Originally posted by woliveri
[B]When I first arrived at California my quest was to find quality MA schools. As such, when a poster on this board mentioned “Duke Cheng” and his school I made it a priority to visit and watch a class. Unfortunately, I was not impressed. Not at the quality of the Kung Fu as when I was there I sat through mostly basics but the attitude of the student that approached me and sat down to tell me about the school. He said he was a or The senior student and let’s just say humility was lacking. So I left with less than good impression. Later, at a local flea market I recognized one of the students there so I approached him to make casual conversation. Well, the same thing. This student said he was the senior student and went on and on. I don’t remember the details but I remember I went away laughing to myself at what this guy had said. Again, humility was lacking. Further on in time I met two more students who said they had been with Duke Cheng for many, many years. They did not have the arrogance that the other two had. However, they left the school as they did not believe were not being taught the essence of the style.
Now, in stark contrast, I visited Paul Lin and his Father one morning at Paul’s invitation and just the opposite was true. Paul’s father is such a treat. Completely humble and down to earth as was Paul.
One other note. I didn’t know Duke Cheng knew 8-Step. I thought he only taught Plum Flower Mantis. The two students that left felt Duke’s son was learning much differently than they. [/B]
I am sorry to hear your visiting too. Just accross where our group meet, on the other side of the park, there are a few people form Duke Cheng’s student line some time practicing there. But we have never talk to them. And we haven’t yet visiting any of his school.
Duke Cheng is a very polite/nice person, as the way he always treat my father. I have asked my father about him yesterday. He said that Cheng has helped to put the names, included my father’s, on GM Wei’s tomb in ShangDong or some thing. He appeared to have only few months learning form GM Wei in 8 step mantis. He don’t have time to stay there at the time.
May be I should try to talk to them accross the other side of park some time to see if they are as arrogance as the ones that you have seen.
Originally posted by bokfu Mr. Lin
Well, it seems this world gets much smaller and smaller. I will be sure to tell my friend what you have told me. I apologize for the misspelling of your father’s name… I was talking on a cell phone and the name sounded like Jiu…my mistake, but your father is known for sure~
I have a question you may be able to give insight into. You have been involved a long time with this style of martial arts as has your father and many others it seems. With so many people playing the mantis styles along with 8 step, why have I not heard of any sort of event or tournament that focuses on these styles? I think that there should be some sort of get together or friendly competition among all of our schools. I still compete and go against a lot of styles with some mantis, but there are always so few mantis people in these open Chinese MA events. I think all of GM Wei’s students/teachers should pull together and get something going here… I know of schools on the east coast and west coast and then there is Mr. Woo in Texas, so why not have some event where everyone could get together? Is this something that would be too impossible to do? I think it would be something great. Do you know of anything like this? If you do, please post it! Maybe there should be a national mantis style event that could occur maybe every couple of years… this could be very interesting I think.
There is a way that TCMA, especially in close related styles, to confirm what can be execute without really finish all off. To the insiders, it will be very knowledgible to see and it is good. But to the ousiders–mainly the general public audiences–they don’t know what is going on until the damage is done. The biggest sitback of TCMA is the audiences support. If they can’t understand what is going on, they will have to see the MMA style contest that shows the every-common-people-will-understand-upon-seeing tournaments. Unless the general public has the basic knowledge of TCMA, this is not easy.
A national mantis style event is a great idea, I will do what I can to support this. But I don’t have any advanced info. Hope there are other mantis artists here can help.
Pax…
I enjoy your e-mails but could you please send me a hotmail/yahoo account? I keep getting undeliverable to mail server message when I try to reply to you. Not sure why but I cannot seem to have any luck.
To answer your question. You asked what MY workout through the week is. My workout is involved but I am thinking you may wonder what Sifu Chang and we others do for workouts in 8 step? When I meet with Sifu Chang, to start off, we all do our own thing for warmup of course then we do 8 movements of 8 step such as cutting/throwing movement, the mantis stepping movement, pulling root jump etc.. Then there are the basic 8 kicks to do and then 8 punching/blocking techniques. We then will spend a few minutes doing the 8 stances such as the ma bu, den san bu to the one leg standing du li bu. All of this takes about 15 minutes. Then we go through forms and Sifu corrects and explains technique. I have 11 forms to go through…(seven hands, li pi, little cartwheel, big cartwheel, sessions 1,2,3,4,5,and 6, and continuing palms.) Then I have three more forms to do that I will practice with Sifu Chang (seven palms two man, li pi two man, and pi an). After doing the forms a few times, it has taken about an hour and fifteen minutes total. We finish the remainder of the two hours with hands on. Sometimes we do our style of sticky hands, sometimes just work on attacking or using the 8 different mantis throws. Lately we are having lots of fun doing free style attacking and defense… just light sparring using mantis techniques. Of course this seems to be the best part of training if you ask me! We meet two times a week now, on Thursday and Friday. Sometimes we meet on Wednesday also, but only when we all have open schedule for the extra day.
