Collecting forms without understanding their application.

[The Xia]

When people talk about B.S. in the Kung Fu world, I usually hear about chi-blast demos, fraudulent lineages, etc. This should be addressed, but I think that schools teaching forms without application are far more common then the aforementioned crap.

[David Jamieson]

I haven't experienced forms without applications being shown with.

usually, shape comes first, then where to put the jin, then apps, then extrapolation in free sparring.

[The Xia]

I haven't experienced forms without applications being shown with.

Really? Never? I notice something about you. From your posts, it seems you have never seen a lousy school under a Kung Fu banner.

[Chief Fox]

My old school did/still does this.

I would ask my sifu what a certain move or technique was and I could tell that he was making it up right there on the spot.

Now there is something to this because some different moves can be interpreted differently by different people. He encouraged us to find the meaning of certain moves on our own but never made time for drilling or practicing these techniques.

This is actually one of the main reasons why I left my old school.

I'm of the opinon that techniques need to be drilled, drilled again and drilled some more. Only through constant drilling and practice can a technique be internalized and made your own.

My old sifu didn't see it this way. By his own admission, he just loves forms.

He would probably argue that there are so many similar techniques in forms that the repetition and eventual internalization of a technique would come from form practice.

Now I like forms and think that they are a major part of learning kung fu but they are not the only part. You have to practice individual techniques on a bag or dummy and then practice them with a partner and then hopefully you can make the jump to using them in a sparring situation. Again, just my opinion.

[MonkeyKingUSA]

I discourage my students from becoming "forms collectors". Many MA peeps want to run from style to style collecting forms, or are in a hurry to learn all the forms in one style.
Our style has only three empty hand forms. Each form teaches the same theories, yet each form builds on the previous in complexity.
I could teach a beginning student the moves of one of the forms in a month at the most. A skilled martial artist could pick up the first or second form in a single seminar. But making the theories a part of one's skill set takes quite a bit of time.
In my experience, the more highly skilled a person is, the more superficially they approach forms training.
Richard

[Royal Dragon]

I used to collect forms, now I only do the core set of my style, and that is it.

[Shaolin Dude]

I'm a forms collector. Right now I got 30 something forms in my arsenal. lol

[SPJ]

my friends used to call me a form-nator and form maker at the same time.

I like to make apart the forms and practice single move in several parts such as stance only, hand move only and then together.

a form terminator or taking them apart into bits one posture at a time.

I also like to combine some variants of the same posture and string 2 or 3 postures together as a practice set.

I make more short sequences out of the forms.

a form generator, sort of.

[MattEl]

--collecting forms without knowing their application

--very little to no sparring

--> how bout some schools in NYC that, don't, do this -- recommendations??