Dear all,
How do you reproduce a form you have just learnt after watching the instructor performed only a few times in a seminar. I can not do it at the moment, so I need your help. Which part of the body do you watch, when the instructor is demonstrating the form?
I know good dancers can reproduce 70 - 80% of a dance routine after watching it only once. How do they do it?
Thank you
key thing is to pay close close close attention…don’t watch just one thing, spread your vision out and soak in the whole picture.
if you focus only on hands, you miss the feet. vice versa.
its easier if you already know the basics of the system, but if you are a complete newbie, take you time.
Footwork first! 
Not to tear this thread down and burn the house to the ground (no, not me! 
not me!) LOL
but anyway, I think this is one of the problems, it isn’t easy to just “copy” movement for many. I know that guys like Lama Pai Sifu, CJurakPT, Steve Ventura and I would watch CTS and learn by imitation. We got very good at it. LOL I remember when YC Wong came to NYC and taught the first Pek Gwa set to us. We picked it up in 20 minutes, he was sort of amazed saying it usually takes an all day seminar to get people to learn it, then he wanted to know if he could teach something else to make up for such a short seminar (YC Wong is a very good teacher)
some people learn very fast, some are thinkers who slow down the whole process.
but i’ve picked up whole forms in a day as well.
but we’ve also probably also seen someone who takes a day to learn how to execture a single technique
(trying to teach “Lin Waan Dau Fu” used to cause me to pound my head into the wall in the old days)
I would agree with Frank take in the whole picture & don’t let people distract you, sometimes you get people commenting on what you are watching is being demonstrated.
[QUOTE=Hitman;812375]Dear all,
How do you reproduce a form you have just learnt after watching the instructor performed only a few times in a seminar. I can not do it at the moment, so I need your help. Which part of the body do you watch, when the instructor is demonstrating the form?
I know good dancers can reproduce 70 - 80% of a dance routine after watching it only once. How do they do it?
Thank you[/QUOTE]
The key is already having the individual movements down pat. You do enough dancing, learn enough routines, you will have a very nice repertoire. Forms are a lot like dancing in this respect. The better your repertoire, the easier it is to pick up new forms…
This does not mean you can’t learn a lot from forms, but they are what they are.
For me it has to do with the skill of the student attending the seminar and the material being presented. Kind of hard to teach a beginner a set that is more complicated then the material that they are working on.
yeah David, I remember that session with YC. Actually you did the same thing to him on the 2nd Pekkwa set as well. I think it was even shorter then the 1st one. Did you ever pick up the 3rd?
Having a teacher like CTS makes you either a great student or …
IMHO, the thing to focus on at a forms seminar is the invisible man. By that I mean get a feel for what he’s doing with the moves rather than trying to remember abstract movements.
It’s much easier to remember the moves as “grab the arm, step in and twist opponent over right leg” than “hold left hand with fingers curved, move right leg forward and turn to the left while straightening the right leg”.
The details will be filled in when the individual moves are tried later on with a partner.
Something like that.
haha, clf is also a good test on your coordination too!
my biggest headache is teaching complete newbies. not only do i have to teach them how to strike properly, i have to slow it all down for those who take more time to learn something than the others.
however, in my lineage, with both GGM Jew Leong, and my sifu, you were shown a technique once, twice, maybe three times…after that you were on your own.
learning that way, keeps your eyes and mind sharp. learning to take in the whole picture is a very good thing for learning.
unfortunately, when im showing my students a technique, they’re too busy staring at girls jogging in the park. 
yao sing, i agree with you on that, but still, you have those who just stare and wonder what are you doing that for again?
[QUOTE=ngokfei;812395]
yeah David, I remember that session with YC. Actually you did the same thing to him on the 2nd Pekkwa set as well. I think it was even shorter then the 1st one. Did you ever pick up the 3rd?
[/QUOTE]
yeah, but the 2nd time he was already ready for the shock
He showed me his senior student doing the 3rd set on video and showed me the opening, I was supposed to go out to San Francisco and finish up and do some other stuff, but I think that was the year I got divorced and everything got sort of messy
Chan Tai San used to say something to the effect that “I gave it to you, why did you give it back” (ie I just showed it to you, how did you forget it already?). He wasn’t the most patient guy (Ngok Fei probably can testify to that, was around enough)
[QUOTE=Hitman;812375]Dear all,
How do you reproduce a form you have just learnt after watching the instructor performed only a few times in a seminar. I can not do it at the moment, so I need your help. Which part of the body do you watch, when the instructor is demonstrating the form?
I know good dancers can reproduce 70 - 80% of a dance routine after watching it only once. How do they do it?
Thank you[/QUOTE]
Just do the parts you remember and make up the rest. It will have the same level of effectiveness.
[QUOTE=Knifefighter;812412]Just do the parts you remember and make up the rest. It will have the same level of effectiveness.[/QUOTE]
as soon as I saw Knifefighter posted on this thread, I knew it was going to be something like this 
but there are not too many people that i know that have totally given up on forms.
when you learn the system you can choose to learn forms, but if fighting in the ring, or in the street, you just learn techniques and schit.
i’m all for fighting, but i am one who understands the difference between combative training techniques, as opposed to learning forms.
forms has their place.
[QUOTE=hskwarrior;812419]
but there are not too many people that i know that have totally given up on forms.
[/QUOTE]
Letting go of something you have spent a lot of time doing is hard. And being part of the “mo lum” is an emotional attachement, and a sentimental one.
Dropping like 10 to 15 years of your life is hard, it’s like losing your religion
But because I sent hours trying to teach a person to do “lin waan dau fu” so they could go on with the rest of the form (as opposed to even just doing the form!) I eventually came to the conclusion that it’s a terrible waste of time
I also think that forms today are terribly bogged down with outdated and or never were useful “fluff”…
Doing what I do today, people see functional skills in a few months, not years, that makes me (and them) happy…
I think people go way too deep into the forms and then start finding stuff that was never intended to have the meaning they attribute to it. That’s where the fluff comes into the equation.
A link may have been added just for a convenient way to get from move “A” to move “B” and now everyone is digging for gold in every little wrist flick. I have a feeling when some of these forms were created they were just throwing moves together and not meticulously inserting hidden knowledge and apps.
Get the gist of what the forms is trying to convey, get the general movements and if you understand the apps then do them the same as they are done with an opponent. Don’t read more into it than what you can get to work.
Well, I feel that as long as you get the intent of the seminar, you’re good. For example, if a form is going over blocking, and the overall lesson was moving and blocking (basic, just an example), then while you might not recall the 120 move form taught over the course of a single hour, you understand what the instructor was trying to teach you.