Self learning

[vaulander]

The boys and I use music for the same purpose. More of a timer actually, since we have a general idea of how long the current song is, say five and a half minutes. Another thing that Derrick and I tried was the 'Horsewalk' with Kiu Sau. Start in horsestance, three Kiu Sau, take a step forward with each foot (so you are moving a foot length per cycle,) three more Kiu Sau, etc. Sort of a very slow race. Obviously the Kiu Sau has to be done at a steady pace, no rushing as the legs get tired, keep in line with partner, etc. Got the idea from watching Hung Gar basics with Wayne Husbands on youtube.

On a side note, I got to the garage after work, and did a Kung Gee just to see if my stance training had improved things. Funny thing, since I did the 3&4 section cycle so much in the carpeted hallway, standing on asphalt made a big difference. I spun around a bit since there was far less friction on the footwork. Instead of the hesitant 'am I doing this right? Gotta remember that correction coming up' style I have done lately, I put some Fury™ into it, hissing and snarling with the techniques. I asked my sifu specifically about sounds during our meeting, and he told us (Scott and I,) to express what came naturally, so I did. It was glorious. Crush, rend and tear!
Anyway, I will of course keep grinding and training the basics, it was just fun to really take it out and go wild with the Kung Gee.
Cheers!
V.

[vaulander]

The boys and I are still going strong working the KGFFK. After finding and reading quite a lot of the threads in the wing lam forum I got plenty of new ideas on how to work things. There is one thread, which title escapes me at the moment, where various training/teaching styles were discussed. Don't know if it was on this board or the wle board. Anyway, one person said that in the classes there were mostly application drills, Lin Gung, and with a bit of forms at the end. Another said that he would teach sections of the form and then drill the applications, so that the students had some sort of idea of what was going on. Then there's the boys and I, who just learned the form without really understanding it and then working drills.
Anyway, the other day I was contemplating learning the HSF Panther, simply because winter is coming and it's very compact, easily done even in my small apartment, so I wouldn't need massive Kung Gee space. I figured I could learn the old fashioned way, work a section until I had it down, maybe a month or two before starting the next, drilling apps every week from current section with the boys. I decided not to, just in case you are all shaking your heads in disgust. Instead I decided to start from the beginning with KGFFK, drilling every possible app I can imagine from the start with the boys.

Also, when we are doing the whole set, instead of all three of us doing it together, trying to keep the same pace and messing up from speeding up and slowing down to keep in line, we do it one by one, the other two watching and commenting. Derrick did not have the privilege of meeting the Sifu, due to work, so he is a bit behind us. I found it very beneficial to step in and offer an attack at certain weak points in the form so he can do the technique and adjust it to make it real. "See, if you turn your wrist this way, you turn my elbow up for the E Hu Qin Ying to slam your palm down. You want to turn it the other way to point my elbow down for the rising elbow Bik Yeung. The grabbing arm should point down to cover your flank and the middle gate, in case I drop my elbow and hit the wide open window with my free hand. The rising elbow already covers your head pretty well..."
"Why do you keep using the chinese words?"
"Cuz if you lazy buggers ever get around to studying LSW's KGFFK text you don't have to spend 6 hours in an airport flipping pages back and forth to get the idea, and if we ever get a chance to visit a school we won't be standing there like fools when the Sifu is talking, that's why. Gave you a list of translations, didn't I?"
Cheers!
V.

[ironpalm]

[vaulander]

And for todays entertainment...
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPta6--fh68[/youtube]
The first one wasn't so good, leaning too far forward in stances.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5zQQPHKA0s&feature=channel[/youtube]
Maybe a little better, but still some stances with too much 'top-heavy' effect.
Cheers!
V.

[TenTigers]

[vaulander]

[Xiaobian]

[TenTigers]

kinda like Clockwork Orange, eh Droogie?

[vaulander]

Classic. Just classic.

[vaulander]

Derrick and I have been working on Wing Lam's Tiger and Crane Sparring set lately. As some of you may know, Derrick is pretty sharp when it comes to Kung Gee Fook Fu, (sharp as in doing the moves crisply, even though none of us are very good,) but famous for his erratic panic moves and fifty-yard lunges in free sparring. Scott on the other hand is rather sloppy and 'whatever' doing Kung Gee, but is a machine in sparring, all calm and controlled.
Sort of like a computer program vs a cup of dice, if you will.
Scott has three ranges, and three moves that he will do regardless. Long range = round kick, medium range = Ping Chui/reverse punch, short range = uppercut. He prefers countering, aka opponent moves into one of those three ranges = block and throw corresponding move. If the opponent circles (that would be me or Derrick) he will close to long range and of course throw the round kick. If the opponent gets in closer he will push us out in reverse, aka uppercut, reverse punch to/or round kick. Once in a while he will follow us with repeated hooks at close range. That's it. No hesitation, no wondering what to do next, no variation. If his pattern is broken, he will fall apart and withdraw to one of the three ranges before doing anything else.
Derrick has no pattern, and no discernible rhyme or reason I can figure out. This is of course a good thing, because it makes it very hard to pin him down, but unfortunately I don't think he himself has a plan either. It's like his mind is a cup of dice, and whatever comes up is what he does, regardless of openings or range. If the range is too far, he does the famous "50 yard lunge" to get in range. In our first sparrings, you could see the 'click' of the dice coming up, he would do the move, and then just stand there to see what happened before 'shaking the cup' again. Now he is better in that the dice are always rolling, throwing up random moves continuously, but they are still somewhat random no matter what the opponent does.

