Forms - Huh? Yeah, What is it Good For?
Rene Ritchie, March 22nd, 2008
You’re a modern combat athlete. You go to the gym. You spar. You train on the bags. You sprint. And you likely do some type of attribute development, and more than likely that attribute development is systematic, progressive, and designed to get your from point A (your current state) to point B (where you need to get).
While personal training methods, equipment, and protocols have certainly changed over the years, the need to train certainly hasn’t.
What does this have to do with forms like Siu Lien Tao, Chum Kiu, etc.? Good God y’all, absolutely everything!
While an argument could be made that forms serve as an alphabet and grammar guide for students — an easy way to reference all the techniques and their methods of employment — that would only explain the content, not the organization.
Why does Siu Lien Tao stand? Why does Chum Kiu turn and move? Why does Biu Jee re-turn and re-move? Is it just strategic progression? Or is there something more?
In modern combat sports, you first need to develop some core functionality and level of fitness. You need to develop the basics and the ability to perform them often enough to make training beneficial. When it comes to programs, you start with an introductory level and then, when your body and mind gets used to it and the benefits you get from it start to plateau, you move on to a more demanding program. You challenge yourself again. You shock yourself out of complacency and force yourself to adapt again. And again. And again.
We know this now and I’d argue we knew this then.
Take Siu Lien Tao. You stand there and move your arms. But that’s not all. While you’re standing there, you are correcting your posture, strengthening your core structure, and you begin to develop the power — in the system I learned, you devote a LOT of effort to develop the foundation of “spiral turning” power. This is a form (no pun intended) of Yik Ging (Yi Jing or Tendon Changing). You teach your body a fundamentally different way to move, and you do it in a manner not too dissimilar to modern circuit training. One arm and then the other. Twisting one way and then the other. Up and then down. In and then out. And you body learns to support all this from the feet through the knees, hips/waist, and torso.
Then, when your body gets used to Siu Lien Tao and its training demands, when you start to plateau, you begin Chum Kiu, and whole body turning and projecting power. You challenge yourself with a wider range of movement. Same with Biu Jee. And when you’ve gone as far as your arms and legs can take you, you’re given the dummy to further increase the stress load, then the weight of the long wooden pole, then the complication of the twin metal knives.
Likewise, side-by-side, you’re going through a similar progression in partner training, from pattern to freestyle, light to heavy, slow to fast, stationary to moving. You’re continually being trained.
Where this breaks down is when Wing Chun Kuen becomes a business, when students are milked by being trained only to stand and wave their hands year after year, not until their body has achieved a certain level of training, but until their dues or usefulness has achieved a certain level of concern (they need to be giving new material simply to keep them from leaving).
In the not-so-distant past, the great masters trained for a few years, not the multiple decades we sometimes see these days. They met their sifu, worked relentlessly, fought, improved, and then went off on their own. They didn’t waste time doing Siu Lien Tao — they invested time in training the ever-loving $#!t out of it.
Imagine getting a modern conditioning trainer who put you on the stair-master, on the low setting, and just told you to run, day in, day out, for years on end. Imagine he or she told you if you ran slowly enough for long enough, you would magically gain stair-master enlightenment.
Sound crazy? Then why doesn’t it sound crazy for Wing Chun Kuen? Just because it came from China and not Discount Fitness?
Forms aren’t useless, even if they are sometimes trained in a useless manner. Forms have a very specific function and, used as such, are one important tool on the road to attainment. Just make sure they’re moving you down that road as efficiently as possible.
[...] W1NG : Forms - Huh? Yeah, What is it Good For? Imagine getting a modern conditioning trainer who put you on the stair-master, on the low setting, and just told you to run, day in, day out, for years on end. Imagine he or she told you if you ran slowly enough for long enough, you would magically gain stair-master enlightenment. Sound crazy? Then why doesn’t it sound crazy for Wing Chun Kuen? Just because it came from China and not Discount Fitness? March 22, 2008 - Wing Chun - [...]
A decent overview of the WCK forms imo, and very simple and practical. I especially like the notion that the older masters trained the forms relentlessly, maybe without spending years standing still. This reflects how we were all trained at the Jun Mo school.
I’ll always have a place for the forms in my own training, and anyone who I have taught has rarely had the chance to think about being ‘too still’! Every style will have their specialities, and I believe within WCK it is our forms that act as a map for our personal journeys.
How we get from A-B seems to be limitless with such simple movements passed on through time.
Traditionalists will always “have room for” or want to preserve silly practices. Forms or linked sets are silly practices.
Forms are a means of teaching certain aspects of a martial art including shapes, movements, etc. But they are not a very good way to do that.
