Is Shaolin-Do for real?

[kwaichang]

My post commented on the biomechanical movements and generation of power which in my opinion is what constitutes the "flavor" of the style. also GMT claims to be the GM of SD not all the Shaolin Temples. SKTJ passed what he learned to Ie Chang Ming and on to GMT, there were other masters of the temples and I am sure they did the same after the split of the temples etc. So of course there are differences and different forms. GMT traces the origin of SD to the Shaolin Temples of which there were 6. That is SD lineage. KC

[tattooedmonk]

So you think forms have NOTHING to do with fighting or how to learn how to fight??

[Mas Judt]

KC - let me know what weight classes you want, and I'll see what can be done.

TM - nice respone, but Sin The' says 'there are many engineers, but only 1 shaolin grandmaster..' sure sounds like a very specific and often repeated claim...

[kwaichang]

Give me a Middle weight , Light Heavy and Heavy weight. KC

[Judge Pen]

Well, I'd say you are delusional, but perhaps you are way past that.

I'd like to know:

Do you believe

That Sin The' is THE Shaolin Grand master?

I believe that Sin The is the grandmaster of Shaolin-do as taught to him by Ie Chang Ming and the other teachers in Indonesia.

That Shaolin Do is the original and authentic art?

Yes, I beleive that Shaolin Do is an original and authentic art.

That the reason kung fu in China is different is because it is a lesser variant of the true original style?

No, its different because it evolved differently

That the reason your stuff looks like Karate is because it is 'for combat.'? (Heard from SD students.)

I don't think our stuff looks like karate, but I think our flow is different because the emphasis on power (or more fairly different ways of generating power) are different then much of what is seen in CMA today. I've never said that other CMA would be ineffective or not powerful in combat.

That the Shaolin monks honored Sin The' by erecting a stele in his honor?

Nope, American students honored their teacher by purchasing the stele

My comments are in bold.

[Judge Pen]

It is near impossible to bring a true believer out of their delusion, so lets focus on the lies of Sin The', the grandhamster of shaolin do.

Do you believe them? Do you repeat them? Do you sell your 'art' by repeating them?

If so, do you sleep at night? How does it feel to be engaged in such bald faced deceit?

Kung Tao is full of embellishments and tall tales (a nice way of saying a lie), but the art is still effective and can be freely taught with little more than a wink and a nod to the fantastical claims that are made. I think your approach is a good example of that.

[Judge Pen]

FWIW, some will call me rude, but no one has bucked up and addressed the moral implications of fraud to support a martial arts club. It happens a lot, but I sense there are some true believers here. No one has been able to support SD outside of SD. It is obvious The' is a bull****ter. So why do you go along with it?

I think its effective, practical and fun. And I don't feel misled as I can form my own opinions on things that are of less importance to me personally.

I mean I could care less if Su Kong Tai Djian was real or a fable. Since debate, part of me would love for some unknown record of his existence to pop up, just to shake things up, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

[cjurakpt]

So you think forms have NOTHING to do with fighting or how to learn how to fight??

minimal to not at all

[tattooedmonk]

minimal to not at all

So how do you think it helps minimally to not at all??

[cjurakpt]

So how do you think it helps minimally to not at all??

minially in the sense that there is the slight possibility that you might be doing some of the moves in the forms with the same intrinsic motor patterns that you might use in gihting, and also that, in a very general sense, you are developing fighting-related skills, or are at least in the mind-set of fighting; also, learning techniques "in the air" can be a good way for someone to get the basic, initial idea of a movement, but only provided that the way you practiced it was as close as you could get to how it would look in actual useage

not at all in the sense that the above is tenuous at best, and that otherwise real fighting has absolutely noting to do contextually with forms, in terms of how techniques are delivered, how you adapt to resistance from an opponent, the fact that you are throwing techs in the air versus contacting something, how your mind functions solo versus in confrontation with another person, etc. etc. etc.

throw in the fact that many of the most skilled fighters these days do not train forms, and you are about home...

finally, if you analyze forms practice from a contemporary motor learning perspective, you immediately see that they come out very very low on the continuum of contextual interference, which is probably the key ingredient in terms of developing functional motor skill, in the sense that you need to have a relatively high level of CI in order to get real retention and transfer of a motor skill; what that means is that if you want to be able to successfully fight against a live resisting opponent, you need to spend most of your time training in that context

BTW, before you throw out the old saw about MMA guys being limited by rules and that kung-fu techs are too deadly for the ring, my point is that it's the context that is more important then the content...

