If you could only work one form for the rest of eternity, which one would it be and why?
1 Single whip posture in tai ji fist.
Both arms extended with a horse riding stance. Fully open stance.
2 Liang Yi Ding in Ba Ji.
Both elbows extended with a horse riding stance.
3 Green Dragon extending claws in Ba Gua.
The waist is rotated.
4 Low kick stance in Tan Tui.
Most important stance
5 Double Hook hands in Tang Lang.
Two hands against one arm.
etc etc.
They are the corner stone stances in each style.
Every thing else may derive from these basic stances.
Greetings SevenStar,
I do not think there is any form that teaches exactly what “now” is.
The only form that comes close involves the words “point and squeeze the trigger” at the beginning stages of instruction.
mickey
What you need is to know the start point and the end point.
And understanding every thing in between.
How to start and arrive at the end.
[QUOTE=mickey;1297786]Greetings SevenStar,
I do not think there is any form that teaches exactly what “now” is.
The only form that comes close involves the words “point and squeeze the trigger” at the beginning stages of instruction.
mickey[/QUOTE]
I’m not saying that’s the only thing you train - I’m saying if that was the only form. spar, drill, firearms, etc - fine. but for the forms portion of your training, if you only kept one form, which one.
the question is moot because every kung fu style basically has one main form.
[QUOTE=bawang;1297803]the question is moot because every kung fu style basically has one main form.[/QUOTE]
that’s part of why I am asking. I am expecting certain forms - jik bo, san zhan, tan tui, sanchin, etc.
Greetings,
I would pick a good Shaolin 12 line Tan Tui.
Why?
1- In many ways it is a dictionary of martial movement. It encompasses striking, grappling and throwing.
2- Offers great conditioning.
3- Continued practice and study unveils new understandings via body mechanics and via martial applications.
4- Unlike what some people say, given the aforementioned, it is never boring. It can be quite a task, but never boring.
mickey
Iron wire, simply because it can be done in different ways to elicit different responses.
I have created a new form called " Long Fist Summary". It combines all the forms that I have learned into a 84 moves form.
Why?
I have read books all my life. It’s time to write my own books.
I am definitely buying John’s books !
Offhand, I can’t think of any single CLF form I would pick as my one and only. I personally practice far fewer forms than most CLF people do, and fewer than I’ve learned. But I don’t see any one as ‘having it all’.
Much of my ‘form/movement’ practice involves various short (2 to 4 movement) CLF combinations with footwork. Some are practical combos I’ve taken from sets and others I’ve combined myself from my own experience. These are pre-set combos with important basic elements of attack/defense, strike, kick, trap/sweep, throw, etc. Then I also practice free-form/freestyling, combining and recombining these movements in different ways in a fluid, workable manner without much thought. This is not for show, but to bypass the logical, thinking mind. These are not things I would ever teach or ‘pass down’, as the choices would be different for every person.
There are lots of kung fu practitioners who train their forms and applications, but if you never learn to freestyle with it, there will always be a big divide; it will never become natural for you or become your own. It also most likely won’t come out during sparring or in real life.
Just my 2 cents, nothing more.
pick one form is like asking to eat only one food. there is no one food that you can only eat and not gradually die from malnutrition. it is a broken question.
forms dont have combat basics anyways so to treat them seriously is itself a grave danger. i can make up a great looking “authentic traditional” form out of my ass right now under 5 min, and i can tell some naive kung fu nerd to practice it 100 times a day.
Most forms (with the exception of sets focusing mostly on kung/gong development) are stylized representations of fighting movements strung together in sequences. The movements and postures are stylistically idealized, if that makes any sense. They develop another type of body-mind discipline, but in themselves cannot teach one how to fight, although they can supplement attributes such as certain types of body awareness, coordination, balance, agility, etc. BUT, there are movements/short combinations that can be taken out of a form and adapted for fighting, as long as you know what you’re doing. The key word is “adapted”. The adapted movements will not necessarily ‘look’ exactly like they do in the form.
Iron thread.
It’s good for your body.
[QUOTE=bawang;1297971]pick one form is like asking to eat only one food. there is no one food that you can only eat and not gradually die from malnutrition. it is a broken question.
forms dont have combat basics anyways so to treat them seriously is itself a grave danger. i can make up a great looking “authentic traditional” form out of my ass right now under 5 min, and i can tell some naive kung fu nerd to practice it 100 times a day.[/QUOTE]
One form doesn’t exclude lifting weight, practice weapons, drills, sparring etc.
Heck, in some styles, after you learn ten forms, you string them all together into one long ass form anyway. 
I like to get the best result from my training. There is a combo sequence in the form that I have created that contains:
- left roundhouse kick,
- right toes push kick,
- right wrist lock,
- left wrist lock,
- right side kick,
- left turn back kick,
- right roundhouse kick,
- right hammer fist,
- right straight punch.
Sometime I just train this small piece of form, Since it contains
- right front kick,
- right/left round house kick,
- right/left side kick,
I can maintain most of my kicking skill through my daily training. Since I can’t find a small section of form that can contain this much information, I have to create it myself. Of course, I have borrowed some moves from the
- Mai Fu Chuan,
- 3rd road Pao Chuan,
- Tai Zhu long fist.
All things are impermanent
This is a tough question for me because my answer changes over time. To maintain your Middle Earth metaphor SevenStar, whenever I get a fav form, middle age sneaks up like gollum, bites of my finger, and then dives into the fiery pit of Mount Doom with it. Which is to say my ‘one form’ changes as my body has changed.
Perhaps a more telling question is ‘what form do you do daily?’ I started a thread that was somewhat related to this back in 2010: What forms are in your Shaolin regimen now?. Shoot, I should update that sometime…I’m way behind on it. :o
For me, variety is the spice of life. One form exclusively for the rest of my life would become boring. Of course, quality trumps quantity, and knowing one thing really well is far better than knowing many things superficially. But it’s good to train the body to move in different ways. Otherwise, it’s easy to become stale, both physically and mentally. That doesn’t mean the form has to be showy.
Obviously, this does not exclude all the other aspects of training. But the subject here is regarding forms.
Even the 2 to 4-move combinations I mentioned earlier that I practice have a rotation. I have maybe a half-dozen of them I’ll practice extensively for a couple months, then replace them with a half-dozen variations, or totally different ones. Then I’ll do the same thing two months later. Then eventually rotate back to the original set of combinations. They all contain the same CLF basics, streamlined. With this method, you can create an almost infinite number of variations. It’s not accumulating more and more material, but simply using what you already have in different ways, to develop greater flexibility of action/response.
Greetings,
The way that SevenStar put it, I saw it as the form you would always come back to for practice and as a source material for ongoing study. I did not see the robotics that is being described here.
mickey