Kahp Choih Video

[Lama Pai Sifu]

Another one....

Many styles use Kahp..Lama's take on it is much different.

Remember this; Lama Pai was most likely the style that first developed Kahp. I say most likely because we don't have written proof, but it is one of the core tech of our style and it is coupled with other similiar strikes of the same type.

Plus we all know the "Ten Tigers" story, Wong Yan Lum was the #1 guy, Wong Fei Hung's Dad and other key people shared info with each other. As Wong was obviously Kick Ass, many of his tech were assimiliated (borg reference) into the other styles.

Anyway, here it is.

Kahp Choih

Enjoy.

[Xiao3 Meng4]

Cool, reminds me of Wing Chun's Ginger fist.

You've got great material, good quality recording equipment, and a very watchable presentation style, especially in terms of your "casual" clips.

With a bit of planning, you guys could not only have your own DVD series, you could have your own TV show a la OCC or LA ink! Maybe follow a new student through the curriculum, or a senior student through the seminar/tournament circuit... throw in a tasty bit of philosophical application to the street, and voila!

Regardless, congrats and good luck on your future endeavours.

[TenTigers]

Another one....

Plus we all know the "Ten Tigers" story,
Enjoy.

OOOOOHHHHHH NO YA DON'T!!!
You're not draggin ME into this!

[TenTigers]

but...since I'm here...
nice vids-keep'em coming
In actuality, we throw the cup choy pretty much the same.
In watching your video, you actually were ending up in bow stance on each and every cup choy. The direction of your stance in relation to the opponent was angled, but the stance was the same.
I think it has to be, if you want to use your waist to twist as you have demonstrated.
We also slide out with the rear leg to angle ourselves off from the opponent's center and attack the blindside with cup, as well as with other strikes-when that is the desired target,

so we are actually very much in agreement.

We also use the cup choy "straight down broadway" which is probably the application you were referring to.

I think the problem arises when we look at the forms in Hung-Ga. Since there are only three-four pillar forms,depending on lineage, techniques are more or less shown as concepts, more like topics of interest to be brought up in conversation.
Cup choy being one such topic.

yeah, I also am not a big fan of the cup choy to the floor method I have seen some people do.

Like I said, I think the video was very well done, and you should continue putting it out there.
People need to see what Gung-Fu looks like.

[Vash]

I'm going to echo XM here and say hell yes to a few dvds. I do karate and I'm captivated by your presentations. Looking forward to your claw/fist strengthening dvd!

[Lama Pai Sifu]

Thank you my very much. I will be doing some some.

[cjurakpt]

so, having had a chance to chew over my having spent some time w/si-hing Mike, a few thoughts...

I think one thing that is interesting about how kahp choih occurs when "borrowed" by styles other than lama, is that you see the difference in terms of what a technique looks like / how it's used in context of an overall approach versus when transferred in and of itself;

in other words, in Lama, kahp does not exist in a vacuum, and as such the potential for doing it "incorrectly" is simply not an option - that is, it is predicated by what techniques come before it and after it; so you have the paired bin / kahp combo: if you do bin (what I do in the vid before throwing the kahp) first, there is really almost no way that you can end up doing kahp any other way than the way lama does it - the momentum that bin initiates and which kahp takes advantage of, by necessity has to terminate in a "side-bow" stance; if you tried it any other way, it would just feel wrong; OTOH, if the lead-in technique was more linear, then you could conceivably do a kahp w/less rotation - but once you do it "the lama way" (), you understand why that is preferable to other approaches, IMPE; perhaps what is being suggested here, is that instead of looking at kahp as a single technique, we really need to look at bin / kahp as a single concept, at least initially, because of how they operate together - then, once having understood this, one can isolate the component parts and use them as needed, but never completely alone - if you look at how Mike uses kahp in the vid, you will "see" that even though he doesn't throw a bin first, his core body mechanics function as if he did - had we not learned / practiced bin / kahp as a pair, we would look very different throwing kahp alone (this follows the general concept of large to small: as a beginner, we do things very big, large circles; as we become proficient and move towards mastery, the circles get smaller, and, dare i say it, more "internal" :); so if someone from another system appropriated kahp based on observing how a master practitioner used it, he might have not gotten exactly how important the coupling with bin was...

