One form to rule them all...

[David Jamieson]

pick one form is like asking to eat only one food. there is no one food that you can only eat and not gradually die from malnutrition. it is a broken question.

forms dont have combat basics anyways so to treat them seriously is itself a grave danger. i can make up a great looking "authentic traditional" form out of my ass right now under 5 min, and i can tell some naive kung fu nerd to practice it 100 times a day.

One form doesn't exclude lifting weight, practice weapons, drills, sparring etc.

Heck, in some styles, after you learn ten forms, you string them all together into one long ass form anyway.

[YouKnowWho]

I like to get the best result from my training. There is a combo sequence in the form that I have created that contains:

- left roundhouse kick,
- right toes push kick,
- right wrist lock,
- left wrist lock,
- right side kick,
- left turn back kick,
- right roundhouse kick,
- right hammer fist,
- right straight punch.

Sometime I just train this small piece of form, Since it contains

- right front kick,
- right/left round house kick,
- right/left side kick,

I can maintain most of my kicking skill through my daily training. Since I can't find a small section of form that can contain this much information, I have to create it myself. Of course, I have borrowed some moves from the

- Mai Fu Chuan,
- 3rd road Pao Chuan,
- Tai Zhu long fist.

[GeneChing]

This is a tough question for me because my answer changes over time. To maintain your Middle Earth metaphor SevenStar, whenever I get a fav form, middle age sneaks up like gollum, bites of my finger, and then dives into the fiery pit of Mount Doom with it. Which is to say my 'one form' changes as my body has changed.

Perhaps a more telling question is 'what form do you do daily?' I started a thread that was somewhat related to this back in 2010: What forms are in your Shaolin regimen now?. Shoot, I should update that sometime...I'm way behind on it.

[Jimbo]

For me, variety is the spice of life. One form exclusively for the rest of my life would become boring. Of course, quality trumps quantity, and knowing one thing really well is far better than knowing many things superficially. But it's good to train the body to move in different ways. Otherwise, it's easy to become stale, both physically and mentally. That doesn't mean the form has to be showy.

Obviously, this does not exclude all the other aspects of training. But the subject here is regarding forms.

Even the 2 to 4-move combinations I mentioned earlier that I practice have a rotation. I have maybe a half-dozen of them I'll practice extensively for a couple months, then replace them with a half-dozen variations, or totally different ones. Then I'll do the same thing two months later. Then eventually rotate back to the original set of combinations. They all contain the same CLF basics, streamlined. With this method, you can create an almost infinite number of variations. It's not accumulating more and more material, but simply using what you already have in different ways, to develop greater flexibility of action/response.

[mickey]

Greetings,

The way that SevenStar put it, I saw it as the form you would always come back to for practice and as a source material for ongoing study. I did not see the robotics that is being described here.

mickey

[MightyB]

This is a tough question for me because my answer changes over time. To maintain your Middle Earth metaphor SevenStar, whenever I get a fav form, middle age sneaks up like gollum, bites of my finger, and then dives into the fiery pit of Mount Doom with it. Which is to say my 'one form' changes as my body has changed.

This has been my experience as well. I think it's tough to answer with just one form because it changes over time. I've found that every form contains an aspect that's worth studying deeply. For me, right now it's the "second essential" form in our style.

[uki]

If you could only work one form for the rest of eternity, which one would it be and why?

bruce lee was quipped at saying be like water... i say... be like nature. the only true form is that which comes from within ones own essence.

[SevenStar]

This has been my experience as well. I think it's tough to answer with just one form because it changes over time. I've found that every form contains an aspect that's worth studying deeply. For me, right now it's the "second essential" form in our style.

What are you traiing in now? I remember before I left that it was judo and san shou.

[MightyB]

What are you traiing in now? I remember before I left that it was judo and san shou.

7 star mantis.

But I competed in San shou back in the 90s. I wasn't that good. So I crosstrained with judo because I found out that I was terrible at take downs whilst getting my arse kicked in one of the aforementioned San shou events. I continued with judo for about 10 years because it's really fun. Now I just do 7 star mantis.

In the mantis I study there are 3 forms called essential routines. My phonetic Cantonese is terrible but the names sound like "yet lo jet you, yi lo jet you, and San lo jet you." I do the first but it's not on my list of favorite forms, but I really dig the 2nd and 3rd.

[Jimbo]

In the mantis I study there are 3 forms called essential routines. My phonetic Cantonese is terrible but the names sound like "yet lo jet you, yi lo jet you, and San lo jet you." I do the first but it's not on my list of favorite forms, but I really dig the 2nd and 3rd.

In Mandarin, those would be the Zhai Yao (Essentials) forms; Yi Lu (first road), Er Lu (second road) and San Lu (third road) Zhai Yao. Of course you know that already. I trained Mantis (7 Star and 8 Step) for 10 years before switching to CLF. I always think of northern style terms in Mandarin, because I studied northern styles in Taiwan.

[bawang]

once you stop caring about forms and do some real training your forms will look amazing.

people who obsess about forms look the worst. floppy rabbit feet/ruber leg syndrome/snail centaur syndrome.

[Faux Newbie]

Another aspect is that training the same thing all the time for ages is sometimes not even good for that one thing. Often. I can't count the number of times working on other things for a while and coming back later to something gave me a much broader or more detailed perspective on it that advanced my practice.

In addition, I find a huge difference between performing a form and analyzing and training its content. The latter is my preferred practice. I mostly return to the former to look for aspects of its content that hadn't made it into my to do list of things to work on.

[David Jamieson]

once you stop caring about forms and do some real training your forms will look amazing.

people who obsess about forms look the worst. floppy rabbit feet/ruber leg syndrome/snail centaur syndrome.

The first step in learning the true martial arts happens when you get punched in the face with a hardness you've never felt before.
Then, the work starts on figuring out how to achieve that. lol

[Faux Newbie]

What on earth is a snail centaur?

[Lucas]

None.

I would simply abandon all.

However if I had a gun to my head and had to pick I would likely choose Chen old frame with personal adjustments. Strong , solid techniques, inherent adaptability, and I like longfist.