Mega red fist?

[Jingwu Man]

Are these forms solo or is the idea to ultimately combine them into one big (mega) red fist form? I've heard both sides, looking for answers.
Ant feedback would be appreciated.

yilu http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0WQvT1-_70
erlu http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXBLeSjBsnQ
sanlu http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncxixSZ60Yw

[LFJ]

it is one large form called dahongquan. it is divided into three sections due to the length, the first of which is generally known and taught. :)

[Royal Dragon]

I actually think there are more than 3 sections, but yes it's all one form.

[GeneChing]

But yes, Dahong is in three sections. It would be a monster to practice as one big form. I imagine some people practice it that way, but not me. I barely have the stamina to make it through the first form nowadays (I doubt I even remember it :o ).

[LFJ]

but its the same as the three roads to xiaotongbeiquan. they can be strung together as one or practiced as three separates. and i believe it was originally one form divided into different roads. again, the first of which is generally known or taught.

a similar thing happened to daluohanquan. its 108 movements long. it was cut in half and an ending was added for closure. most people will tell you thats the whole of it but there's more. but its not generally known or taught either.

[RD'S Alias - 1A]

Shaolin Tai Tzu Chang Chuan is also like that. It is 121 moves long (probably 108 if you delete the redundancies). This set is cut into 3 sections, and ONLY the first is widely known, and mostly butchered into a modern Wushu peformance at that.

If you go back far enough, ORIGINALLY Tai Tzu wasn't even a form, it was just loose techniques. The Shaolin made it into a form when the Emperor asked them to preserve the system for him. They also created the Xiao Hong, and Da Hong sets as a later part of that project, again they were all one single long form originally.

I suspect they did not have sections untill much later, and at first were taught in small groups of one, to maybe 3 techniques at a time untill the student learned them all with useable proficiency.

[Jingwu Man]

How is it done?
Do you do the ending posture (Hero on Mountain)?
Do you omit that and keep going?
I find it odd to go into the pushing movements at the beginning of the other forms after doing the first form.

So many questions......
Thanks for the information though, everybody.

[LFJ]

as gene and i have said, we've never seen it practiced as one form. really couldnt tell you. i'd assume there was an ending added to each road that would be omitted in the full run- such as going straight into the thrusting movements in gongbu right after the jump kick in road one and the backsweep in road two. but i've only ever seen them as separate roads. i'll be back to see shifu in a few weeks. i'll ask about how they are linked together.

[Royal Dragon]

I know in Tai Tzu Hong Quan you also do all 10 sets as one lonng form. In the Shandong system I am told you drop the beginning and end of each section and they become one huge seamless form.

[GeneChing]

Yang Tai Chi has three distinct sections too. Many people just practice the first section and end it there. That's what I do sometimes, mostly because I can't remember the rest. When practiced as a whole form, there's a sort of a pause point where you could bail out at the end of the first and second sections. That blends into the next section if you choose to finish it all. Good question about hero's pose. Would you practice it or not if you strung them all together? I wonder what the original transition might have been. I'm not sure it makes that much of a difference now. I'm sure it's very subject to interpretation, since so few people practice it this way anymore.

Actually, when it comes to stacking forms, you can practice however you like. It's your practice. If you're not experimenting with it, you're not really practicing it. You could string xiaohong and dahong together into one massive form. Back in my BSL daze, we used to string the short five forms together into one long form, just to work our endurance. It wasn't something we did very often, but it served to mix it up a little when we were feeling unusually spunky. We'd often mix and match forms like that - go from one to the other - just for more training.

