Is Shaolin-Do for real?

[Judge Pen]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXGh7ltxuyI

This guy has better kung fu than 99.9% of the kung fu people out there, but it's karate.

The problem is with SD is not that it looks like karate, it looks like bad karate people doing kung fu they learned from a book, horribly.

That man's traps were frightening.

I agree with the assesment of most SD that's out there. I think that there are exceptions, like Master Mullins, Master Reid or Master Nance, but most people here would lump them all together which is fine.

[bawang]

I'm a big fan of Toyama Sensei. I agree the majority of today's SD students look bad. But there are some who look very good. But most, if not all, are old school guys from way back. There are numerous reasons for this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nY8-8AmMTXM

[Empty_Cup]

It doesn't look like someone that's just waving their arms around; that's one of the biggest criticisms that I have of most SD forms I've seen. The other being odd McDojo-like moves; Jake Mace's videos have these.

Have you seen any SD in person or are you just going off Internet videos and jake mace?

[Kymus]

Have you seen any SD in person or are you just going off Internet videos and jake mace?

It's the latter, Empty Cup.

I've seen some well done SD forms like from SW, and it looks like actual Kung Fu to me with flow and intent. 99% of the rest, including everything I've seen from Sin The, looks god-awful.

[Kymus]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nY8-8AmMTXM

I'm going to have nightmares about that tonight. Thanks, Bawang

[Judge Pen]

It's the latter, Empty Cup.

I've seen some well done SD forms like from SW, and it looks like actual Kung Fu to me with flow and intent. 99% of the rest, including everything I've seen from Sin The, looks god-awful.

I'll agree about Sin The's forms. Never thought they were done particularly well. I ignored it for so long because of teachers that I respected.

[Kymus]

I'll agree about Sin The's forms. Never thought they were done particularly well. I ignored it for so long because of teachers that I respected.

I think this begs the question:

Did SD always look like this? Is the reason why it looks so out-of-whack is because Sin The taught forms cr@ppily? How much of this is influence from the time in Indonesia?

Didn't someone - a long while ago - post a video of a school in Indonesia that learned from ICM? I forget how their forms looked.

[kwaichang]

Not all of GMThe's forms are bad some yes due to physical limitations. But that is just that form. I still dont see any karate type stuff in SD it doesnt have the same mechanics. So i am not speaking from bias just what I have seen. my point was the form I posted came from another site here. KC

[Empty_Cup]

I think this begs the question:

Did SD always look like this? Is the reason why it looks so out-of-whack is because Sin The taught forms cr@ppily? How much of this is influence from the time in Indonesia?

Didn't someone - a long while ago - post a video of a school in Indonesia that learned from ICM? I forget how their forms looked.

I'm not one of the old-timers but have seen the series from the 80's when everybody was younger and there weren't really physical limitations. Back then, as now, there were folks who were just plain sloppy. And there were also folks who looked sharp, most notably (IMO) EM ES. It really comes down to what that particular person worked on.

The real question, in my mind, is about expectations. To see higher ranking people performing sloppily is disappointing because it implies low expectations. Some ppl choose to push themselves harder to go above and beyond.

At some point in the past, I've heard EML tried to standardize the forms to create a minimum expectation on how they should look. This effort got shot down by GMS because he "didn't want robots." Something to chew on, but again this info isn't firsthand.

[pazman]

I think this begs the question:

Did SD always look like this? Is the reason why it looks so out-of-whack is because Sin The taught forms cr@ppily? How much of this is influence from the time in Indonesia?

Didn't someone - a long while ago - post a video of a school in Indonesia that learned from ICM? I forget how their forms looked.

The forms look like **** because Sin The learned them

1) from a book

2) from a seminar, and didn't do any follow up training

3) made them up without any sort of clue (mantis beaks)

[Judge Pen]

I think this begs the question:

Did SD always look like this? Is the reason why it looks so out-of-whack is because Sin The taught forms cr@ppily? How much of this is influence from the time in Indonesia?

Didn't someone - a long while ago - post a video of a school in Indonesia that learned from ICM? I forget how their forms looked.

Yes someone did and then they were taken down. They were on par with what you see in SD here. Nice by SD standards. I don't know if Sin The is the heir to the system taught by ICM or not, but even if he is, I doubt he was the best forms person under ICM.

What the Indonesian videos confirmed to me is that whatever style SD claims to be, it is not pure kung fu or anything else but very kung tao in its development. Which isn't bad as long as you don't pretend that it is anything else.

[Kymus]

Not all of GMThe's forms are bad some yes due to physical limitations. But that is just that form. I still dont see any karate type stuff in SD it doesnt have the same mechanics. So i am not speaking from bias just what I have seen. my point was the form I posted came from another site here. KC

It's not that the forms themselves look like karate, it's that the practitioners generally come off like karate guys attempting to do kung fu, badly. You could also liken it to someone with no training, watching a wuxia, and then trying to mimic it. That's what people mean when they criticize SD forms.

Of the form's I've seen Sin The do, namely mantis and the double canes, I dunno how old age can be given as an excuse for their poor performance .

There are certain passes we give to old masters that do forms. They're not perfect anymore, but they're still at least good. This is a great example. Master Su Yu-Chang (whom admittedly I have a great deal of respect for) does this mantis form well. In the video, you'll also see him when we was young doing it. He can't do things like that anymore, but the form at least still looks good. Sin The's forms look really bad.

[Kymus]

What the Indonesian videos confirmed to me is that whatever style SD claims to be, it is not pure kung fu or anything else but very kung tao in its development. Which isn't bad as long as you don't pretend that it is anything else.

Yeah, when you look at it as something that isn't Kung Fu, it has a little more meaning to it. But when you look at it as Kung Fu, it just looks terrible.

[Empty_Cup]

Yes someone did and then they were taken down. They were on par with what you see in SD here. Nice by SD standards. I don't know if Sin The is the heir to the system taught by ICM or not, but even if he is, I doubt he was the best forms person under ICM.

What the Indonesian videos confirmed to me is that whatever style SD claims to be, it is not pure kung fu or anything else but very kung tao in its development. Which isn't bad as long as you don't pretend that it is anything else.

I didn't see the videos before they got taken down. What was in them that confirmed to you it is kung tao vs. kung fu being taught in Indonesia? I don't really care one way or another, just want to understand what you saw in those videos that makes you say that.

[Kymus]

The forms look like **** because Sin The learned them

1) from a book

2) from a seminar, and didn't do any follow up training

3) made them up without any sort of clue (mantis beaks)

Well, it's been established that he learned something (who knows what it was) in Indonesia. Given, yeah, there are forms he learned from books and JP has mentioned - I believe - that those were beaten with the ugly stick the most. I'll take his word for it.

The closest thing we know for certain is that Sin The learned some stuff in Indonesia, and all the fairy tales and different body mechanics explain this (for the most part). The rest is uncertain.