Update Well ive been in Hung Ga for a little over a year now. Currently learning Fu Hok and there is a very big difference in this art compared to anything else I have taken. The curriculum is huge, and there is just not enough time to learn 1/4 of it. So now I understand why you need a life time to learn it all.. Im really enjoying the forms, as I can do this as much as I want at home. The one thing I really like about Hung Ga forms is nothing is wasted. Every movement is something whether a block, strike, etc. Nothing is wasted..
My teacher taught the entire kung si as the first form to learn. However that was a few years ago. these days most instructors in our club teach lau gar as the first form. Because kung si is such a long form it puts many new students off.
When I trained in your lineage I learned Mui Fa Kuen, Lau Gar Kuen and monkey staff before I learned Gung Ji.
Phil was already an instructor in several arts (if i remember correctly including Escrima) when he spend some time studying a few forms under my teacher. I am sure Phil taught good stuff over all, but from what I understand he taught his own take on our kung fu informed by the other arts he Practiced. Therefore what he taught was different from how our linage does its kung fu.
Hay Bkyln James - how goes the training? I am currently suffering from an overdose of work, and migraines (boo) but the leg injury is beginning to quite down. (yay) In September I am going to have a binge on practising iron wire. and am putting together a seminar on playing with the animals and diagnosing forms. yay!
James what is your favourite of the 5 animals and why? I tend to default to dragon but am working on my crane. I am lucky because one of my kung fu brothers is awesome at crane.
When I trained in Tom's lineage I was taught lau gar, monkey stick and a form called 'walking drill' which essentially worked the some of the fundamental animal stances in a repeatable pattern first.
I remember doing the walking drill at Wayne Armstrong's school before it was Wayne Armstrong's school (a guy called Larko or similar was teaching). If memory serves it's essentially the opening footwork from Fu Hok Seung Ying.
Ok so I'm only on FuHok so far so haven't seen too much Dragon yet. But I'm liking snake.! Did a small workshop just on snake, using it to (Lack of a better word) parry and strike drills. Our junior/beginner classes are made up of conditioning and drills. Crane is difficult, as im an overly aggressive person. So you would think I would be good at tiger, im not. I see some really nice changes in my body. With all the conditioning I am definitely getting stronger, especially with "The Turtles!"
wow! that's a blast from the past. 12 - 13 years ago? Yes wayne opened his class and then got posted abroad by his employer so Ian McLeod (aka Laco) took over as caretaker for about a year, ably assisted by me. We have probably met ! point of info. The walking drill is a exercise in footwork that takes stepping sequences from several of the forms and drills them in isolation to the hands (which are placed on the hips throughout, emphasising the alignment of hips and shoulders). It is very much a drill (working on isolated aspects of movements), rather than a form. In teaching it helps to reduce the overload for beginners who often find coordinating good hand technique and good stance /stepping technique difficult at first.
Bklyn james Dragon is one of the more subtle mechanics within the system. when I look at hung gar i personally see that it tends to teach the subtler aspects by including them from the start but not emphasising them until later. this allows the practitioner to develop a sensitivity to the movements and reduces the effect where if you overtly try to teach something subtle the student tries too hard and fails because they are trying. The dragon mechanic is within all the spiralling movements of all the forms. Whether or not it has a dragon hand attached to the movement. so you will find dragon mechanics in butterfly palms and in many cranes wing movements that include either an expanding or contracting circular motion. Looked at it this way, both taming the tiger and tiger and crane contain a surprising amount of dragon. The best way to learn dragon (in my opinion) is to develop an ear for how movements can spiral in and out of the tan tien but without trying to get them to do it. Just practice the forms and feel how the body likes to move.
Tom, Thank you for the insight. Now that you said that I see where in the form they could be(Not sure too new). Towards the end of FuHok we do Fu Jou then turn around into dragon stance(Some call it unicorn) so im guessing this has some Dragon elements in it. From what I understand Dragon is a higher level?
Difficult for a beginner to pick up on - yes. Subtle so easier to get wrong - yes. But higher level - I am not sure I would agree. To me the phrase "higher level" implies that dragon techniques are in some way superior. but they are not - they are simply one tool in the tool box. Again point of clarification. (my bad because I should have pointed this out earlier) I am thinking about mechanics of movement usually associated with the animal hands in these recent posts rather than stances. (which can have animal names too, e. g. tiger, cat, crane and dragon). You don't need to be in dragon stance to use a dragon hand mechanic. In fact in practice as many (but by no means all) dragon mechanics are applied in grappling you will most often be in a bow and arrow (or as we call it tiger stance) or a horse stance or retreating into a cat stance when performing the application.
Would have been 2001-2002. Would certainly be amusing if we'd met. I only went for a class or two though.
Would this be more of the essence of the animal? Where you can be doing a crane technique but have the exxence of another animal?
Welcome to the confusing world of Chinese analogies, metaphor, and shorthand. This is the way I personally look at it (others may just as correctly look at it another way). the animal metaphor is applied to hands, mechanics, and stances. When applied to the hand - it is what shape the hand is at the time. Now in practice the shape of the hand does impact on the mechanic because it introduces tension into the elbow/ shoulder and also presents planes of use that are more suited to certain vectors of force application. This is particularly true for tiger hands. but the shape of the hand does not dictate the mechanic used it is merely more suited to some mechanics of movement and power generation rather than others. When applied to the mechanic - it is the vector of force that is produced and it its the internal mechanics that are used to generate those forces. Tiger linear, dragon spiralling, snake linear expansion and retraction, cranes wing opening and closing of a sphere (without spiral) and so on. So if we take the movement when we rotate the butterfly palm for example - the form of the hand could either be described as snake or cranes wing. However the mechanic of the power generation is neither the linear expansion and retraction or the snake nor the opening and closing of a sphere (without spiral) of the crane. The mechanic has a pronounced spiral in the tantien. So in my opinion the mechanic is a dragon mechanic.