similarly, what follows kahp in many cases is the combination fan po / paoh (ok Mike, topic for next vid here): not surprisingly, this combo takes whatever momentum is "left over" from kahp and redirects it along the arc of the sphere that conserves it maximally - meaning that it not only tries to optimize the continuity of flow, it also helps prevent injury to the body during practice (in case you didn't notice, kahp looks an awful lot like a baseball pitch, and carries with it similar risks of rotator cuff trauma over time if done incorrectly - following with fan po / pauh is a "remedy" to the forces acting on the RTC); also, in a way, fan po / paoh sort of acknowledges the inherent dangers of a kahp "gone bad", for example, one that has been evaded, and assuming that having done so the opponent would try to quickly close the distance: so the fan po / pao helps to change your line to evade, and also to create a counter-attack based on a charging opponent (again, hard to talk about it, easier to see...)

interesting to think about the lama like this after a hiatus of some time...

[TenTigers]

I really like the evade concept in Lama/Hop-Ga.
I believe that is the main difference between how Lama uses its techniques, and how Lama influenced styles might use them.
The structure may be the same, but the body angling,shifting and most especially, the footwork is what sets it apart.

My personal opinion, (and I might be completely alone in this) is that it was originally taught, but over the years was forgotten. As we've discussed, priorities and emphasis has changed in TCMA over the past several generations-but that's another topic.

The reason I believe that it was originally taught is the fact that I just find it hard to believe that a the people who researched and developed such arts as Hung-Ga, Choy Li Fut, Jow-Ga, etc would place such care and time into their art and then just say, "Oh, let's just throw these punches too," and ignore the angles, set-ups, follow ups, footwork, etc that make them so effective.

So, that being said, a video on footwork, angling, and evasion would be interesting. (hint-hint)

[Lama Pai Sifu]

In watching your video, you actually were ending up in bow stance on each and every cup choy. The direction of your stance in relation to the opponent was angled, but the stance was the same.
I think it has to be, if you want to use your waist to twist as you have demonstrated.
We also slide out with the rear leg to angle ourselves off from the opponent's center and attack the blindside with cup, as well as with other strikes-when that is the desired target,

I'm not saying it's NOT a bow stance, we just use a side one more than a forward one. We don't align our hips and shoulders with our target (at least with our Meteor Fists). Structurally, it's the same stance, but the direction we are facing when we strike is just different from most.

[cjurakpt]

I believe that is the main difference between how Lama uses its techniques, and how Lama influenced styles might use them.
The structure may be the same, but the body angling,shifting and most especially, the footwork is what sets it apart.
My personal opinion, (and I might be completely alone in this) is that it was originally taught, but over the years was forgotten. As we've discussed, priorities and emphasis has changed in TCMA over the past several generations-but that's another topic.
The reason I believe that it was originally taught is the fact that I just find it hard to believe that a the people who researched and developed such arts as Hung-Ga, Choy Li Fut, Jow-Ga, etc would place such care and time into their art and then just say, "Oh, let's just throw these punches too," and ignore the angles, set-ups, follow ups, footwork, etc that make them so effective.

