in the long, long ago…forms were originally more like a Wai Ku than a fundamental method of martial training?
In Mongolian Bokh competitors perform a dance before they wrestle. Okinawa had folk dances with martial elements that predate Karate. Nak Muay perform their Wai Ku before a fight. It seems like most Asian martial arts have a dance element.
So is it possible the origin of forms training may have been more of a ritual than we let on? Could the current popular thinking about this tradition be completely misconstrued?
[QUOTE=bawang;1231618]forms is dance. the traditional chinese name for forms is dance.
have i torn apart your reality yet bro[/QUOTE]
lol..I expected as much…
What brought me to this was seeing Yi Long fight. He would do a traditional form before his kickboxing matches. It reminded me a lot of the Thai’s Wai Ku.
Made me think maybe this was the original intent…back when Kung Fu people fought.
[QUOTE=Kellen Bassette;1231619]lol..I expected as much…
What brought me to this was seeing Yi Long fight. He would do a traditional form before his kickboxing matches. It reminded me a lot of the Thai’s Wai Ku.
Made me think maybe this was the original intent…back when Kung Fu people fought.[/QUOTE]
all forms of entertainment were banned in the ming army except forms. thats why forms exploded in the ming dynasty.
[QUOTE=bawang;1231621]ALL forms of entertainment were banned in the ming army except forms.[/QUOTE]
Do you know if there is any evidence to complex form training prior to the Ming? It seems like the 15th Century really kicked off the proliferation of taolu…
[QUOTE=Kellen Bassette;1231622]Do you know if there is any evidence to complex form training prior to the Ming? It seems like the 15th Century really kicked off the proliferation of taolu…[/QUOTE]
Anybody can make up forms. If you are 70 years old with some reputation, you just made up a form last night, nobody will question the origon of your form. You can always say that you have learned that from from your father.
The day that you have found out that you can make forms better than most of the TCMA forms, the day that you will lose faith in your TCMA forms. If you can add
right jab, left cross, right hook, left uppercut combo,
front kick, roundhouse kick, side kick combo,
front cut, leg lift, shin bite combo,
…
into the new form that you have just created, you have add a lot of value into whatever the style that you have trained.
[QUOTE=YouKnowWho;1231624]Anybody can make up forms. [/QUOTE]
It seems like each generation a teacher creates a form, if not several, to add to his system…having one form for a school/style makes sense to me, for tradition, preservation of techniques, marking a system, ect…having 50 or 60 forms doesn’t make much sense…
[QUOTE=bawang;1231623]what do u mean by “complex”[/QUOTE]
lengthy, complicated, intricate movements…I’m sure forms have always existed in the sense of linking a few moves together to practice as a drill…(like John mentioned,) but when did jab-cross-round kick turn into Da Hong Quan?
[QUOTE=YouKnowWho;1231631]When you create a form, you have to ask yourself the following questiions:
Do I just re-arrange different moves from forms in my system?
Have I added anything new?
Will I create “burden” for the future generation (one more form to learn)?
…[/QUOTE]
My Go Ju Ryu Shihan created several basic kata. I never understood a need to have more than one basic kata. He also created several “bridging kata” combining techniques from a lower level kata with techniques of a higher kata. This also made no sense to me. You were just practicing a rearrangement of the same moves.
In Shaolin there are hundreds of forms, but there is so much redundancy, it seems forms were just created for the sake of creating forms.
I think there is an idea that everything you learned from your shifu must be passed on and then whatever you add gets passed on, along with some of the things you absorbed from other systems. In the end it is, as you say, a burden.
To much time practicing the same thing in different sequences and not focusing on conditioning or developing fighting skill.
[QUOTE=Kellen Bassette;1231629]lengthy, complicated, intricate movements…I’m sure forms have always existed in the sense of linking a few moves together to practice as a drill…(like John mentioned,) but when did jab-cross-round kick turn into Da Hong Quan?[/QUOTE]
all forms of entertainment were banned in the ming army except forms. so forms became more complicated in the 1550s, since it became a major form of entertainment.
folk stories also say in the 1700s there was another wave of flowery kung fu, but there is no written history to prove it.
[QUOTE=Kellen Bassette;1231633]same thing in different sequences …[/QUOTE]
This can be an interest discussion.
When you try to get your opponent’s right leading leg, he pulls that leg back, what will you do next? You can
inner hook,
outer hook,
sweep,
bite,
spring,
twist,
lift,
…
his left leg,.
Will you train all different combos even if the “single leg” is in different sequence (use single leg to set up next move)? If you create your form, will you include all combos or just 1 combo?
[QUOTE=bawang;1231639]the more flashy your form, the more coins people give you. [/QUOTE]
That was while the “(Wu Feng Qi Feo) - 5 phoenix fly in the sky” was created. In 3 jumping kicks, you use your hands to hit on your body 5 times as if you carry the drum beating with your body.