Forms or Not Forms

[Lucas]

Not a lot of CMA guys are competing in MMA, but some are.

It's a big world.

[Sal Canzonieri]

In specific, how come, and we have heard this a THOUSAND times here, when traditionalist's often spar, it looks NOTHING like the form practice. Which to me is fine, but then you get your own traditional crew crying out to the heavens saying that what is being put on display is not real kung fu.

Because you can think you know something, but unless you actually train with other people and deal with their attacks, you will revert to the most primitive stuff you know the most, for most people that is doing stupid stuff out of panic, for a really well trained all around person, they will shoot out what works best at the moment, and often it is the moves that you know the best and the most.

[lkfmdc]

Because you can think you know something, but unless you actually train with other people and deal with their attacks, you will revert to the most primitive stuff you know the most, for most people that is doing stupid stuff out of panic, for a really well trained all around person, they will shoot out what works best at the moment, and often it is the moves that you know the best and the most.

or, under realisitc conditions, only certain techniques actually work....

[Black Jack II]

or, under realisitc conditions, only certain techniques actually work....

lkfmdc just held down the correct and gave it a Dirty Sanchez.

Because you can think you know something, but unless you actually train with other people and deal with their attacks, you will revert to the most primitive stuff you know the most, for most people that is doing stupid stuff out of panic, for a really well trained all around person, they will shoot out what works best at the moment,

Performance training under pressure is one thing, but stating kata work is pressure testing is a different animal all together, which is in a nutshell kinda what this whole deal is about.

BTW, that primitive stuff is often where people find themselves when under violent stress. It's kinda hard to actually perform a intricate application when you have the added baggage of perceptual distortion and your emtional centers in the brain are running in the red.

Well, unless your idea of pressure testing is the more-is-better approach of LAARPING.

[Mano Mano]

Forms = a book
Series within the form = chapter
multiple of say 3 technigues in a seguence in the form = paragraph
multiple of 1-2 techniques in the form = words
techniques from the form out of the sequence = letters x,z,r etcetra.

The form if trained with repetition ingraines the letters into the unconscious to be used at your leisure. Dont train the form and the essence of the technique is lost.And the words or paragraphs or chapters and the book is lost. KC

Unfortunately some books are on par with Thomas the Tank Engine while other are on par with War & Peace.
Or if you if you like a book of nursery rhymes where the original meanings to the tales have been lost generations ago.

[sanjuro_ronin]

You can pressure test kata in sparring.

You will also find that forms does not look like Forms when you use it a practical way in a full contact sparring environment.

[RD'S Alias - 1A]

Performance training under pressure is one thing, but stating kata work is pressure testing is a different animal all together, which is in a nutshell kinda what this whole deal is about.

Reply]
Yeah, but who does that anymore? I have not heard anyone claim Kata work is pressure testing ever. Heck, it's got to be 7 or 8 years since I heard you can learn to fight by doing forms. No one says that stupid stuff anymore. It went out with the 90's.

Get back to the roots and do alive training and two man pressure testing is all you ever really hear now a'days.

or, under realisitc conditions, only certain techniques actually work....
lkfmdc just held down the correct and gave it a Dirty Sanchez.


Reply]
Well, here is the thing. all of the techniques work just fine (not counting sets dressed up for show). The thing is, is that they were designed to be used in situations not really seen in the ring today. For example, many sets contain some weapons techniques woven into the empty hand set. they are generally not done with the weapon as they are meant as reminders. You have to take them out of the form and practice them with the weapon in hand to really learn how to use them.

Last I checked, swords were not allowed in the UFC....so the techniques *Work* just fine, but are just not applicable to the ring environment.

[rogue]

Because you can think you know something, but unless you actually train with other people and deal with their attacks, you will revert to the most primitive stuff you know the most, for most people that is doing stupid stuff out of panic, for a really well trained all around person, they will shoot out what works best at the moment, and often it is the moves that you know the best and the most.

And how far you revert will be determined by your comfort zone. If you don't have a lot of experience or don't practice with enough stress then your skills will deteriorate further than someone who does.

[Christopher M]

In case I wasn't clear, the person who was going to host the seminar was very nice, very helpful and they patiently discussed stuff with me. I have no complaints. I was very welcome to attend, I just felt that it wasn't going to "work" for me. Again, no offense was intended to anyone involved

Aha... I thought you meant you were looking to host a seminar on some topic yourself. You're right that there's not much point in doing a seminar on exercises you don't normally do and aren't going to keep up afterwards. Although, it can be interesting to do these seminars just to get a feeling for the skill these guys have. It's a bit peculiar to see the amount of energy people spend online speculating and debating about this stuff but who never have any interest in checking it out to actually feel for themselves. (In general, I mean; I'm not saying that's the case with you.) CXW and the other big Chen style names definitely have skill with a body method you can appreciate regardless of your style.

