Away from the temple :(

[Chop Socki]

Taylor -

Trying to stick with something when you're off by yourself is very challenging, but your willingness to practice what you know and continue to improve your strength and flexibility shows a lot of maturity on your part. Good for you! There's some good advice for you in here, especially the part about video taping, if that option is available to you. It's not a substitute for taking class and interacting with other students, but it helps you remember all the little details that get lost one by one over time.

Corwyn, congratulations on your son's recent test result, it sounds like some hard work paid off. Always nice to see that old 'hard work = success' theory validated. Did you feel that the test took good measure of his abilities and understanding of what he's learned? Too often these days, a martial arts 'test' is more a measure of time spent and willingness to pay test fees.

Good luck in your training,

- CS

[Corwyn]

ironfenix,

I am by no means an expert but I would say that the WH stances pay far more attention to low and mid-width (does that make sence?) where as my Shotokan history gives me the tendency to be far wider in my stances and my sons Kempo made him want to be far taller in his stances. I guess the way I can explain this is the that my sifu always uses the expression to try to separate the hips when doing horse stances where as the focus was always squeezing a beach ball between the knees for my son and keeping a pair of walls from squishing you with your knees for me. If you do these while in a horse stance, I find anyway that, the stance I create feels totally different which makes the stance look and work different. Maybe it's just me.

CS

Yes, I definitely feel like we're being taught application.
One of the biggest comments I hear from Sifu as well as all my Si Hings is
"Are you learning the application or just learning to dance." It was definitely part of the test for us and even more so for the 10A, so I assume it continues on.

Pet peeve - What's with test fees anyway?

[Chop Socki]

Corwyn -

Glad to hear the applications are being stressed. Traditional martial arts isn't dancing, but far, far too many people advance in a system, accumulating more and more material without ever achieving a true understanding of what they've learned. Let's just call that my own pet peeve.

As far as yours - test fees - I'll assume that you're talking about their existance rather than the actual value? If that's the case, I hope you're paying for nothing more than (a) the people who give up their own extra time to perform the testing, and (b) some small token fee for anything you 'get' when you pass the test, e.g. sash, certificate, etc. etc. In the case of franchise systems (like Wah Lum), I suspect that most, if not all of the fee goes back to the 'headquarters' itself, which also might collect some sort of 'per student' franchise fee at some point during the year.

I will say, in the form of a disclaimer of sorts, that while I've tested hundreds of students over the years, even though the students have been charged, I've never personally earned a single cent doing it, but without a more detailed understanding of what the money that I'm dutifully handing over to someone else goes towards, I don't feel right begrudging someone else their right to charge for services they might render that I'm unaware of.

Back to the training!

- CS

[Frogman]

Hello Taylor, seasons greetings everyone.
I remember you very well, I train at the Tampa WL also. Yao Sing is correct you can call the school or email Sifu if you ever have a question. I’m sure he would not mind you asking Yao Sing either. You can also ask me as well. Practicing on your own is difficult when you don’t have a lot of material, but you can also do a lot of research. There is an endless supply of information on the net. Some of it can be confusing and some misleading but you have found the mother load of mantis conversing, here. When do you plan on returning to Tampa? Just so you know the school has relocated, in fact we moved north so we’re closer to you but only about five minutes… sorry! Anyway keep doing your basics and next time you’re in Tampa I will be more then happy to work with you.

Happy New Year.

[螳螂(Mantis)]

I want to thank you guysfor all of the advice. I will be ack for training next summer. I just got a punching bag. So I think that can help as far as applying the techniques go. I think I am really starting to grasp Kung Fu's idea and how it affects me. I think I have really grown both mentally and physically from it. But the last thing I want to know more about is the more philosophical and/or spiritual side to the art. I want to know more abou meditatin, the significance of incense, and other things I may over look becaus I don't know how thy are connected to Kung Fu. I have done some resarch, but I'm not sure of the reliability of my sources.
Another thing I wanted to talk about is the publics view of Kung Fu. It's amazing to see how wrong they are. I have some links, below. Watch the movies and read the forums to see what I'm talking about.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=PU1ZtDi_g...elated&search=

http://youtube.com/watch?v=BBh9Bk9ir...elated&search=