How many forms do you need?
It depends on your goals.
If your goal is perfection of the mind, body, and spirit, the more the merrier.
If your goal is combat alone, you don’t need any.
Eric Hunstad
www.OldSchoolKungFuNow.com
I like this combo very much - hook punch, turn back/spin kick, back fist.
http://img138.imageshack.us/img138/2049/2706201092556new.gif
It’s not in any of the forms that I know. Sometime I wonder whether we should try to take combo out of the forms, or just create combo by using our “common sense”.
“My no forms would beat your many forms like an out of work h00ker”
Do I detect an inappropriate aura of arrogance in these words?
That’s a pretty strong statement towards someone you’ve never met before.
Unless you are either the “Jon Funk is a fraud” Troll or the “Nam Anh” Troll in disguise?:rolleyes: (unless maybe they are the same person).
If you look at okinawan karate (more documenation and a little more recent than many kung fu styles) you will see that originally, instructors only had 1 or 2 forms/kata. The rest was two person drills and lots of basics. The forms/katas were a system in and of itself.
If you wanted to learn more skills in an area, you would go to that instructor and learn those skills and a form/kata that emphasized those skills. Eventually instructors started to collect those forms/katas to preserve them.
Gichin Funakoshi attempted to collect many of the forms from Shuri-Te and preserve and pass them on. Mabuni collected all of the shuri-te and naha-te forms and put them in his style (around 50 kata). Some of these forms are VERY close to each other and the material is found in other places, do you really need to incorporate them? Nope, the material is already in there and the only reason is to give students more busy work to keep them happy.
I think the commercialization of the martial arts is what lead to the more is better. It gives someone tons of material to keep working on and coming back for more. Most people would rather keep learning new stuff than working on what they have to master it. Add to the fact that not everyone studies a martial art to be a fighter and you keep adding stuff for them to practice.
I think also, some forms are redundant, in that they are replaced by other forms later on in the system. I have heard of some kung fu styles that a beginner would learn a certain form, and then at the intermediate level would learn a very similiar form with some more advanced principles/concepts to it. Then finally, a third form would be learned with more additional material. So, you would have in this case 3 forms even though by the advanced level you would drop the first two in practice since the lessons are replicated.
[QUOTE=YouKnowWho;1039450]I like this combo very much - hook punch, turn back/spin kick, back fist.
http://img138.imageshack.us/img138/2049/2706201092556new.gif
It’s not in any of the forms that I know. Sometime I wonder whether we should try to take combo out of the forms, or just create combo by using our “common sense”.[/QUOTE]
That’s basically how my Sifu teaches. He’ll find good combos and set ups in the forms and then drills them.
He always says that the best way to analyze the application in a form if I’m unsure and because I live too far away to ask is to go back a couple of movements to an app that I know and then follow it’s progression to the move in question. He said that all of the forms are basically combination chains where one move builds upon the previous.
IMO - I think it’s probably the most fun way to make sense out of the forms.
Heheh, good point Mighty B. You should see the way Sifu trains techniques these days. More organized and more repetition. Good stuff. More simplicity too. Pak sao, diu sao. A key to a lot of things is repetition, repetition, repetition!
laterthannver
“I learned 5 forms I teach 5 forms, the applications areadly over lapp, so i couldnt imagine have more what’s the point?”
Because what if you fought someone who ALSO knew the SAME 5 forms? Do you see a problem arising?
There is NO martial art that was desgined to fight against itself so your point is irrelavant. So no I do not see the problem arsing. however If your point even ficticious was that one needs more forms to fight because of someone knowing the same forms and youi need to learn 10 more (and mind you this would never happen) but then it would come down to speed skill and strength and how good of a fighter you were, not but knowing another set.
My shifu always all you need to do is master 1 block and 1 punch. Everything else you train for is just extras
“If you wanted to learn more skills in an area, you would go to that instructor and learn those skills and a form/kata that emphasized those skills.”
TA-DAAA!!! Someone finally gets it 
If someone wanted to learn more SKILLS in that area. The fact that many kung fu styles have “Beginning, Intermediate and Advanced forms” it indicitive of that dynamic. It’s not possible to learn advanced material and applications in the first form. Were this not so..there would be no “intermediate” or “advanced” forms.
"I think the commercialization of the martial arts is what lead to the more is better. It gives someone tons of material to keep working on and coming back for more. Most people would rather keep learning new stuff than working on what they have to master it. "
Too true! And I don’t mean that one should add forms just for the sake of adding them. I merely mean it is possible to master more than one form.
“I think also, some forms are redundant, in that they are replaced by other forms later on in the system. I have heard of some kung fu styles that a beginner would learn a certain form, and then at the intermediate level would learn a very similiar form with some more advanced principles/concepts to it. Then finally, a third form would be learned with more additional material. So, you would have in this case 3 forms even though by the advanced level you would drop the first two in practice since the lessons are replicated.”
Indeed again. Some forms are totally redundant. Lets say that even in an advanced form..you would still get 1/10th the material you learned in the first form, but you would still get added material that just was not privy to a beginner or intermediate. Look at Ying Jow Pai(eagle claw). If you look at the Chin-Na(seize and control joint locks) of what a student learns at the beginning..they are wrist and arm locks..as one progresses(hence..going away from a beginner)..they learn more advanced Chin-Na such as throat locks, leg locks, and supposedly at the upper level of the final 108 locks of General Ngok Fei locks that are designed to kill.
Thus it is the same concept with forms.
As our friend Bawang might say: More forms = more monies. In other words, keep em busy, keep em paying. This is how the McDojos do it.
Though I do respect the ideas of collecting forms as a way to preserve the arts.
As a self-defense/street emphasis teacher I believe less is more. I teach forms to preserve principles of fighting. My students learn fighting through drilling and FIGHTING.
[QUOTE=mooyingmantis;1039660]Though I do respect the ideas of collecting forms as a way to preserve the arts.[/QUOTE]
It’s easy to do in nowdays. Just record all your forms and you will never have to train those forms any more. The day before you want to teach that form, you just look at your DVD again.
Form(s) should at least “speak” something of your system thus it/they should never be just a bundle or packaging of techniques. Seed forms of a system address not only the fundamentals of the system but also the training methodology. It should also express cosmological viewpoint; hence, it is both metaphysical and pragmatic in nature. More advanced forms should be building on the seed forms and transcend the fundamentals. The system is then transformed into an artful expression of the proponent but not a mere set of functional principles and rules.
Mantis108