Anybody ever heard of shaolin-do???

Robert... I got my CMA start there, but once I found what I was after, I left.

I met some really great folks there, some really good martial artists, but it's just not what it says it is. It has pieces, but they're largely incomplete.

PM me for more info... this is too big a kindling pile.
 
A got's a 2 tape series on the art of shaolin -do. Mostly comes out a little later at parties, great goofy fun

Todd
 
Whoa. I just did a search on MT about Shaolin-do (one of my arts) and it appears that they are not very well-respected by some people. I'll tell you my opinion, though. It seems to be very much a sport-style karate at my level more than a kung fu killing method. At the later levels, the black belts begin learning the pressure points, cycle of destruction, etc, but I believe that the belts from white to black are for weeding people out. Most of the BB's claim that the real training and learning begins at black belt. It's very secretive, which could annoy some people and drive them away, but I am there for the exercise as well as the knowledge; I love the kata. At my school (and each is a little different), we only learn one or two applications at a time for a move in a kata and we aren't really required to come up with more at this stage. It's kind of like manly aerobics in a way, heh.

The tournaments are great fun and exercise, but it's mostly kickboxing-type stuff rather than chokes, locks, holds, pressure points, tackles, etc.I really enjoy it for the conditioning and the people, but I'm glad I've taken some kyusho on the side because it is teaching me how to more effectively break down kata into practical fighting uses. It's probably stuff that comes later.

It claims to be the most comprehensive martial art in the world and it might be; that would be one of the first words I'd use to decribe it. So it gives you a taste of white crane, Shaolin bird, monkey, drunken style, tiger, preying mantis, etc, but only at the higher levels do you choose your specialties, from what I hear (could be wrong). For example, we learn 3 White Crane forms for 3rd brown to second brown and 3 Shaolin Bird for 2nd to 1st. So spending 4-6 months on an entire temple's worth of material seems like you could become a jack of all trades, master of none. I guess it comes down to what you practice best.
 
Golden Roaches

Golden Rooster

tai Chi
and
Bagua

Wow!
Todd
 
Its like anything else, there are phoneys out there in every "system". Yes, a search will reveal many thread dedicated to shaolin-do, its quite a heated topic as well. But I know no one is going to get out of hand on this thread though, right? :)

7sm
 
I think 7starmantis just applied a chin na lock on this thread!!! LMAO!!!
 
archmagician said:
I think 7starmantis just applied a chin na lock on this thread!!! LMAO!!!
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:rofl: I actually laughed out loud at that one!!

Sorry, I wan't trying to stifle discussion, please everyone feel free to continue. I just wanted to make sure we all knew to play nice. :)

7sm
 
Shaolin Do...
:toilclaw:
This is one of those threads where if I say what I really think, I'm going to piss some people off. All I can say is this: Is Shaolin Do Chinese martial arts? Kind of( :idunno: ). Is it capable of producing good martial artists? As well as any art( :asian: ), it's really up to the student after all. Would I recommend it to someone seeking to learn CMA? No.

Mike
 
RHD said:
Shaolin Do...
:toilclaw:
This is one of those threads where if I say what I really think, I'm going to piss some people off. All I can say is this: Is Shaolin Do Chinese martial arts? Kind of( :idunno: ). Is it capable of producing good martial artists? As well as any art( :asian: ), it's really up to the student after all. Would I recommend it to someone seeking to learn CMA? No.

Mike
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What seems kind of strange to me is that they use Japanese words and wear Japanses type Gi (with LOTS of patches)in their Chinese "art"....also I guess you don't really need to train at one of their schools to be a member:

http://www.shaolin-do.com/pages/application.html


http://www.shaolin-do.com/pages/mission.shtml

there are 2 "red flags" for me. Organizations that allow you to join via the Internet or by mail allows give me the creeps.
 