so, it either got passed down correctly but was then forgotten or it was passed down incorrectly / incompletely (either by situation of design)

let's consider those possibilities in one specific context, that is WYL as a likely node of transmission given his notoriety and proximity, specifically in terms of how did his understanding of lama might have been transmitted to other members of the GDSF, who were as heads of respective styles in a position to formally influence the evolution of their particular styles; first off, it's obviously dependent on how openly WYL shared what he knew: if he was completely forthcoming in terms of sharing the lama principles w/he GDSF "brothers", then your theory of those particular attributes getting lost over time is reasonable to some degree, although arguably that would then show up in modern-day as different branches doing it differently (the idea being that, reasonably, not everyone would have "forgotten" the original way to do it);

there are some other ideas to consider: first off, maybe WLY wasn't talking much at all; and maybe it wasn't just him: although the GDSF may have joined forces in order to achieve a common set of political agendas, that may have been it as far as interaction: even though they were ideologically aligned, given the culture of TCMA secrecy, would that alliance necesarilly overruled that long history? it would be like the libertarians and greens getting together because they are anti-GWB, but as far as sharing mailing lists, no dice - of course, in the course of the GDSF's alliance, info may have been gleaned informally (either from watching each other practice, touching hands or observing real / challenge fights); which could explain why some aspects were lost and some retained, specifically the ones that visually would be easier to "get" - a large arcing fist strike would tend to lead the eye along the path of the fist technique, which means less emphasis on the footwork, which could have been missed, and then re-engineered in context of the observer's own style; couple that with the TCMA penchant for not asking questions (so as not to appear ignorant), it's not unreasonable that the technique morphed a bit...

but anyway, it's all conjecture, I certainly wouldn't stake my life savings on it...

[Lama Pai Sifu]

Hey man,...it's oral transmission. Who really knows what they were doing a hundred years ago.

Now we have video. We have photographs and books. We can document and retain. Other than hearing about the old days, albeit that some of us had very old teachers who could tell us about the old days first hand, we will just never know. It's all speculation.

Oh, new staff clip is up.

[TenTigers]

agreed. At this point, the hows and whys are moot.
So...how about some footwork vids? Show us how the Lama P'ai utilizes footwork (one of their strongpoints-at least according to Micheal Staples' books-whatever happened to him?) to make the meteor strikes more effective.

[Lama Pai Sifu]

agreed. At this point, the hows and whys are moot.
So...how about some footwork vids? Show us how the Lama P'ai utilizes footwork (one of their strongpoints-at least according to Micheal Staples' books-whatever happened to him?) to make the meteor strikes more effective.

Aw, c'mon. Not putting everything out there for free, he he he

[cjurakpt]

it's all conjecture

It's all speculation.

agreed

a moment of silence, please, on this rare occasion of across-the-board consensus on KFMF...

Aw, c'mon. Not putting everything out there for free, he he he

really, next thing you know, everyone will be asking for the Weasel in Lycra form...

[TenTigers]

If you followed my thread, "Traditional or Chop Suey,"
I was actually putting out feelers, trying to see where people's heads were at.

I have, in the past, shared my explorations into various interpetations of Hung-Ga techniques on another southern fist board(which shall remain nameless).

I also recieved alot of flak from this.

Mostly coming from people who felt they were big, know-it-alls, higher up on the Hung Family totem pole, because their Sifu was so-and-so.

They would respond with all sorts of drek,
such as"Hung-Ga has different engines," (wtf is an engine in Gung-Fu?)
or "We don't play it that way, so it's not real Hung-Ga.."
(yeah, Homey don't play dat!)

The bottom line is, after speaking with people who are far more qualified, I made a (not so startling) discovery-

Back in the day, Sifus used to get together on a regular basis and compare and exchange techniques.
If someone had a technique or skill that you liked, you simply asked him for it, and it went into your repitoire.
There was no "Oh, we don't do it like that," type of mentality.
Absorb what is useful.(sound familiar?)

That is how Gung-Fu grows,develops, and evolves.

It is only recently, especially with westerners,
who are so concerned with their so-called purity of their system,
trying to be more traditional and more Chinese than the Chinese- that evolution in TCMA has come to a screeching halt.

Always bear in mind: If your Gung-Fu is not growing and evolving, then it is stagnant, and dead.