A Newbie's Intro

[Dronak]

Another update for those keeping track. It looks like we've decided on doing weapons for summer training. We'll be able to practice outside where there's tons of room and I think everyone will be doing a weapon regardless of how long they've been with the club. I'm not sure any of us are *really* ready to do weapons, but some have been training longer than others. We'll have two weapons -- broad sword and staff. The teacher told us that if we plan to be here for the summer session, we should go buy one of each for ourselves. I think he said we'd all learn the basics of both weapons, but we'd only do a form for one of them. I'm hoping to do the staff form, but I think it's our teacher's choice as to which weapon form we learn. Anyway. I don't think our barehand form training will be left behind. The tai chi group I'm in will be continuing because there's no way we're going to complete the entire form this semester. Some "how to teach" class was planned, too, but I haven't heard any more about it lately. I think the teacher wanted to up the class sessions to 4 hours in the summer, too. I don't know if that would be three days a week or only two as a recent e-mail we got seemed to imply, but we'll find out later. There's still plenty of time before the school year ends to prepare for a summer session. Oh yeah, I think it will only be about two months, not the three months or so that we have off between school years. I guess that about covers the recent developments here. I just thought I'd keep you informed.

 

[disciple]

Hi, Dronak! I just recently tranferred MA school, and finally I can recognized some of the forms you're talking about
not sure about the english term though, we use english name only for first fist and second fist, the rest are chinese...but i recognized tan toi too
how far is you training? what have u learned?

salute

:asian:

 

[Dronak]

Over the past few months I've been giving little updates about what I've been doing here in this thread. Considering how many posts there are now though, I can't blame you for not wanting to read the entire thing. At some point I should split things off into a new thread, but most of my updates don't seem worth their own thread, so I keep posting here.

The shorter summary of things so far is that I started in the fall when the Chinese Martial Arts Club on campus started. We're learning northern Shaolin long fist style kung fu. Back then we learned a bunch of basic stances, punches, kicks, stretches, etc. We also did five of ten tan tuie routines and learned a basic form the teacher called Six Closing Fist. Since a good portion of the class doesn't speak Chinese, he sticks to English translations most of the time. We had a short winter training session in January where we learned another basic form called Power Fist. When the spring started, we got split up into two groups. A smaller group (the one I'm in) is learning some Yang style tai chi while the other group is doing the third basic form called Linking Step Fist. About a month into that, we had a little exam for people who learned the first two forms. If you passed, you could learn a second form during the spring. These would be more advanced, intermediate level I suppose. I think everyone who took the exam did pass which frankly surprised me, but it was the teacher's choice and I'm sure he knows what he's doing. The people doing a second form were also split up, this time in to three groups. A couple people the teacher selected to learn Fourth Running Fight Fist, the rest were split into First Ambush Fist (tai chi group people) and Second Ambush Fist (Linking Step Fist people). That group division is only there because the teacher didn't group us all back up again before splitting us into the First and Second Ambush Fist groups. Oh, there should be Chinese names for a few forms earlier in the thread should you want to look them up. They didn't come directly from our teacher, but I think they're right from what I can tell.

That's where we're at now. I was about to repeat the summer plan as I understand it, but realized there's no need to since that's only like two posts up. As for next school year, the teacher mentioned possibly doing some sparring/combat training with selected people then, but that's too far away to really worry about right now. It's a lot of interesting stuff, but it's also pretty hard especially when we're moving so quickly. But that's the way our teacher wants to do it. If we've learned things sufficiently well, we can move on. It's sort of like how you don't need straight As in school to go to the next grade level -- do good enough and you pass. Same idea, we don't have to be perfect to learn a new form, just have learned the previous one decently well. I still think it's a bit fast at least for some people, but we're all trying to keep up.

 

[Cthulhu]

Dronak,

I've really enjoyed reading about your progress in your chosen art! Many of my favorite martial arts books aren't about history or technique, but the experiences of people in the martial arts.

And just think, when you eventually have your own students, they'll have this to look back on. And so will you!

Cthulhu
keep 'em comin'

 

[arnisador]

I've been enjoying it too, and was just flipping through the Shaolin Long Fist book by Yang and Bolt again today because of it!

 

[disciple]

Originally posted by arnisador

I've been enjoying it too, and was just flipping through the Shaolin Long Fist book by Yang and Bolt again today because of it!

