I know you guys make money off selling videos. But whenever I here someone thinking they actually learned a form off of one. It makes me laugh. Especially people with no prior training.
People that are in my class still do the form wrong after years and they are learning it first hand. They think their technique is correct when that couldn’t be further from the truth. Sifu corrects them all the time. 2 seconds later they haven’t changed. They just don’t get it.
Since I have 5 dedicated years of training under my belt. I could probably mimic forms off of videos pretty well. That doesn’t mean I am doing it correctly. It just would be an empty frame of what it really should be.
After 5 years, you should be able to watch a form and deconstruct it yourself. So what if your foot is at 90° instead of 85°. Examine the moves and extract the meaning.
he’s go a point mortal. you must not go to class too much. we should train privately with shaolinmasterkiller. Maybe he could teach us the applications to the da lohan form.
I already got the apps from the video. Now I can teach the form in level 3 with the chinna I learned in the book.
I got my green sash in Hung gar through my video tutelage.
mortal,
which tapes were those. i’ve been looking for a good hung gar video.
Agree with Gene - do you not think that if Wong Fei Hung (insert name of any other martial hero from the past) was around today that he wouldn’t make full use of every available resource - video, DVD, book, internet. Of course he would - the world has moved on. Traditionalists should not lose sight of the fact that the oldest tradition is change…
Also mostly agree with ninja/mortal - of course, you cannot and should not “learn” a form solely from video, especially if you are a novice, and then claim that you know kung fu. However, if, as Masterkiller says, you have some years of good experience from a sifu then why can’t you deconstruct a form from video and self-correct? You should have enough bulbs in the cupboard to make sure the light comes on.
There is a lot to be said for the student who seeks out every available source of information, including that from his sifu, to advance. If this means a student “learning” a form on his own from video and then seeking correction/improvement from a knowledgeable Sifu then this, to me, is better than a dull minded student who shows no real interest from one lesson to the next.
Of course there is the danger of learning too much to soon and that is where personal judgement and control must step in but we are in an information age and should make full use of it to advance us.
However, as was said - practice is the key. Is someone who learns a form off a video and practices 100 times a day any worse than someone who learns from a sifu and practices once a week?
I’m sure WFH would be stocking up from MartialArtsMart as we type…
mortal vs. money
Sure we make money of videos, but it’s not like that’s a bad thing. There is an economy to the martial arts - we need money, everyone needs money. It’s not like we’re making so much money that we’re not as good as you (although personally, I kinda wish we were 
). Consider that we lose money on this forum (and many other endevours) it’s a constant battle to make moeny in the martial arts. Try it, if you don’t beleive me.
However, back OT, I think you’ve nailed the misconception on the head when you said:
Especially people with no prior training.
Everyone has to start somewhere. The biggest man you ever did see was once a baby. I would hope that most people start with a real live flesh & blood master. In fact, legally, we have to say this because of liability (which means people who have no common sense are protected by the law here). I’ve never personally learned a form from a video or a book, but I’ve got too many forms now. I’m just looking for moves, concepts, ideas, etc. Sometimes I’ll see something in someone else’s form that I can apply to my own, and that I can easily lift off video. It means we all live in a very exciting time for the martial arts, because so much is at our disposal in terms of different media and ways to do this kind of research.
never Gene?? Really …you have never seen some thing/form/style /person on video /dvd/vcd and pulled aprt there form or application and made adjustments as results? Crazy…
AND THIS FOLKS IS WHY GENE IS OUR HERO !!!
lol at ninja…
Originally posted by ninja
…QIGONG FORMS ARE ONLY WHAT THEY DO BEFORE THEY BREAK A HOLLOW STICK THEIR LEG OR HEAD…
I wish ours were hollow, lol…found out the hard way that sh it hurts when we did the Discovery channel.
Not as bad as when I got whacked with a baseball bat but I pussied out midstrike just hitting myself to “see.” A lot of those sticks are made of hemlock so don’t eat them, heh heh heh.
Qigong forms in the Olympics?
snnnnnoooooooooooooooooooooooooooze…maybe if they got everybody dressed up in monster costumes and then had space robots hit them with foam meteors while the monsters did Yi Jin Jing that would be worth watching.