this is left over from some other forums I post at where threads ar egenerally hijacked pretty quickly. for some of you this may sound familiar...... I am recently discovering that repetition, consistancy, and time are three ingredients to training that if added in liberal amounts, can lead to a much deeper understanding of the martial arts. It sounds like common sense but I seem to be running into a lot of people who dont seem to know what I mean exactly. My training regimen consist of about 90% basics, 2-4 hours a day, usually split up into 2 hours in the morning and an hour to two hours in the evening. Before you ask, yes I am married, no I do not have kids, and yes I work a professional 9 to 5 job. I am finding that the extra time doing just the basics, really brings out the effect these drills or exercises are supposed to produce. An example would be developing the ability to generate power from the dan tien. I have just barely scratched the surface, but I have been doing the same 4 basic exercises for the last year and have seen some tremendous benefit! I am finding that although the arts arent all that complicated, most good arts rely on a few basic physiological and physics principles, they can have great depth if practiced precisely and consistantly. This leads me to believe that many practitioners, even the 'high' level ones, instructors and such, rarely make it to appreciable levels of skill. Has anyone noticed that when they go to schools that teach the same art you study, that most things seem very much alike? For wingchun it seems to be that way, even with the claims of lineage, and changes by supposed pioneers in modern combat, it all seems about the same, vanilla. I believe this is because these people that are good, stopped at good and instead of continuing down the path to reach real appreciable skill, they sort of took a side path or two. Does this make sense to anyone?
Basics are the most important thing in training. Each day I spend 2.5 hours doing taiji basics (going through the form, power generation training, stance training) and 2 hours of kung fu training. For kung fu, I spend about 80% of the time concentrating of stances, basics, techniques and all the basic elements of the sets. Then I go through my forms, again braking it down to basics elements first, and whole forms later. I also believe, the only way you will reach complete understanding of your style, is by daily practice. Its difficult to explain, but you kinda reach some conclusions about certain movements etc, which cannot be expressed by learning it academically. sorry about my spelling
"Its difficult to explain, but you kinda reach some conclusions about certain movements etc, which cannot be expressed by learning it academically. " Eddie, thats exactly what I am talking about! I have noticed that memebers of my class who do not practice daily do not seem to notice the changes that I do in my training and the improvements. Sometimes conceptually they understand it but they dont seem to get it. No specific examples right now but its like all of a sudden after all this practicing something clicks and I get how something works while my fellow students who basically only practice when in class struggle on.
there is a saying, 'you cannot explain to someone how a coke (for eg) taste, unless you have tasted it your self'. you do wing chun right? allot of what makes wing chun work, is burried deep inside the essence of the movements. That is what is so great about martial arts. we cannot see it, we can only feel it.
hmm red5angel i think u r pretty rite about basics frankly i daily spend at least 1.5 hrs on basics... i do TKD n started with TC when somebody talks to be about basic then there's simple line i used to say(nah my dad used to say that ) "u cannot create a Multistorey building without good foundation" the only difference is that we can strengthen our foundation but a building cannot BTW i noticed this in my TKD rather than in TC... in TKD we practice lots n lots of kicks but from last 3 months i was on break(just recharging my cells n hav some xam to do) so y'day after break when i started to kick(yup high n fast) i noticed my kicks havn't detoriatted but they become good n flexible, generatin lots of power too(yea i those 3 months i didn't tried to kick that fast or high) i was workin more on body allignment which i hav learnt in first few classes... understood more in kicks... just my 2 cents... -TkdWarrior-
with stretching, often after you take a short break, the muscle becomes more flexible. I have seen people who reach a peak with regards to their flexibility, then they take a week or two off. When they start again, they are much more flexible. It has all to do with muscle recovery like in body building later e
TKDwarrior, good exmaple! Eddie, you are correct my freind, you cant explain some things you have to experience them. My instructor is always refusing to answer questions. I shouldnt say always but most of the time I will ask a question on something and he will say, "don't worry about it, just keep practicing." Eventually my question gets answered on its own!
the cool thing with Martial Arts, all your questions will be answered by just training, training, and more training. Repitition!!!Repitition!!!Repitition!!!Repitition!!!Repitition!!!Repitition!!!Repitition!!!Repitition!!!Repitition!!!Repitition!!!Repitition!!!Repitition!!!Repitition!!!Repitition!!!Repitition!!!Repitition!!! This is the only way to learn
Red5angel,I whole heartly agree with your comments about training the basics more and more to gain a depper understanding of the arts. I noticed this myself when i had been doing pretty advanced kung fu for about 2 years, I then went right back and just started training my horseriding stance again and my skill and understanding shot up. I too think it is best to train every day but some people state that this will just lead to mental and physical burn out, have you any insights on this matter Little lion
Its like the Blackbelt classes that often only do basics. Although theres basics, and perfecting essential techniques Beginners often think they know something after repeating if for 10min, but to be able to use it effectively in a fight does require a better understanding than just repetition. Red5, you've been training in WC for 3 years so you should be getting a decent feel for it now, as it all starts clicking together. But, that learning curve starts to flatten off now and it takes longer to get down that rabbit hole. Do you have training partner, 4 hours training alone a day sounds a bit much! I'd be carefull not to overdo it
