they are called something else) there are subtle differences in what is emphasised in the stance.

2) PRACTICE your stances EVERY DAY!

This is kind of boring, but if you are truly this committed to kung fu then you have to put in the work! And stances are THE MOST IMPORTANT thing you can learn.

I have not studied any other Kung Fu besides Wah Lum, so I can't speak for other KF but I can tell you that from the year my son and I have been doing Wah Lum

/brag/ My 11 year who is in an adult class with me, not a kids class, passed his 10b with 96 /brag off :) /

stance are FAR more important than in Kempo that he did before WH and Shotokan that I did. You should work your way up to a 5 minute proper horse stance. Practice all of your stances and confirm that your body mechanics are correct when doing them.

As I said earlier, this is kind of boring, BUT it has the advantage of being easy to do every day, multiple times a day anywhere and without daily supervision.

The days you can make it to a class, have your Sifu confirm that you are doing them properly.

If you're stances have power and flexibility your kung fu will be good!

Corwyn

[ironfenix]

Corwyn,
What are those subtle differences?

thanks

[Yao Sing]

螳螂(Mantis)
Sorry to hear that you have no outlet for your enthusiasim. Best you can do is keep working on what you've learned so far and continue when you get back to Tampa. Before you leave Tampa though I suggest you video tape everything you learned for refernece.

I'm sure your Sifu would be happy to answer any questions you have by phone or email. If not then, with his permission, you can me. What level are you working on?

Oh, and no need to explain things here as there are quite a few of us that are intimitely familiar with the Wah Lum system.

Good luck.

[racerX]

What part of the panhandle do you live? i may be able to asst. you,I go to panama city beach very often,and know alot of wahlum.p.m for any details.:)

[yu shan]

I thought about you when I read this. Looks like mantis is in the Ft. Walton area. That is a hop skip and jump from you. D*mn what a nice place to live.

[racerX]

Hey Yushan,how is everthing?Happy holidays to you And your family.I don't live in PCB but go as often as i can,I love it there.I need to set up a seminar for there so we all can train and vacation it would be a blast.
Take care Merry Christmas.:)

[螳螂(Mantis)]

Thanks for your advice everyone. I do practice my horse stances along with flexibility and muscle building routines taught to me from day 1 in Wah Lum. I havn't taken a test yet so I guess I'm at the very bottom as far as ranks go. But no worries here. When it's time to take my first test I will make a perfect 100, and I will go back and take it again if I get anything less than that because I want to prove my devotion to Kung Fu, and the fact that I have way too much time on my hands :D .

[Chop Socki]

Taylor -

Trying to stick with something when you're off by yourself is very challenging, but your willingness to practice what you know and continue to improve your strength and flexibility shows a lot of maturity on your part. Good for you! There's some good advice for you in here, especially the part about video taping, if that option is available to you. It's not a substitute for taking class and interacting with other students, but it helps you remember all the little details that get lost one by one over time.

Corwyn, congratulations on your son's recent test result, it sounds like some hard work paid off. Always nice to see that old 'hard work = success' theory validated. ;) Did you feel that the test took good measure of his abilities and understanding of what he's learned? Too often these days, a martial arts 'test' is more a measure of time spent and willingness to pay test fees.

Good luck in your training,

- CS

[Corwyn]

ironfenix,

I am by no means an expert but I would say that the WH stances pay far more attention to low and mid-width (does that make sence?) where as my Shotokan history gives me the tendency to be far wider in my stances and my sons Kempo made him want to be far taller in his stances. I guess the way I can explain this is the that my sifu always uses the expression to try to separate the hips when doing horse stances where as the focus was always squeezing a beach ball between the knees for my son and keeping a pair of walls from squishing you with your knees for me. If you do these while in a horse stance, I find anyway that, the stance I create feels totally different which makes the stance look and work different. Maybe it's just me.

CS

Yes, I definitely feel like we're being taught application.
One of the biggest comments I hear from Sifu as well as all my Si Hings is
"Are you learning the application or just learning to dance." It was definitely part of the test for us and even more so for the 10A, so I assume it continues on.

Pet peeve - What's with test fees anyway?

[Chop Socki]

Corwyn -

Glad to hear the applications are being stressed. Traditional martial arts isn't dancing, but far, far too many people advance in a system, accumulating more and more material without ever achieving a true understanding of what they've learned. Let's just call that my own pet peeve. :D

As far as yours - test fees - I'll assume that you're talking about their existance rather than the actual value? If that's the case, I hope you're paying for nothing more than (a) the people who give up their own extra time to perform the testing, and (b) some small token fee for anything you 'get' when you pass the test, e.g. sash, certificate, etc. etc. In the case of franchise systems (like Wah Lum), I suspect that most, if not all of the fee goes back to the 'headquarters' itself, which also might collect some sort of 'per student' franchise fee at some point during the year.

I will say, in the form of a disclaimer of sorts, that while I've tested hundreds of students over the years, even though the students have been charged, I've never personally earned a single cent doing it, but without a more detailed understanding of what the money that I'm dutifully handing over to someone else goes towards, I don't feel right begrudging someone else their right to charge for services they might render that I'm unaware of.

Back to the training!

- CS

[Frogman]

Hello Taylor, seasons greetings everyone.
I remember you very well, I train at the Tampa WL also. Yao Sing is correct you can call the school or email Sifu if you ever have a question. I’m sure he would not mind you asking Yao Sing either. You can also ask me as well. Practicing on your own is difficult when you don’t have a lot of material, but you can also do a lot of research. There is an endless supply of information on the net. Some of it can be confusing and some misleading but you have found the mother load of mantis conversing, here. When do you plan on returning to Tampa? Just so you know the school has relocated, in fact we moved north so we’re closer to you but only about five minutes… sorry! Anyway keep doing your basics and next time you’re in Tampa I will be more then happy to work with you.

Happy New Year.

[螳螂(Mantis)]

I want to thank you guysfor all of the advice. I will be ack for training next summer. I just got a punching bag. So I think that can help as far as applying the techniques go. I think I am really starting to grasp Kung Fu's idea and how it affects me. I think I have really grown both mentally and physically from it. But the last thing I want to know more about is the more philosophical and/or spiritual side to the art. I want to know more abou meditatin, the significance of incense, and other things I may over look becaus I don't know how thy are connected to Kung Fu. I have done some resarch, but I'm not sure of the reliability of my sources.
Another thing I wanted to talk about is the publics view of Kung Fu. It's amazing to see how wrong they are. I have some links, below. Watch the movies and read the forums to see what I'm talking about.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=PU1ZtDi_g2I&mode=related&search=

http://youtube.com/watch?v=BBh9Bk9irt4&mode=related&search=