No, I totally get what you mean by the term...
When I started I came from sport karate.. The sport karate model was carried with you at all times--the sparring equipment...
I specifically came to Chun because I wanted to improve my sparring.. When I gleefully landed in the kwoon for my first lesson I was looking for things I could use right from the start... I found that compared to what I was exposed to before that there was just tons of "stuff" that looked like it might be useful..
So in my case I was working on application in parallel with the standard curriculum... An imperfect approach perhaps but that's what I came for and my sparring partners from college (I was in school then) were my guinea pigs...
Yes and no.. The action is the action... The when and the why (which I could call theory) is what it is... I always tried to make my actions as much like they would be in application given the limits of the drill.. The basic LopSao drill is an inherently dead drill (no resistance, little variability)...Still to me a lop is a lop..later a lop amid resistance is just that.
No, I do understand.. What I am getting at is how can the training be made more realistic? How can the core training be made more effective?
What's a better way--a more realistic way--to teach the tools and the tactics? The tools/actions have many different uses so if you were going to take the Kano approach with Chun how would you do it and still cover all the basics, actions but more efficiently and with the correct energy? Doesn't Kano's version have kata--drills?
This is true in many cases.. However, the curriculum does call for sparring, does it not? Also there are many aspects to the training that can take quite a while to develop.. Many students or even 'big shot sifus' never even seem to develop what you term "decent ChiSao" which in itself is a very broad drill that can be played many ways and has tons-o-stuff in it--not to mention the ChiGerk, weapons, etc..
But, I speak specifically to moves that involve two handed simultaneous--yet different actions involving fine motor coordination and use of the horse with it amid resistance.. Most students/teachers don't get to this higher level of performance or ability even in the core drill..
Now, if you are sparring all along the way here, then I see no problem in continuing to refine these more difficult aspects.. Moreover there may come a time when you become too old to fight or you lose interest or the ability to fight/spar hard and then also I see nothing wrong with just doing this training.. You know as well as I do that Wan Kam's skill in these "basics" doesn't come to most quickly, or even ever in many cases..
Moreover, we all have these basics, the core, yet why is it that when folks start sparring/fighting (normally long before all the material is mastered at the drill level) you don't see them or much of that core? Same core, same training, yet where is the "correct expression" and if what is expressed is not correct--as you have often said--then where is it? Where/how did the Chun get lost on its way from the core to the floor? Assuming it did that is...