Visitors

It was almost 2 weeks ago and has taken me some time to get these downloaded from my camera but I finally got it done. On August 10th our class had a visit from Sifu Norman Mandarino and a few of his students. They have a Kung Fu school in Buffalo, NY and asked if they could come visit our class. It is always nice to meet other students that have some connection to the founder of our style of Fut Gar, Leung Tin Chiu in their background. By coincidence we also had a visit from another student from Michigan who also is training in Fut Gar techniques. I had asked Grandmaster Chen Rong En to come meet the students as he is always interested in seeing other people that have a connection to our style. Here are the pictures from that visit.

Short Notice

I have seen a definite trend over the 20+ years that I have been teaching Kung Fu. Almost every time I am asked to put together some people for a show or demo, it seems like it comes with very short notice. It makes me laugh every time I receive a call about a show that is taking place the day after tomorrow followed by the inevitable question - "How many of your students can make it?" This seemed like disorganization when it was my brother seemingly calling me the day before every event that he needed help on but as my brother became less involved in Martial Arts events, I have come to realize that it is just the way things are. I am not running a commercial school so it is less important for me to attend when invited but find it fun to get out on occasion. As a student, I think it is a good teaching tool because you are required to keep something at performance level at all times. As I have told most of my students over the years, there should always be something that you can perform well without notice because you never know when you are going to be asked to perform. Although the short notice I always get is frustrating, I think it has helped reinforce the importance of being prepared at all times.

Weapons Forms of Fut Gar Kung Fu

In Leung Tin Chiu's branch of Fut Gar Kung Fu there is a heavy focus on staff work. This agrees with the theory form my previous blog entry about the most important weapon in Martial Arts. Here is a list of the weapons forms as I was taught by Grandmaster Chen Rong En.

• Double-ended Staff
• Shooting Star Chasing the Moon Staff
• Tiger Taming Staff
• Left Handed Staff
• Flying Dragon Staff
• 2-Person Flying Dragon Staff
  
• Dragon Well Sword
  

There have been other forms that Grandmaster Chen has taught but they were not from this style. Years can be spent just training in the proper techniques and applications of these forms.

Commercial Schools

I have thought many times over the years about the commercialization of Martial Arts. There are a few things that I find to be quite frustrating.

The schools that pressure you into joining when you were there to ask about a few classes. The idea is to sign up a bunch of students who ideally do not continue to show up so the space is able to accept even more students. Yes, you are there because you are interested in joining a school but I believe it should be up to the student to ask to join. When asked about selecting a style, I normally suggest that the student should try a few different schools and styles to see which one is to their liking. This should be a combination of liking the instructor, their teaching style, the location, the other students and enjoyment of the lesson during the time you were trying the class. Don't get me wrong, I don't mean that the workout should be easy and therefore enjoyable, but more that the style of workout is what you are looking for.

The guarantee of attainment of the highest level within a certain amount of time is something else that I have heard of. I do not believe that it is possible to guarantee that someone will get their "black belt" in a certain amount of time.

I accept the existence of belt or ranking systems so people can see their progression within a style. I have also given into the need to show progression and gotten away from traditional style where all students were students, not a certain level of student. I do feel that some schools now are overdoing it with adding too many levels or levels within levels. In my opinion, it is a pure money grab because the school can charge for each grading,

Watered down systems due to the desire to generate instructors is a problem that I see in commercial schools. They want more instructors to spread the style but unfortunately, I have seen too many instructors teaching watered down versions of their style or not having time to mature before moving out to be an instructor on their own. I know that students are able to learn an entire style quickly if given the opportunity. Unfortunately these students have not been given the time to mature in the style and fully comprehend/practice the techniques. This leads to the situations I have seen where the instructor is not aware of why things are done a certain way. This knowledge becomes lost and as their students become instructors, even more knowledge is lost.

We have all seen schools display weapons on the walls or in a rack. Some of my students actually discovered a school that displayed swords and staves on the wall but upon asking discovered that the instructor did not actually know how to use the weapons and did not teach the weapons. Another one of those silly franchises that try to excite potential students by displaying "cool" weapons.