I know 7* is watching me on this one. Let me see if I can fill in some gaps. The shaolin-do system has some great forms with some great application. And I have sparred with some of the Masters in the system Believe me they are some of the best I have ever ran across. I have been to tournaments throughout the north east US and even went to Athens Greece to a tournament and have yet to run across masters that can preform at the level of the Master's I sparred out of the Shaolin Do system. There is two branches of the Shaolin Do. there is Master Sin The' and Master Hiang The' they are brothers but they split back in the 90's and Hiang The' calls his system centreal Shaolin. Grand Maste Ie that they talk about was there grand father on their mothers side. the brothers took diffent paths acording to the note on the back of the photos you see of GM Ie. According to the Note GM Ie travaled all over china studeing at differnt temples. Master Sin studied mainly under his grand father witch was a internal master. Master Hiang studied under 4 differnt masters under the direction of his grand father. Now let me break the questions down.

Uniforms--according to the brothers and the letter on the back of the photo. GM Ie fled down to Indonesia why we don't know the brothers say he was wonted for killing gards or militay of some sort. Can't tell you if this is real or not. but he did "Flee" to indonesia. during that time in Indonesia the japanise and Chinise did not get a long. So GM Ie hid the system by developing a karate style of short forms that had all the main form in the system but would give him time to see if they were spying on the sytle. this is also why he used the Karate style uniform and the belt ranking that it has today.

Dose the system have 900 forms-- well I can't say it does. I have 86 myself and My instuctor (7th degree) has showed out close 150. We believe that there is around 200 between the brothers. 900 well believe what you wont on that!!!

Probles with the system-- I will say I teach the art and I can show you take down, throws, hold, locks, ground fighting, inside fighting, outside fighting, weapon fighting, and much more in the system. however it was not untill my instructor met and started traning with Ramy Preses (who loved are art) and Master Gin foon Mark that he started really showing the applications out. I believe the coment made before he started teaching was "why should it take you 20 years to learn what I already know". The brothers don't think that way. by the way my insturctor was one of the first to reach 7th degree under two brother.

Is it any good. Yes if you are trained by some of the upper rake (3-7 degrees) you will and can learn a lot. if you are training under a 1 black you it will take you much longer to gain skill in the art. what I have found and truely believe is the shaolin-do white - Green belts are below advrage, the brown belts to 1st black is advrage, but the higher ranks like 3,4 -7 are above the advrage by far.

if you are looking for a art to be in and enjoy for years while you contenue to learn new stuff Shaolin do is great. just remember it will take you a while to become great at the system. but you will be come great if you spend the time in it.
If you are looking to Kick but tomarrrow. well I don't know of a system that will do that. Maybe someone else will. I can tell you this no matter what system your are in the one who puts the time, heart, and effort in is the one who will be great.
 
As with many other "fringe" CMA's one of the major porblems with SD is that it has no connections to any other CMA's. There is no common thread there, and literally no one to authenticate by saying "yes, that's what we learned/observed/recall from China back in the day". Heck, even the 200 forms thing is a major alarm bell. The only place you can get 200 forms from other than an SD school is a Green Dragon Studios catalog. (Jack of all trades, master of none) While I have no doubts that you can become a good fighter by studying at an SD school, I doubt it has anything to do with all the forms or the questionable history. To me it's a Chinese influenced fighting art that comes out of Indonesia and plays heavily into the Shaolin myth.

Mike
 
I can agree with this post. I was suprised to hear someone say they had 86 forms allready. Thats quite a bit. I was thinking about how much time we spend on each form. If you spend 6 months on a form, that would take like 43 years. Even if you spent 3 months on a form, thats around 21 years I believe? To learn 200 forms at only 3 months on each form thats what, 50 years? 900 forms would take 225 years at 3 months each. 900 forms would take 75 years at only 1 month for each form! I'm not sayin this to discredit SD, just to show that there are some tall claims floating around.

