2 styles

[green]

I have been taking kung fu for a short period of time, and I have read that it is bad to study two styles at once. Does this also apply to researching other styles from books, and practicing some things, or just studying from multiple teachers? My main interest is kung fu, but I am curious about the techniques from other styles, and if people think that this is a bad idea, I would not be upset to only do kung fu, I'm just curious about the others.

[Swordless]

imho, there's nothing wrong with studying more than one style at a time. The more you can learn and the more skills you can pick up, the better.
Some would caution, however, against becoming a jack of all styles and master of none. For now, go out and experiment. You'll find your favorite style in time, whether it is kung fu or something else entirely, and you will be all the more confident in your chosen style because of your experimentation.

[xing_jian108]

If you've only been in the martial arts a little bit it may be some trouble doing different styles at once. For one, you don't have a solid base in any one style to start with. And the kicking techniques of, say a sidekick, are going to be different in different styles even though it's pretty much the same kick. If you don't have a strong base and understanding of the kick in one style, then it's going to be some trouble changing the technique for the other style. So I would suggest going at one style until the base is set pretty well. Then you can build on that with techniques from different styles and it will be easier for you to realize the differences and how to change them without totally messing up your muscle memory of the technique. And also it will help you better choose which techniques are good for your body and what you like. Before you have a good base it will just be like you should take everything you learned and use it all. Which would be very difficult to do. Because you wouldn't understand the basics of even one.

A mi tuo Fo
-Xing Jian

[srt202_shooter]

The issue would be self-discipline.

If you are somewhat disciplined in your practice, you would be able to pull off
doing a predominantly stand up style and another style that focuses on
a different aspect of martial science such as throwing and groundfighting.

If you are extremely disciplined in your practice, you may be able to pull off
studying two similar systems simultaneously.

What you may not want to do is practice two systems that have
contradicting nei gong (internal power practice). Has it been done in the past? I'm sure it has, but I advise
against this practice. Your progress will be slower than just focusing one of system
of nei gong. Get good at one nei gong system before practicing another system.

[Gawenka]

I always wondered about what internal styles contrast. Which styles would you say have contrasting "nei going"?

[Swordless]

Xing makes a good point about getting a base in one before starting another. I guess it depends on what else you want to study. I was thinking of my own experience, where I started in Kung Fu, then several months later started studying Tai Chi, and eventually moved into tai chi style weapons forms. Kung Fu was always my base though, and I never studied anything too similar to it until about a year after I started that. I think Xing is thinking about if you studied, say, kung fu and karate at the same time, in which it would be easy to get confused and screw with your muscle memory.

[Swordless]

However, AFTER you have a good base in Kung Fu, don't be afraid to experiment. It can be very beneficial to cross-train, and a lot of fun.

[phoenix]

I personally find it quite difficult to switch to other styles. Once you have spent years learning to throw kicks and strikes in a certain manner from a certain stance it is very hard to 'unlearn' and do it another way. A completely different style would not pose this problem. I think once you have a good base in one system you are always going to go back to that in some way or another. I started in Karate as a kid, and even though I have been doing Kungfu for about seven years, I still tend to slip back into the stance I learnt back then. For this reason I pretty much gave up on Wing Chun because my stances are too long (I have very long legs too, which does not help!) and had to find another style which suited me and my previous learning better.

[Swordless]

Yeah, I have a tendency to 'Shaolinify' my tai chi and weapons forms, doing them too fast, overextending, too deep of a stance, etc. Anything else I do will always have a little bit of Shaolin in it.