Is Shaolin-Do for real?

[Judge Pen]

Originally Posted by Royal Dragon

Wow, you guys learn ALOT of forms!! How do you have time to get anything more than the outside shell of them?

*Wipes the sarcasm off of the computer screen.*

I start with the shell, but eventually I'll get to the tootsie-roll center.

[lxtruong]

Originally Posted by Royal Dragon

Wow, you guys learn ALOT of forms!! How do you have time to get anything more than the outside shell of them?

"Wow, you guys read ALOT of books!! How do you have time to get anything more than the outside shell of them?"

[chud]

I can't believe I actually read all 95 pages of this thread. It's time I'll never get back, but at the same time I just couldn't stop. Anyway, after having read the whole thing it seems to me that we can agree on a few things:

1.) Starchaser mixes some mean music.

2.) Jonie Uniforms sells some quality uniforms.

3.) ShaolinDo teaches too many forms too quickly. However despite that there are some pretty cool people who train in it, and it is what it is, so it's probably pointless to debate any of the other points because we'll just never agree.

[Ou Ji]

NNNNOOOOO!!!!!

Save the conclusions for page 100.

[Brad]

"Wow, you guys read ALOT of books!! How do you have time to get anything more than the outside shell of them?"

Most people don't Reading a book on medicine doesn't make one a doctor... of course reading books and practicing kungfu aren't the same, so it's kind of a silly arguement anyway

BTW, about learning lots of forms... I practiced longfist basics for about 4 years with little form work. It takes me about 30 minutes to commit a minute long form to memory now. I admit, I do pick things up fairly quickly compared to a lot of people, but I know I'm not the only one. As most have seen from the vids, SD pretty much follows the same basics whether it's drunken, monkey, mantis, chang quan, taiji, etc. It wouldn't be too unreasonable to memorize 800 to 900 or so forms, especially if you make notes, and practice them all with esentially the same physical basics.

[MasterKiller]

Just because you 'could' doesn't mean you 'should'.

[Brad]

True...

[kwaichang]

Why not learn the forms if they are here to learn ???? KC

[MasterKiller]

Originally Posted by kwaichang

Why not learn the forms if they are here to learn ???? KC

Well, let's say you learn something like 200 open hand forms.

How often do you get a chance to practice each form? If you do 10 forms a day, it would take you 20 days to cycle through all your forms. So, every year you would perform each form maybe 14 or 15 times. And that's if you do them every day, 365 days a year.

I have 10 open-hand forms that I maintain. In that same amount of time, I can do each form 365 times.

In ten years, I would have performed each of my sets 3,650 times, while you may have performed each set 140 to 150 times.

Everything else being equal, who do you think will have more indepth knowledge of their forms?

[Judge Pen]

Bah, math.

At best I only keep 15 forms up to speed. The rest are pieces that can be put together if I need to. So I pick the 10 to 15 that I really like and I have them as well as I can.

[lxtruong]

Let's go back to the book analogy:

Person A reads one book a week, at approximately 250 pages per book. That's 13,000 pages of book a year.

Person B reads one book a year, but rereads the same book every week. That's 250 pages of book per year.

At the end of the year, who will have more in-depth knowledge of their respective material? Obviously Person B, who would probably be able to recite the book back by heart.

But who would have a wider overall BREATH of knowledge? I would contend that is Person A, who is likely (we assume) have read books of varying subject matter and such.

Transfer this analogy to forms. Obviously Person A with 200 forms won't be able to practice their forms as often as Person B. More likely the case will be that Person A will have a set of forms that are their favorite (10 seems like a reasonable number) that s/he will practice often (although still less often than Person B would from their forms).

However, even if Person A only retains a small fraction of the concepts from the other forms, I would maintain that with the same amount of hard work Person A would not be far behind Person B, with the additional benefit of having gained concepts from various (presumably different) sources.

[sean_stonehart]

Originally Posted by lxtruong

However, even if Person A only retains a small fraction of the concepts from the other forms, I would maintain that with the same amount of hard work Person A would not be far behind Person B, with the additional benefit of having gained concepts from various (presumably different) sources.

I would maintain that they can not. You can't reasonably presume to think if you do "a little of this, a little of that, a little of the other" with no relationship between concepts, mechanics, theories & structures, you would be as proficient as a person who practices a single system, with a single set of concepts, mechanics, theories & structure.

Let's increase that to say... 2 or 3 systems total. If you are working similar concepts, mechanics, theories & structures, then interchanging ideas, skills, techniques isn't a big deal, provided the practice is structured, consistant & maintainable as MK & JP both indiciated. Even if the extra system or 2 are dissimilar, as long as the amount to practice & quality time spent on each is worthwhile, structured, consistant & maintainable then it's doable, but stetched at this point to maintain the proper foundations for them.

However if you do "2 of this, 4 of these, 1 big one of this, a smidge here, a smidge there, etc..." with no foundations or formal proper training in a single one, what have you got?? A bunch of pages with squigglies on them that you still can't understand. You can read them on the surface for sure, but the foundation to understand what's written just isn't there.

[Judge Pen]

Well the nice thing about having a wide range of material to chose from is that I can choose where I want to focus my training (or it can chose me based on my body type). As much as I love northern long-fist, I'm not as suited to it as I am in other systems. If all I had to learn was nothern sets, then I would be better at them, but never as good as I could be in another system. But I can sample another system and decide it suits me better and focus my training in those areas. I still learn the northern material, but it isn't my ideal. What it does is force me beyond my range of comfortablness. My footwork is better, I mave better, but I still don't do those forms justice. But they still help me and help thge material that does suit me be better also.

[kwaichang]

Lets suppose I have 70 forms learned and I practice 60 of them I personally do a 2- 3 a dayer training to maintain my forms and try to do more than scratch the surface.
So with 60 forms trained on 2x / wk = 120 over a 6 day period that means i will have done 20 forms a day that is 10 in the am and 10 in the pm if you divide them equally. 60 forms at an avg of 35 moves each which some have far more such as Long Fist , Hua's etc. will = 2100 "moves" a day that I perform x 6 to 7 days / wk =12600 moves. With the infinite possibilities of attack lets suppose over a ten year period I did this only 300 days per year that = 630,000 moves in one partial year that I can use to defend my self. The numbers speak for them selves and since some moves are variations of others there is replication but whether you hit someone with a palm or a fist doesnt matter. I personally feel that with 630,000 moves over a 10 year period gives me a better chance of responding appropriately as you are training the Neural Pathways to respond w/o conscious thought not to mention thje conditioning aspect. Also do not forget that repetitive movement in the same plane of movement increases the chance of over training injury thus you cant train and are not as good as you could be! KC

[Golden Tiger]

Ok, if I have 24 beers drink 12 and give 2 away but bum 3 more then have a shot of tekillya then go to bed, I still will have as big a headache as I got trying to decipher all that math.

First, what we learned was crap. Then it was too much crap. Then it was still too much crap but we just weren't digging deep enough into the crap to know that it was crap. Lord have mercy! I never would have imagined prior to the age of the message board just how bad I was.

Yes, we have too many forms. Way too many IMHO. But like JP eluded to, it does allow one to find something that fits them and gives them the chance to learn it well. I see it like this...every new form I learn, there will be one or two moves that make me go "Wow, I never thought of doing it that way". Then I take those two moves and incorporate them into my knowledge base and voila, I am two moves better.

As for training deep into just one thing....thats kinda like selective breeding. It works for horse bloodlines but not too well for people. Heck, look at Eastern Ky! (sorry but I lived there for a time so I can talk about them). And to be honest, mutts make the best (and sometimes meanest) dogs.

JP: Vid Mail