Do you look for forms or techniques outside of your style? Do you have to ask your Sifu if you are allowed to learn them first?
My Sifu doesn’t say “No.”, but he is strongly against doing so. I never really wanted to though.
How about all of you?
It prob depends on you rexperience. When you are new to the martial arts you will want to focus on learning what is at hand.
If you have a couple years in, external knowledge is good. Not everything works for everybody.
I constantly look at other arts and indeed 'brawlers’in the street. Some of those idiots fight better than any ‘martial artist’! I think you should learn from everything and anything. I try not to look at individual techniques, so much as the principles that underpin them.
My Sifu has studied three different arts in varying quantities, but teaches only one. However, he will constantly refer to other arts to illustrate points about his own. How can I really understand his point if I have no idea of the principles that the other arts work upon?
My teacher has no problem with people attending other classes either, in fact several of my brothers and sisters do. I think its dangerous to try and learn too much as you can get blinded by the profusion of techniques you are seeing. This could easily cause confusion and slow down your progression in all the styles you study.
Contradictory I think but, hohum.
Out of respect, I always ask my Sifu about other techniques or forms I’m interested in learning. Many times, he knows a variation and will show me. If I see something online, in a book, or on a video, I approach him with it and ask his opinions. If he hasn’t seen it before, and likes it, sometimes he will incoporate it our class lessons.
When it comes to forms, he is pretty open about us learning from qualified people he trusts. If he doesn’t know the person teaching it, or hasn’t heard anything good/bad about them, he may ask us not to practice it in class.
He still flies to Chicago once or twice a year to study with his teacher, and sometimes we can even make requests for certain forms we want to learn. Two years ago, he brought back a black tiger form from one of his trips because I asked to learn a tiger form and he didn’t know one at the time.
I wouldnt care if my sifu said I couldnt train outside. In fact, I would probably leave for good. I have recently been getting back into grappling practice, and it actually goes quite well with my kung fu.
As for outside practice, my sifu seems a little skeptical sometimes when I show new techniques Ive been working on and learning from books… I know book learning isnt near as good, but you have to be retarded to not understand Dr. Yang Jwing Ming’s comprehensive analysis of shaolin chin na. Or any other of his books for that matter.
all of the great masters who created the arts studied many styles.
all of the great masters who created the arts studied many styles.
True. But it’s common courtesy to ask your current Sifu if you can go learn from someone else. Just because he hasn’t taught you something, doesn’t mean he doesn’t know it. He may not feel you are ready.
Originally posted by Shaolin-Do
I wouldnt care if my sifu said I couldnt train outside. In fact, I would probably leave for good.
With that kind of attitude, your Sifu is better off without you.
GHD
He’s better off without his sifu. It is shaolin-d’oh after all.
Never really came up, as so far I never studied 2 styles at the same time.
OTOH, I tend to ask my Sifu about what answers our style has to say technique X or Y.
So far he has always had an answer and showed me how to modify/use on of our current techniques.
Some were real eye-openers too.
He teaches us the forms but we keep changing the techniques in the forms and adding stuff in as we progress., with new applications being shown as we progress.
What is a step now, becomes a jump in another application, etc.
Seeya.
P.S.: Sorry, got longer than intendet.
The only person who can tell you how to train is you. Your sifu makes suggestions, s/he cannot make demands. Train as you feel you should train. Trusting yourself is more valuable than obedience.
At my club most everyone seems to have some kind of previous martial arts experience anyway, so it’s no big deal as long as we’re not practicing the other stuff on his time(during class). If one of us ends up training too much stuff and gets spread too thin, it’s our own **** fault. It’ll hurt me more than it’ll ever hurt him, lol.
I see no problem with it at all. Don’t become a forms collector, but by all means, if another style has techniques that are beneficial to you, learn them.
But it’s common courtesy to ask your current Sifu if you can go learn from someone else.
In my (harsh) opinion, it’s none of your sifu’s business.
“In my (harsh) opinion, it’s none of your sifu’s business.”
I disagree. Especially, if you are a close door student.
In my (harsh) opinion, it’s none of your sifu’s business.
How would you feel if you spent an enormous amount of time training someone to do something, only to find out they were going somewhere else to learn the exact same thing?
Your Sifu invests a lot of time and energy in you; the least you can do is ask him before going somewhere else to learn. I know a number of instructors who will call the previous Sifu when a student comes in the door, to see if that Sifu objects to them teaching his/her former student.
It’s common courtesy. Plain and simple.
It is also common that the sifu himself has trained in more than one style. it is VERY common, in fact.
“Don’t do what I did… seek what I sought…”
Coach Sonnon
Originally posted by chen zhen
It is also common that the sifu himself has trained in more than one style. it is VERY common, in fact.
I would not say it was ‘very’ common on the whole. Rather I would say an exchange of techniques was common.
For those who learned other styles and or exchanged techniques…they showed courtesy and respect by asking the Sifu of their main style…the Sifu who took them from a rank beginner to an advanced practitioner in the style, if he would mind if they studied this ‘other’ style.
GHD
well, I mean like a tai chi instructor has often a history of training bagua/xingyi at the side, and a choy lee fut sifu can have practiced, say, hung gar at some time of his life. you will often hear this.