Now, I will tell you my personal workout if that is what you wanted to know. I am in my early 40’s so my workouts have changed a lot since I started MAs. Mon. and Wed. I do strictly cardio workout. My wife and I developed a demanding martial arts cardio workout that takes an hour. It uses techniques and combinations and we throw about 1,100 varied kicks during it. We then spend another hour doing pilates which is a resistance type of workout that focuses on the torso mainly with some basic leg work included. Tuesday is my martial arts workout for two hours where I focus on my personal goals for strength and endurance, do forms and practice my wushu weapons forms which include chain whip, broadsword, chainwhip/broadsword combination, straightsword, spear, long staff, short staff, and padao) Wushu weapons really give a good workout to me since there is so much running and aerial kicks and movements while controlling weapons. Sometimes, I replace this part with a five mile run. Thursday and Friday is spent in mantis training, Saturday I have a private student and we do 3 hours hard workout with bagwork, body training, sparring, 7 mile run, 30 minutes of our cardio workout and 20 minutes of pilates. Sundays I run seven miles and do martial arts stretching only. This is my usual plan but sometimes I vary the workouts opting to run fast six miles instead of cardio and then do pilates. With age, I am slowing down on the physical and am trying to increase the mental…using mind before body. As I get even older, there will be less of the wushu and bok fu kicking since flying is harder and harder to do each year. You said you were early 30’s so I imagine that you should have good workouts yourself, but I am believing the strenghtening of the mind is where it is really at. In any case, you know our mantis regime as well as personal.
Gee, not even my father has seen sifu Chang practicing all 6 chapters of ZhaiYao before. Gonna have to see that some time if I have the chance.
I think the continuing palm (Lian Huan Zhang) is the form added into the book by sifu Su YiZhang, if I am not mistaking, that is not a GM Wei’s form. It is a pretty good and short one though.
Ni hao, Mr. Lin
I am pretty sure that you are correct about continuing palms. Sifu Chang did not learn that form from GM Wei, but he still wanted us to learn this form. Actually it is sort of easy to pick it up since the main portion is a knockoff of session four in a way. It is a good short form and well worth the time to get it down.
As far as doing session six, sifu Chang has sort of taken a break from this form. He has a trick knee that he has to watch very carefully nowdays when he does the aerial kicks and sweeps. I do this form in my practice so I am sort of the demo guy when it is time to explain all the fancy parts. We have some video clips that we have recorded over the years of sifu doing some forms including six, so maybe one day I will convert them to mpegs where you may be able to see some of the forms over the net. By the way… something that may be of interest speaking of aerial kicks and things. When sifu was studying under Grandmaster Wei, he really did not learn any of the flying types of kicks and some sweeps. At that time, Grandmaster Wei had gotten old and would not do any kicks like that. Grandmaster Wei said that the kicks were too flashy anyway and unnecessary! Of course, he was so adept at mantis, he did not need any kicks like that anyway~ So, the first two years of my training, I was learning the forms sans aerial kicks from Sifu Chang. Then we were lucky enough to get in contact with Mr. Woo in Texas who was a student when GM Wei was younger and had learned all the kicks and sweeps. So, with Mr. Woo’s guidance, we put the right kicks into the right places so we now have complete forms.
Originally posted by bokfu Ni hao, Mr. Lin
I am pretty sure that you are correct about continuing palms. Sifu Chang did not learn that form from GM Wei, but he still wanted us to learn this form. Actually it is sort of easy to pick it up since the main portion is a knockoff of session four in a way. It is a good short form and well worth the time to get it down.
As far as doing session six, sifu Chang has sort of taken a break from this form. He has a trick knee that he has to watch very carefully nowdays when he does the aerial kicks and sweeps. I do this form in my practice so I am sort of the demo guy when it is time to explain all the fancy parts. We have some video clips that we have recorded over the years of sifu doing some forms including six, so maybe one day I will convert them to mpegs where you may be able to see some of the forms over the net. By the way… something that may be of interest speaking of aerial kicks and things. When sifu was studying under Grandmaster Wei, he really did not learn any of the flying types of kicks and some sweeps. At that time, Grandmaster Wei had gotten old and would not do any kicks like that. Grandmaster Wei said that the kicks were too flashy anyway and unnecessary! Of course, he was so adept at mantis, he did not need any kicks like that anyway~ So, the first two years of my training, I was learning the forms sans aerial kicks from Sifu Chang. Then we were lucky enough to get in contact with Mr. Woo in Texas who was a student when GM Wei was younger and had learned all the kicks and sweeps. So, with Mr. Woo’s guidance, we put the right kicks into the right places so we now have complete forms.
Right on. The flashy kicks are for more showing and very tiny chances of real use. Mostly because it’s weak on the root control. I would suggest more internal arts for keen problems, 8 step mantis is half internal and half external. It is very good for both purposes. If you slow down the 8 step forms into a Taichi speed and firmly, detaily applying the concepts and requirements, you will get a Taichi healing result form 8 step.