The Way of Least Resistance

Here's something I was told when I first started training in martial arts: You start with "no form" - ie. natural movement. However this movement is not necessarily productive and is almost certainly not efficient. You then learn " form "; this involves a basic, formal, structured type of movement being "imposed" upon you. Once you have absorbed or "internalised" this "form" you abandon it - and your movements become natural again. "Abandoning form" and "shrinking your art" seem to go hand in hand. By "shrinking your art" I'm referring to making your formal blocks/deflections etc. smaller, using finer and more efficient angles etc. until the basic "form" you were taught becomes almost unrecognisable. The " formality " of your technique (ie. the structure dictated by katas/forms etc.) disappears and in its place is just the smallest movement necessary to effect the principle or es...

I would like to make the following observations on the subject of applications and forms, gleaned from my recent trips to Taiwan and Hong Kong: My teacher Chen Yun Ching and my senior James Sumarac were at pains to point out that what they demonstrated as applications of forms were merely examples. Forms don't teach applications - rather they teach certain principles . Isolated applications make you aware of how these principles might be utilised in combat - they do not provide an exhaustive treatise on how they should/will be utilised. The reality is that you are unlikely ever to string together any chain of movements from a form, however you can extract the principle of the movements if you study them sufficiently and correctly . In practice this means applying a small part of a form sequence here or there - and perhaps more importantly it also means learning to avoid those techniques being applied to you. Part of the reason why applications exist in the form of xing/kata/hy...