7sm
 
RRouuselot said:
also I guess you don't really need to train at one of their schools to be a member:

there are 2 "red flags" for me. Organizations that allow you to join via the Internet or by mail allows give me the creeps.
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The application asks for the name of your teacher and your rank, so maybe you do have to be in training...I'll try to find out. I can understand why you might be creeped, but it's not like you're buying a belt or anything. You're pretty much signing up for the newsletter and getting discounts on seminars and tournaments.

RHD, I'm not sure what you mean by "fringe" CMA. But, yeah, that's pretty much what I said before...it gives you a taste of a bunch of CMA's, but it's up to you at the later levels to choose one and master it. I'm not sure what the Shaolin myth is, either. Now with the 900 forms claim, maybe GM Sin The has documentation on all of thses forms because so many of them are included. I mean, Shaolin-Do teaches forms from Tai Chi, Pa Kua, internal, external, and several animal forms as well, so maybe these forms are all in the system somehow. I don't know and I don't think anyone can answer that but a few of the higher-ranks. As for the 86 forms, it's kind of misleading, but not untrue. Supposedly in order to appear more Japanese or something, several short forms were created. There are 30 "short kata," 20 "sparring techniques," 20 "Ippon Kumite" (yes, I know it's another Japanese word), and 20 self-defense. So there's 90 right there. As a second-brown, I know those 90 plus 10 long forms and five weapon kata. So yeah 105 sounds like a lot for a brown belt, but I guess it's all in how you define a form.
 
Xequat said:
RHD, I'm not sure what you mean by "fringe" CMA.
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Didn't really want to go there but:

It's not a CMA recognized by anyone in the CMA community. It's not silat, it's not karate, so it gets lumped in with CMA.

The thing that really is unappealing to me personally is the smattering of forms from (or reportedly from) multiple styles of kung fu, but utterly lacking the strategic and conceptual base that makes each one unique. Not to mention the fact that each of these kung fu/fighting systems are comprised as much by the conditioning exercises, drills, and theory specific to them. I mean really, how can you learn TaiChi, Bagua, Black Tiger, Preying Mantis, and White Crane forms and expect to be accomplishing anything other than some physical activity without the style-specific training methods that go with them? Shaolin Do is a modern phenomenon: A little bit of this, a little bit of that, and some belts to earn. Sorry fella's, I know it's going to tick you off, but take the time to do some research on Chinese martial arts and ask the hard questions.

To give an example:
I'm a practitioner of Hung Gar kung fu as passed down through Wong Fei Hung lineages. Within that system there are 3-5 core empty hand forms that really define the system (Gung Gee Fook Fu Kuen/Gung Pattern Taming Tiger Fist, Fu Hok Sheuhng Ying Kuen/Tiger and Crane Combined Fist, Five Animals, Sup Ying Kuen/Ten Forms Fist, and Titsin Kuen/Iron Wire Fist) and 1 or 2 weapon forms (Ng Long Pa Kwa Gwun/Fifth Son 8 Diagram Long Pole, and possibly a butterfly knife set) that can be considered "original".

Different schools will vary in the number of supplememtary forms they may teach, but these are the defining forms of Hung gar. However, the forms alone amount to very little. The drills, "gung"/attribute building exercises, and theory behind them is the important part, in addtion to hours and hours of time spent training hands on practicing what's contained within the forms and backed up by the gung. In essence, once learned the forms really need to be put on the back burner so the real training can commence, and it's all very specific to Hung Gar's strategies and theories and wouldn't apply to the way a Preying Mantis or BaGua practitioner moves in a direct way.

What I'm getting at here is that it's so very un-CMA like to have that many forms, from completely different strategies and backgrounds, and expect to produce an effective fighting method from them. My thoughts are that those who obtain martial skill from SD get it from whatever drills and exercises you do in or out of class other than forms practice.

So, I apologize if my opinion upsets you. However, I have no doubt it's an opinion shared broadly throughout the CMA community.

