I've been thinking about this since David Ross's thread about San Shou. There he said that if a student wished to learn to fight, his Sifu would teach them San Shou.
However, is this a statement about the effectiveness of San Shou, or a statement about how people learn? If a student comes to a school expressing their sole interest is fighting, do they want to spend time on stepping drills, internal forms and spear fighting? Do they feel that learning the 8 drunken immortals form will allow them to win a bar fight?
While those of us who do traditional CMA will state (probably rightly) that in the long run these things will make you a far better fighter, will someone who wants to learn to fight appreciate this immediately?
However, do we devalue our arts and heritage if we tailor our training to pander to these people? One of my Sifu's once told a fairly senior student that if he didn't want to do forms anymore then it was probably the wrong school for him and he should seriously think about finding somewhere else to train! How many professional Sifu would be this blunt to a student?
His rationale was that if you train them just to fight then you get a certain type of student. He felt that if they weren't "invested" in the style, then they felt no alliegance to it and would eventually get bored and drift off. Conversely, the students who are interested in the art side will be driven off by endless fighting training. Indeed, one of his top guys was running some classes and decided everyone needed to be fitter and do lots more San Da. He lost nearly 20 students over the next 6 months!
Personally I feel that around a 60/40 mix of forms and San Da is best.
What do you guys feel?