Tweet
Master schmaster. **** mastering forms, I'm just trying to master myself. And mastery of self is not a point which you reach one day and say, oh well that's done, now onto other things. It's a path. There is no end and no beginning.
You could start doing shaohongquan and lohan qigong at the age of 3 and practice your entire life, and constantly improve. This doesn't mean you mastered the form at the age of 13, or 33, or 103. It constantly improves because you constantly change and you use your training to focus that change. And please for the love of god don't tell me you seek to grandmaster a form after you master it simply because you've been practicing the same moves for 10 years and now you need a different word to make yourself feel good about your practice.
Just strive to improve through your practice. I've been called many names by many people, some have called me kungfu master, drunken master, and other monikers. Though I have never once considered myself a master of any of that.
As for wing chun, wonderfully effective for infighting, but has severe drawbacks at long and middle ranged fighting, especially against an opponent who does their best to control the distance of the fight. From what I've heard (though this might be just a myth) the real reason Bruce Lee started developing Jeet Kune Do was that he got his ass whupped by a boxer when he tried to use just wing chun. IMHO the reason wing chun is so widespread is that it is a simple, relatively easy style to learn, which can be taught in a short amount of time (you can learn the whole system in less than ten years, which is quick for chinese martial arts) and it enables the student to fight very well against untrained fighters.
Just master yourself, and practice your training. That's all.
You could start doing shaohongquan and lohan qigong at the age of 3 and practice your entire life, and constantly improve. This doesn't mean you mastered the form at the age of 13, or 33, or 103. It constantly improves because you constantly change and you use your training to focus that change. And please for the love of god don't tell me you seek to grandmaster a form after you master it simply because you've been practicing the same moves for 10 years and now you need a different word to make yourself feel good about your practice.
Just strive to improve through your practice. I've been called many names by many people, some have called me kungfu master, drunken master, and other monikers. Though I have never once considered myself a master of any of that.
As for wing chun, wonderfully effective for infighting, but has severe drawbacks at long and middle ranged fighting, especially against an opponent who does their best to control the distance of the fight. From what I've heard (though this might be just a myth) the real reason Bruce Lee started developing Jeet Kune Do was that he got his ass whupped by a boxer when he tried to use just wing chun. IMHO the reason wing chun is so widespread is that it is a simple, relatively easy style to learn, which can be taught in a short amount of time (you can learn the whole system in less than ten years, which is quick for chinese martial arts) and it enables the student to fight very well against untrained fighters.
Just master yourself, and practice your training. That's all.
Comment