Mike
 
RHD said:
What I'm getting at here is that it's so very un-CMA like to have that many forms, from completely different strategies and backgrounds, and expect to produce an effective fighting method from them.
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Agreed. About twenty years ago, I ran into a guy who claimed that he was going to create a style by combining Wing Chun and Taekwondo. His reasoning was that since Wing Chun has great punches, and Taekwondo has great kicks, putting them together would make a superior martial art. I pointed out to him that the two arts' respective strategies would conflict, and he would wind up with bad Wing Chun or bad Taekwondo (as it turned out, it was just bad, period.)

As for Shaolin-Do, a central Ohio school of the style has dropped the "Do" and replaced the belts with colored "T" shirts indicating their rank (or at least they did at the Asian Festival in Columbus last summer). Maybe the gis and belts were catching flack from the CMA community. Just a guess on my part :idunno: .
 
Randy Strausbaugh said:
Agreed. About twenty years ago, I ran into a guy who claimed that he was going to create a style by combining Wing Chun and Taekwondo. His reasoning was that since Wing Chun has great punches, and Taekwondo has great kicks, putting them together would make a superior martial art. I pointed out to him that the two arts' respective strategies would conflict, and he would wind up with bad Wing Chun or bad Taekwondo (as it turned out, it was just bad, period.)

As for Shaolin-Do, a central Ohio school of the style has dropped the "Do" and replaced the belts with colored "T" shirts indicating their rank (or at least they did at the Asian Festival in Columbus last summer). Maybe the gis and belts were catching flack from the CMA community. Just a guess on my part :idunno: .
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I call those kinds of styles “Cuisine Art” styles…like that blender thingy.....add a little of this a little of that and you get a whole lot of garbage.
 
OK I am back I have been off for a few days. First of all the Shaolin do form I have are long forms not short. The short forms and Sparing tech. all come out of the forms that are in the system. They were taken out to help train the student before learning the forms. just like you would teach a front kick before you would teach a form that has a front kick in it. Randy Strausbaugh I see you are from Ohio I am located just south of dayton I would invite you down to my school to see the way we teach the are and to show you my 86 forms. I am not just talking I can back them up and am willing to show you any of them. I can also show you how they work for fighting as well. This goes out to anyone If your forms are not showing you how to fight why are you doing them? All my fighting tech. comes out of my "Shaolin Do" forms. RhD we don't clam to be CMA we are a shaolin art. We do have a core forms in our system like the Taipang Birds and Iron man. There are a complete 18 taipang system and a complete 18 throwing dagger system, they start with training forms and move up to more advance tech. You also say "...that can be considered "original". " why bebecause someone told you this, because some one typed it on the internet? What is ment by "original". If you look back no one can tell you what is "original" when it comes to the old style of shaolin. the temples were burnt so many times a lot of history was lost. You say the system is not "silat, it's not karate" lets look at that. Were did silat and karate come from? If I remember it came form the Shaolin arts? if this is true. why don't they look like the shaolin we see today? why don't they have the stance of the hung Gar? Maybe it's not that the Shaolin do looks like Karate, maybe its Karate looks like Shaolin do? I have showed some top masters like Ramy Presas, Gin foon Mark, some of the advance forms of the Shaolin do and they don't question it. Master Gin foon Mark who is respected my any style of kung fu walked into my instructors Gym in Hazard KY (yes Hazard, I have photos if you would like to see them) and he walked around the gym and he looked at all the Photo's, certificate's, weapons ect that was on the walls of the Shaolin do system and made the commit as he read the Certificate "shaolin Karate". My instructor walked to the middle of the floor and preformed our brown belt Iron man form we he was done Master Mark said "that's shaolin", my instructor preform a advance taipang form, Master Mark said "that's anchent Shaolin". Standing there in the room and watching Master Mark call the system Anchent Shaolin was all I needed to believe in the art.
 
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