[Royal Dragon]

I started mixing various Tai Tzu Hong forms, form different lineages together once because I was just board of doing each one a number of times, and then the next. I found out the last moves of certain sets flowed seamlessly into the first moves of other sets. This made me think that originally they were all one long form. Later I found out that Tai Tzu hong was originally one long set. :D

[oasis]

when i did songshan shaolin and learned xiao hong quan i was interested in the idea of a very long da hong quan. my school had taught da hong quan that's widely known as the first routine as described above. at the time i thought i understood why '108 moves' forms had to be broken down into smaller parts. however, learning my school's siu mui fa (xiao mei hua) in choy lay fut made me realize what an awesome workout a form longer than 1.5 minutes can give (besides taiji 108 ;) ). i've only gone through half of the form and i think i'm a little over 3 minutes right now, and it definitely wears me out. it made me think back to how short some of my previous forms were. as royal dragon and others have often discussed, since the purpose of the forms is not really to train techniques per se but to focus on things such as the flavor of a style and endurance training, there really is no need to break up many of these except for shorter practice obviously. from a historical 'art' point of view, i'd rather learn the original of a long form then advance through three short forms (application training question aside) over the same time frame.

[Royal Dragon]

from a historical 'art' point of view, i'd rather learn the original of a long form then advance through three short forms (application training question aside) over the same time frame.

Reply]
I think that it really does not matter. You get the whole form either way, weather you learn it several techs at a time, or in several larger sections.

Personally, I would rather get a DVD of the whole unaltered set from several angles and then learn each move from a good fighter in the style, one or two at a time untill I can fight well with each. I know it might take years and years to learn a single form this way, but you would know it really well and be able to use it.

I would also prefer to spend more time on the structure, and mechancis of the art, as well as the strategy to get the type of position our techniques are implemented from. If you focus on memorising the form, you miss the essence.

In the end, you get the whole form anyway, and if you have a detailed manual, and a good well done DVD of the whole form, you can continue on yourself if anything should ever happen to interupt your training schedule.

[LFJ]

oasis-

many times when we practice forms in shaolin we go directly from the end of one form into the beginning of the next form or the same one again. everyone's just in the yard training their movements non-stop that way. its much longer than 1.5 minutes. :)

[Mega-Foot]

I never learned red fist.

Is it related to the Big 6-Fist?

[Mega-Foot]

We have a 2-man drill called Mega 6-Fist. But I don't know any Red Fist, although I've heard it referenced many times as an introductory style.

[Sal Canzonieri]

Everyone calls these forms Red Fist, but the character is Chinese shows that Hong Quan is translated as Flood or Flowing Fist.

Hong Quan is a style in itself, it is part of the Luohan Men (gate) system.
In actuallity Hong Quan is not a beginner's style, per say, it is just learned early to set the proper foundation.

It is a sister style to Pao Chui, which is also part of Luohan Men system.

Both Hong Quan and Pao Chui are derived from Rou Quan (perhaps one of the oldest styles from Shaolin) and Shaolin Tai Tzu Chang Quan.

There is the 36 move Xiao Hong Quan, and if you understand what is being taught in this form, the real way to do Shaolin, soft and hard, then it is a perfect form to transition from Shaolin to Tai Chi.
In fact, the second movement in Xiao Hong Quan (after the salute type movement) translates as "Push Hand" from the Chinese.

The correct SECOND form to learn in the system is called Lao Hong Quan, Old Flowing Fist. Shi Deyang has a dvd/vcd out of the form, surprisingly he does it pretty close to fully correct (not 100%, as usual for him tough). You can also see the form in the slideshow area at Russbo.com, where it is mistakenly called the original da hong quan (it's not). This form is clearly a long verion of the Xiao Hong quan, with more stuff added.

108 Rou Quan, Shaolin Tai Tzu Chang Quan, Xiao Hong Quan, Lao Hong Quan, and Chen Tai Ji, and Yang Tai Ji ALL have the same movements in their first section. If you did them all (I do) you can see the evolution from the Rou Quan to the Yang Tai Ji (then onto to Wu Tai Ji).

There are actually TWO different Da Hong Quan styles at Shaolin, one is part of this Xiao Hong QUan system
and the other is a different style completely that comes from Li Su, who introduced it to Shaolin (late Yuan/early Ming era).
He's Hong Quan is the actual Red Fist style, the character is the real one for RED.
It comes from Shanxi province.