Anyway, so I thought that working the TCS would help Derrick with his shoddy range finding and help him calm down in sparring with some options apart from just flailing his arms wildly and bouncing all over the place. Instead of just learning the form and making it faster and crisper, like some wu shu show (not putting the WS people down, it takes a tremendous skill and training to do what they do,) we do it slow and methodical, 'touching the punch' that is, we keep position and the attacker touches the target, making sure range and structure (stance and movement,) is correct, then the defender does the counter move, stance shift first (if any,) to see and learn how it changes distance, and finally the block/deflection. Then we combine the stance shift and block and do it over again, several times per move, and switch sides (as in strike with left instead of right, not change who does what,) and do multiple repeats. Then we go to next move/section and do it all over again. We also explore the techniques themselves, for instance, there is a section where Derrick comes in with a left hook, countered by a high block and knife edge hand to the throat, which he blocks with a rising palm (don't ask me the chinese names,) and I pull back to cat with hanging hammers, then double hammer into Derricks cross block. Straight out of both KGFFK and FHSYK. Just practicing either of two forms is cool, rising block/knifehand, pull back and hammer down, right? Yeah, if that's all you do you open the entire right high and middle gate, and put out a red carpet for his rising palm block to turn into any straight attack to your head, throat, chest, or ribs. Hell, he can do a black tiger claw attack since his hands are already good to go. Left claw to face/throat, right claw to ribs or whatever. So the pulling back to hanging hammers demand pulling his arms along to prevent that, and if done right will jerk him forward into the double hammers. Didn't think of that while doing Kung Gee repeatedly and following advice. In my corroded and quirky mind the KGFFK and FHSYK are like toolboxes, lots of shiny and nice looking tools, and the TCS is like the manual.
Anyway, usual rambling aside, we are only working up to section 10 so far, trying to learn and drill as much as possible, over and over. Hopefully it will improve Derrick's range and teach him some tools to use so he doesn't just go into panic mode if we do free sparring again. Again with the dice cup, perhaps he will limit the options to what would be good in a certain situation, say a random of 3-4 techniques for a certain range instead of the whole toolbox at once.
Don't worry, we aren't going to post any vids on this for a long time, there's no sense in torturing you with shoddy stuff that we know to improve on our own.
Cheers!
V.

[vaulander]

[Chunyat]

[Daifong]

Vaulander,

One year already?!

This has got to be the most enterprising thing I've seen all day!

I would like to be supportive of your little project here, but a couple of points you bring up seem to be of more immediate concern:

People have developed chronic injuries that have lasted for an entire lifetime by doing the equivalent of simply ignoring so much as a standard videotape disclaimer. I've seen Wing Lam's tapes myself, I know he has them...

Along with actually learning this Gung Fu yourself first, you might want to carry some insurance and have a meeting with those parents before having them sign a consent form/ waiver, right?

Best,

Michael

[vaulander]

A bit more than a year, actually. I finished learning the moves (shoddy and weak as they were,) in january last year, but the boys and I started practicing in August, I believe. So, with the boys I have practiced for what,
1 3/4 years. Starting with Arrow Hand, to Lau Gar Kuen, then to Kung Gee, et al. Doesn't seem that long, and we still have years worth of refinement and work to do on Kung Gee before it's fully a part of us.

As for the little boy, yesterday as I returned from a shopping trip he came up to me again, asking when his training times would be. I said I had to talk to his mom first, and he told me she would be home by five. So I said I'll meet him at my garage by five. He agreed.

Five comes around, and I am sitting in my garage, door open waiting. At about 5.25 I see him out with some other boy playing ball, and I decided waiting's over, so I gathered my stuff and headed towards the passage through to get to my apartment. The boy said that 'she might be out later'. My response was "Mmhm" as I walked past.

In my book, that's a bit disrespectful. We set a time, I showed, and he failed to, and even if he was a bit late, he chose to play ball with some other kid instead of coming up to me to explain. His mother does not seem too concerned either, which means that 1. The boy isn't serious about learning, and 2. the mother has no concept of responsibility or concern for her boy's training.
I am not doing this. If I cannot count on him to show up to a mutually arranged time, how can I count on him to NOT do something really stupid with what I teach? My rules are very simple, and goes for everyone. I devote my time, effort, and in some cases money for equipment to help you learn and train, and all I want in return is Respect, Courtesy, and Dedication.
You can say he's just a little boy, and easily distracted and forgetful. You can say his mother has a lot on her plate, and might not remember every little thing. But since I don't charge any money, or are bound by some sort of monthly contract, I can set any rules I want. I don't have to compromise on anything. And that's lesson 1 for you.

Sorry, but I have a very anal view on keeping appointments, and right now I am yet again frustrated.

[juicy couture]

I think self learnning is a bility of ourselves,some one are good at that,while some one cannot.