[Toby]

Can't believe I'm subscribed to this thread, nor that it's gone for so long. I remember when it started ...

... here is a clip of me practicing my understanding of yang tai chi chuan.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=9nJ3vwcR1EQ

what is "strange" about the way i presented yang tai chi chuan as i have learned it from shaolin do?

how is what i presented a "basically cheap rip off of tcma"?

Hi Bruce,

I don't formally learn tai chi, yang or any other style, but your movements are very limb oriented. It's "empty", there's no body behind it. I see no opening or closing, no torquing, your body seems static the whole way through. Sure, you turn and move but it's driven by your feet. Your arms move but they move alone, not through your centre. Compared to tcma, it's not necessarily strange or a cheap rip off because I see a lot of empty tcma too, at least on youtube vids. The way I learn (almost?) all movement should originate in the lower dan tien and all movements should be whole body, not limb. So, e.g. at ~19s you step with your left leg, weight it and turn to your left. It's not driven by your body. If I did the move, my leg would turn because it had to, because my centre would've turned it. Hard to explain, easy to show, hard to do.

I'm sure you could develop good mechanics if you specialised in yang style tai chi, but I guess that's the downfall of SD - as soon as you learn the basics of something you change to something completely different (at least from what I recall of the syllabus).

[TenTigers]

if there's one thing that can sum up this thread, it's...
"Never teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time, and it annoys the pigs."

[cjurakpt]

to quote A. M. Hall: "Oink oink, my good man..." (cr@p, can't remember the movie that was from though...was it Vacation?)

[synack]

My post commented on the biomechanical movements and generation of power which in my opinion is what constitutes the "flavor" of the style. also GMT claims to be the GM of SD not all the Shaolin Temples. SKTJ passed what he learned to Ie Chang Ming and on to GMT, there were other masters of the temples and I am sure they did the same after the split of the temples etc. So of course there are differences and different forms. GMT traces the origin of SD to the Shaolin Temples of which there were 6. That is SD lineage. KC

I'm sorry but about GMT is completely false. Go to shaolingrandmaster.com watch the intro alone!

"the youngest grandmaster in shaolin history, Sin Kwan The. Shaolin Grandmaster"

In the biography it claims GM Su is the grandmaster of Shaolin. Then claims that it was passed onto E Chang Ming who then:

"Grandmaster E died in 1976, but not before passing all of his knowledge on to me, the current Grandmaster of Shaolin."

Now for GMT:

"Mastering more than 900 forms from over 100 fighting systems, I became the youngest Grandmaster in 1500 years of Shaolin history."

"At age 25, Grandmaster E passed the title and rank of Grandmaster to me, making me the youngest Grandmaster in the history of Shaolin."

"After Grandmaster E's death, I realized that while there were many engineers in the world, there was only one Grandmaster of Shaolin, so I left my graduate school studies to devote my life to teaching and preserving the art of Shaolin Do." (this is the first time he's mentioned Shaolin Do.)


Monument Honor:

"I am also the only person in 1500 years to be honored with two monuments at the Shaolin Temples in China."

"In 1992, at a large celebration at the Honan temple in Honan Province (the original Shaolin temple), Chief Abbot Su Xi presented a stone tablet to commemorate my visit. Fewer than twenty such monuments have been erected in the history of Honan temple."



He even signs his biography as "Shaolin Grandmaster Sin Kwang The'"


If he's not completely full of ****, he's definitely misleading people intentionally to make himself seem more important. You can like the art (like I do) and not drink the kool-aid. There are big claims with nothing to back it up. And I think it's so obvious what the truth is and some people prefer to live in a turtle shell.

[Mas Judt]

This is where the ethics come in. How can you sleep at night if you support and rrepeat these falsehoods? This is more than just a fanciful history - in Chinese culture you often find an innovation attributed to an ancestor. But claims to be something else that already exists is still fraud, even within that context.

Where are your ethics?