If you spend some time researching open and closed skills, you’ll see that a closed skill is one where we try to replicate some model movement or action, as we do in figure skating, gymnastics, etc. Here, skill in performance is in how precisely you can repeat a shape or movement or whatever. In contrast, an open skill is one where the we need to constantly and continually adjust to the environment while trying to achieve some objective, for example, surfing, boxing, wrestling, and wing chun kuen (fighting with wing chun).
Modern scientific research has proven, and modern sport science and sport performances have also corroborated, that models are a very poor way to learn an open skill. They are great for learning a closed skill because that (replicating a model) is what you are trying to do in the sport. But with an open skill, any model is really the exception, not the rule (because you will need to adjust, or modify, any model to the occassion). Moreover, by focusing on the shape (or form) or movement itself, a practitioner is missing the real objective of the shape or movement — which is not duplication but IN ACHIEVING SOME RESULT. For example, in tennis we don’t perform a forehand drive and rate it (how “good” it is) against how closely it matches some expert’s shot but rather on how powerfully and accurately it drives the ball (the result).
As you may see, this shows that forms are not only a poor way to learn and train but they actually get people thinking wrongly about what they are doing. Ask to see a tan sao and someone will show you a shape or a movement. These people see WCK asa series of dance steps, and application as using these various dance steps in combination to deal with an opponent. Wrong. Tan sao is doing something specific to an opponent. The shape or movement is incidental and/or dependent upon that doing(result). In other words, open skills are result driven.
A common analogy used by traditionalist is to compare WCK to calligraphy, and repeat the old chinese saying that one should “copy the masters” for years before trying to find your own way. This shows a complete lack of understanding of the open/closed skill dichotomy. That is how to learn and develop a closed skill (which is what calligraphy is but it is an extremely poor way to learn or develop an open skill.
It is not surprising that boxers, wrestlers, surfers, tennis players, etc. — all open skill activities/sports — don’t have any use for forms or linked sets. People in all manner of open skill activities/sports achieve world-class levels without forms. So clearly forms aren’t essential. If there were any “advantage” to forms as either a teaching or training device, we should expect to see people using them to demonstrate those. But the evidence of performance shows they don’t help. In fact, they hurt. They retard performance. They get people thinking wrongly about performance.
The ancient chinese did not know about open and closed skills. They came up with a learning/training method in relative ignorance. Today we know more. And we need to adjust our learning, teaching, and training to encompass this new knowledge.
Yet again, an interesting viewpoint but now we’re on to closed or open training of skills!? I do think that for you to say that the ‘ancient’ chinese didn’t know of this and that we know more today is totally unfounded. You have not met every Martial Artist in the world, and believe me when I say that there is further knowledge out there that has still to see the light of day.
What you seem to be concerned with here is this open/closed skill training scenario. This, to me, is the difference between learning on your own, with a partner or learning in teams. Are you saying that you have never trained to fight/spar as an open skill in your WCK? I can understand this, as I have rarely seen it too. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t practised!
And as for forms taught as a closed skill not being a good way to enhance your open skills, I agree. Most people would learn the forms with no language. What a mistake! I agree that just copying an image is NOT training your SLT, but who knows how to train it?
Taking a lapsau drill as an example, I’d first learn the shape, movements etc then practice with a partner (stationary). This I see as closed skill training, as you describe it. But to learn how to use lapsau needs an open environment of constant change. You can not accomplish this without a team!! It’s impossible!
So I ask you, how many times have you used lapsau in this open manner?? I can remember being surrounded by a number of students who were instructed to attack at will whilst I defended with my lapsau! Not one person could attack in the same way as the previous guy, and the timing was never steady and the pressure was kept constant by the team leader who applied strategies he knew. This, I feel, is a method of open skill training for Martial Artists.
Doesn’t everybody do this? As with the initial teaching of forms, the explanation has to be present and the development of your skills needs to progress in an understandable way. They’re only as good or bad as the person teaching them imho…
TiFei,
The ancient chinese — just like the ancient westerners too — didn’t know a great many things. We know a great deal more today about everything. Including how the human body works, how to best train or learn, etc. If the ancient chinese knew about the open/closed skill distinction, they wouldn’t have created forms — they would have known better. They would have known that they are not a good way to learn or develop open skills.
Your discussion of open/closed skills is confused, and that confusion seems to be based on your misunderstanding of what open/closed skills are. If someone wants to teach you a movement, like your lop sao, they don’t need to use a linked set or solo movement in the air to teach it. They can directly teach you the movement as you will really do it as you will really do it. The form adds nothing.
And, from my perspective, based on what you said above you still haven’t learned the skill.
Moreover,