[Christopher M]

How do you know one method is any better than the other, in terms of modern wushu as you just stated and something people claim comes from a martial enviroment? ... How does martial form work fall into a method of testing, to determine what is "right" and what is "wrong".

Part of the problem in these discussions is that there's more than one understanding in the TCMA about what form work entails and what it's for, so it can be difficult to generalize. There's a lot of variety among the TCMAs. What I have mostly been taught is that form work is for primarily for training body use, and in that sense is more of an analog to weight lifting than to application work. This makes sense to me when you consider the notion of specificity of training and what form work actually is: quite simply, it is moving and so we expect it to teach you something about moving. The utility of the skills learnt in form work naturally have to be integrated with a complete approach to martial training, which must include various intensities of partner work to test their effects in a way which would be familiar to any martial artist. This is really the difference between qigong and martial arts. People get scared of by the 'qi' in 'qigong', but really qigong can be understood simply as a wide variety of body and/or mind exercises (they run the gamut from things that would be indistinguishable from weight lifting to things that would be indistinguishable from meditation). Martial arts, at least in the neijia sense, can be considered qigongs that have been integrated with a curriculum for training martial skills. Of course, if you don't practice the rest of that curriculum, it makes sense to say that really you are just practicing qigong, not martial arts.

[Sal Canzonieri]

I still think that this guy is the greatest:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CR-7E5xXs4c#GU5U2spHI_4

He truly transcended the forms he practiced by completely assimilating them into his movements making him go beyond the form into totally natural self defense movement.

Who need Modern MA when you can have Timeless MA.

[wiz cool c]

I think forms are very important for TCM for many reasons. It make your style an art. If this aspect doesn't interest you then you would be better off doing boxing or wrestling. Also it has many important training values.

I use forms as a form of cardio exercise. They also condition your body in a special way specific and unique to your style. If you want to fight with it you need to do partner work and sparring as well.

[Sal Canzonieri]

or, under realisitc conditions, only certain techniques actually work....

Honestly, lets be real serious for a minute, I have been able to use all my moves from forms in realistic circumstance applications.
But that's due to my training that old school way.
I don't think it is the movement in forms, they are neutral, it is the person.
Most people just don't know how to apply movements.
The fact is that in forms what might look like a specific thing, like a punch or kick or whatever, when done in realistic type of applications, function differently from what they "look" like.

That's my experience and my opinion. When people haven't seen this, I have shown them applications that they never suspected and they accept this.

I know you believe a punch is a punch in a form, but I don't, none of the old timers, especially people over 70-80 have ever said anything but the opposite to me.
Only "do the movements correct" and you will see that "a punch is not a punch and a kick is not a kick".

Well, I'd love to do a seminar on this. I think it would be a beneficial thing.

[sanjuro_ronin]

Honestly, lets be real serious for a minute, I have been able to use all my moves from forms in realistic circumstance applications.
But that's due to my training that old school way.
I don't think it is the movement in forms, they are neutral, it is the person.
Most people just don't know how to apply movements.
The fact is that in forms what might look like a specific thing, like a punch or kick or whatever, when done in realistic type of applications, function differently from what they "look" like.

That's my experience and my opinion. When people haven't seen this, I have shown them applications that they never suspected and they accept this.

I know you believe a punch is a punch in a form, but I don't, none of the old timers, especially people over 70-80 have ever said anything but the opposite to me.
Only "do the movements correct" and you will see that "a punch is not a punch and a kick is not a kick".

Well, I'd love to do a seminar on this. I think it would be a beneficial thing.

One thing I have learned from forms "bunkai" and "himitsu" is that they are highly subject to interpretation.
In some cases its almost a case of making the form look like a given sequence rather than the other way around.

[Sal Canzonieri]

One thing I have learned from forms "bunkai" and "himitsu" is that they are highly subject to interpretation.
In some cases its almost a case of making the form look like a given sequence rather than the other way around.

Have someone grab your wrists really tight and then do those forms, see what happens.

Did you ever read the book "Barefoot Zen" ? if not, you can learn a lot from what he says in the book.