I am too reading the book

Dronak,
do you do sparring, chin-na, push hands in the class?

salute

 

[Dronak]

I'm glad to hear that at least a few people enjoy reading the updates about my training. I guess it's not the kind of thing everyone likes, but since I found this board shortly after I started training, I thought some people would be interested in reading about how things go. I don't know how often you get to follow things near real time right from the start, so it seemed to me that it might interest some people.

Cthulhu, you've got a point there. This thread can make up a pretty good history of my experience in starting martial arts training. I should save the whole thread to my hard drive periodically so I have it all on record.

arnisador and disciple, the Yang and Bolt book is pretty good, but it's not exactly what we're learning in our classes. For one, the stances shown in the book are generally higher than we practice them. E.g., our Mountain Climbing / Bow and Arrow Stance has our front shin perpendicular to the ground and our front thigh nearly parallel to the ground; the thigh isn't near parallel in the book. The forms I'm doing that are in the book have some differences that I've had to notate, too. Power Fist was basically right, mainly minor differences as I recall, but First Ambush Fist appears (by my reading) to have more significant differences. Well, the book is an extra reference to help remind me how things go. With my added notes, I shouldn't have too much trouble reproducing what we learned.

disciple, so far we've basically stuck to barehand form training. We did learn some "grabbing hands" self defense techniques in the fall (I forgot about those) and I think those could be classified as chin-na techniques -- they were mainly some sort of wrist locking moves. Push hands might be part of the tai chi stuff later on, but right now we're still just learning the form. We should get to sparring in the Shaolin section eventually, but I'm not certain how soon. I had heard it could happen as early as this coming fall for selected students, but I'm not sure anything's really set for that far in advance.

 

[arnisador]

This is an interesting insight into an art unlike any I've ever studied, so I'm enjoying following the thread.

 

[KumaSan]

Count me amongst those reading your story with interest. It was a pretty good idea to write this down as it happens, and provides a very interesting (to me anyway) story. Thanks!

 

[Dronak]

It's nice to have some positive feedback on my story here. It started off as a basic introduction and since some people seemed interested in it, I kept posting updates. I didn't start it with the intention of making it a story of my learning experience, but it's sort of going that way now. It can be hard for me to gauge interest in it though. Sometimes there's really no need to people to reply to my posts but without the feedback, I'm not sure people are reading and interested. It's good to know that some of you are enjoying it, so I'll keep posting new information when I have something that might be worth passing along.

Maybe after the summer when I've gone through a year of training, I'll start a new thread for year two. I can start it with a recap of the first year and then go from there in the same way I did here. That seems to be a fairly logical breaking point anyway since we'll be into another school year then.

 

[Cthulhu]

Yeah, I apologize...I should have given you some more feedback earlier.

Well, even if I don't reply, you now know that I'm reading the thread!

Cthulhu

 

[Dronak]

Don't worry about it Cthulhu. I realize that not all of the posts I made here encourage replies. I mean, with a simple "here's what we're going to do next" post, what do you say back? "Cool, keep us updated"? There's really not a lot to say in response to some posts. But yeah, at least I know now that some people are reading and enjoying the thread, so I'll keep sending along updates when I have something new that might be interesting.

 

[Dronak]

Not too much new, but I've got a little more news. We're basically finished for the semester now. The teacher won't be able to come for the last few sessions until finals, so no more new moves. The Linking Step Fist group was the only one to complete their form. Everyone else will continue and hopefully finish their forms in the summer. The tai chi form is long and we're not going to finish it in the summer. Our aim there is to complete the second section then stop and resume in the fall. We will be doing weapons in the summer -- staff or broadsword. The teacher wants us to buy both now so that we can practice some basic moves for both weapons, but we'll only do an actual form for one weapon. We're getting wooden broadswords for practice both for our own safety and so the school doesn't complain or something about us carrying around metal swords (even if they are dull with no real blade). Our practice sessions for the summer will be four hours long, three times a week, but the teacher will only be there for two of them. He wants us to spend some more time stretching to help improve our flexibility and doing basic training stuff to help improve our stamina. I think that's partly the reason for the extra hour. I think the summer session will be short, only 6 weeks or so, because the teacher is going away towards the end of the summer. We might continue practicing on our own after the summer classes end, but I guess we'll see later. Like I said, not a whole lot, but it's been a while since I had something new, so I thought I'd pass along the current summer plan.

 

[Nightingale]

how are things going now?

 

[7starmantis]

Yes, I would be interested in knowing how it is going now as well.

7sm

 

[arnisador]

Yes, it's been a while!

 

[Dronak]

Wow. I haven't been here in quite a while because I've had to stop going to practice in order to focus on getting my research done so that I can graduate this school year. So imagine my surprise to see my intro thread on the first page here.

