Originally Posted by
Judge Pen
The old timers tell me that forms work was a very small percentage of the SD that they first learned. Most of the focus was on the sparring and the conditioning. I've never seen Sin The spar, but I know people in SD that can fight with the best of the other TMA students and teachers that I've trained with, so I will not criticize the ability of someone to learn how to apply the art.
It seems that there was a forms explosion in the mid 1980s. It was at that time that more branches of SD were taking off in other parts of the country and it was right after the sports center went under. Hallady's book came out as well as the inside kung fu article (where the infamous list of material linked to various temples was listed). Where all of these forms came from is a matter of speculation, but the focus certainly shifted from fighting and conditioning to forms, forms, forms. I was lucky to have a teacher that stuck with the basic material and we sparred and conditioned most of the time, but I was always surprised when I visited other schools at how lower belts were working on forms that I had never seen or heard of.
As far as the material in Indonesian video, there was Buddha Fist, 8 directional Dao, 5 Directional Palm, and a few that I had not seen that still had a distinct SD flavor to it.