Well, once my research work started moving along last January, I had to cut back on fun activities in order to keep work moving along. It's time for me to graduate, so I need to make a push to finish and get out of here. I haven't been to practices since last school year. I'm pretty sure I have a second and maybe a third thread similar to this that would bring you more up to date, at least to the last time I posted to it; you might want to dig it/them up for some more info. AFAIK, things have been going along pretty much as usual, the teacher gives group lessons at normal class sessions and holds weekend sessions where he teaches advanced forms to the senior students. Me, I've been trying to do a little practicing at home when I have some time. Every now and then I review the basic forms so I don't completely forget them, but I don't do much with the higher level forms. I also really need to practice tai chi more since that's what I really wanted to learn. It's kind of relaxing but also a nice workout, I'm usually sweating by the end, so I ought to try to make it a regular part of my schedule. Some exercise like that should help relieve a bit of the stress I'm going to be under while trying to finish my PhD.

The latest news I have is that our teacher will be moving back to Taiwan around the end of February. This is unfortunate, but he wants to do a special one day seminar session to teach us Cha Fist (that's what it sounded like), answer questions, and give us an idea of how the club can continue on without him there to teach. I think he said Cha Fist is one of the four most famous Shaolin forms; it's also supposed to be pretty advanced. But he's going to let anyone come, new students, too, because this may be the only time they'd be able to learn directly from him. Since this will be a one-shot deal, I'm planning to adjust my schedule so that I can attend it. I'm hoping he'll also teach us the last three tan tui routines he hasn't yet so that we know the complete set of ten. Exactly what happens after this semester, I don't know. I'm pretty sure everyone will keep having practices for the spring, possibly the summer, but come fall and next school year, I'm not sure if they're going to keep the club going when they don't have a teacher. I think this is something for the club officers to discuss at some point.

So I guess that's the basic update. Sorry about being away so much, but even reading the boards here has slipped my mind since I haven't had time to practice and keep up with our MA classes. I'll try to pop in a little more regularly even if I'm not learning or practicing much, just to keep in touch.

 

[arnisador]

Sounds like your priorities are where they have to be, but it must be tough having to not do it after you put so much effort into learning it!

 

[Dronak]

Hi, I'm stopping by again. Yes, graduating comes first. Just don't get me started on how much torture I'm going through to try to finish my PhD; this is probably the worst period of my life so far. But, on MA I do kind of miss the practices. They were always good exercise. I just don't have the time for it anymore right now though. Maybe when I finally graduate I can get back to them. For the time being though, I do try to do a little practicing at home so that I can at least remember the basic stuff. I ran through Linking Step Fist a number of times just a few days ago in order to refresh my memory on it. That was the last of the three basic level forms we learned so I didn't drill it as much over as long a time as the other two. I also review the tan tui routines once in a while. And I'm trying to get back into the habit of doing tai chi regularly before bed. It gives me some exercise and helps me relax so it's pretty good for helping control the stress I'm under. Just this week I bought a few more tai chi and chi gong type music CDs to play when practicing at home.

We had that last class session a while ago now. We learned the Fourth Cha Fist form specifically and we were allowed to video tape the session. Our club officers are still attempting to put the various tapes and views together to form a nice DVD for those of us who went to the session. That reminds me, one of the officers also made a CD with the video of our teacher performing the the tai chi form he taught us; I need to pick that up from him one of these days. As always, I took notes in class, but I think they're incomplete in some places because I made them fast. I'm waiting to check them against the video once the other guys get that made. We also learned tan tui routines 8 and 9 at that session so we go almost all of them before our teacher left. I think he said he couldn't remember routine 10 so he couldn't teach it to us. We did have a video of our teacher's teacher doing all 10 tan tui routines. Maybe if I study that carefully, I can pick up the last routine. Oh well. I am glad he gave us at least 2 of the 3 we had been missing. Better to have 90% than 70%. I haven't really heard anything about continuing practice over the summer or what they want to do about next year; most of the members and officers are graduating and without our teacher . . . We'll have to wait and see, I guess.

But that's the basic update now. We had our final session, learned another, more advanced form and 2 more tan tui routines. I think people are/were still practicing, but I'm not sure what's planned for the future. Me, I've got to focus on finishing my work so I can graduate and find a job. I'm trying to resume regular tai chi practice, but that's generally all I do besides short refreshers on the basic kung fu stuff once in a while.

 

[arnisador]

Thanks for stopping by! Good luck with school.