Forms without belts

skribs

Grandmaster
This thread is specifically aimed at folks who teach or train a style that uses forms, but does not use a colored belt system to measure the curriculum. How do forms work in your curriculum? How do students know which forms to learn, or how do instructors know which ones to teach? Does it matter what order students learn them in?
 
How do forms work in your curriculum?
We teach forms, beginning first advance later
How do students know which forms to learn, or how do instructors know which ones to teach?
The teacher knows what forms the student is ready for. Also depends on what depth the sifu is teaching. Just forms or forms and applications
Does it matter what order students learn them in?
Yes
 
In the (short) time that I trained on Wing Chun, the school wore no uniform or rank. There was the sifu, the assistant, and a few senior students. After about 30 seconds, you knew which was which.

You start as a first form student, until you are deemed ready to be a second form student. Then 3rd, ect.

It was actually quite simple and effective (compared to our TKD system that I'm 'priced into the hand on').
 
You start as a first form student, until you are deemed ready to be a second form student. Then 3rd, ect.
How is this different from a belt system, then? In TKD, when you've completed the first form, you are invited to test, and then after being tested on the first form you get your belt that signals you're ready for the 2nd form.
 
How is this different from a belt system, then? In TKD, when you've completed the first form, you are invited to test, and then after being tested on the first form you get your belt that signals you're ready for the 2nd form.
An example that comes to mind is Modern Army Combatives (MAC). You learn a series of techniques, then move on to the next level (4 levels). Testing is based on mastering the particular parts of the overall training process. It seems that you would observe in class whatever promotion standard that you set. For example, mastery of form one and X techniques, then they move on to form two and y techniques, etc.
 
I believe that you need to have a concrete understanding of what the forms are meant to be used for, what is accomplished by training them, and how to go about that. This also means that you need to know what forms are NOT meant to be.

In my opinion, forms are often viewed as performance art. They are the vehicle used to show off or highlight the techniques contained in a system as a way of entertaining an audience. Or they are viewed as the end product of the training: "see, I know kung fu, watch me do this form." Or they are simply added on as a curriculum requirement, often just before a test, to give the student something to be tested on, and often quickly forgotten afterward.

In my opinion, none of the above are what forms were meant to be, although I understand how they have evolved into these things in the modern era.

Forms are a tool that you use in your training. They are not performance art. They were never meant to be put on display for the uneducated public to gawk at. Nobody was meant to see your forms other than your teacher who teaches them to you, your classmates with whom you train, and your students to whom you teach them. To anyone else watching them, they are one tool taken out of context and become meaningless as abstract movement. It would be like looking at a screwdriver all by itself and trying to understand how it is used to build a house. Asking to see someone's forms is somewhat like wanting to buy a house and asking to see the builder's toolbox. The house is the product, the tools in the toolbox were used to build the house. The forms are a tool within the greater toolbox, and they are used to build martial skill which is the end product. The form itself is not the end product. You work with them and use them to help you develop your skill. They are never "done." You have never mastered the form, and in fact the concept makes no sense because the form is not to be mastered, but rather to be constantly worked on as a vehicle to greater skill, not as a end in-and-of itself.

I believe that not all forms/kata etc. were created equal. Some were poorly designed and no amount of training or delving into "deeper" secrets will turn them into valuable training tools. I have learned some forms that I classify in that way. Over the years, as my understanding of my training has improved and I have gained higher quality instruction, I have rejected those forms once I was able to identify them as such. In other cases, the form itself may have been well designed and has a lot of good training to offer, but it may have been poorly taught, so everyone in the downstream is not learning it well. If you don't understand the form and you don't have an instructor who can give you quality guidance on it, it has little value, even if it is a famous form for which everyone sings its praises. Practicing it is a waste of time and offers nothing that cannot be gained better, through other types of training.

@skribs I know from other discussions that you have struggled with finding value in the forms that you have learned. I am in no position to judge the value of TKD forms because I have never learned nor studied them, but from the input of other members in those discussions, it is not a foregone conclusion that they were simply poorly designed and inherently hold little training value. However, they may have little value to you. It may be that they were poorly taught to you so you struggle to see their value. It sounds to me like they were often taught as "curriculum fillers" just before a test, expected to be forgotten quickly. You were the rare student who did not forget them, but that does not negate the fact that they were probably poorly taught to you so you view them as shallow curriculum filler, or as performance art done to win a trophy in a tournament and to dazzle an uneducated audience. Given your plans to open a school, I don't know if the forms would hold much value in your school. I don't have an answer to this problem, I am simply pointing out the fact that the problem exists and somehow you need to make some decisions about that.

Getting back to your original question. I use the forms as a tool for training, not as an end product or as curriculum filler or as performance art. I am in no hurry to teach them, because there is a whole lot of fundamental material that is used to build the student's foundational skills before the form itself can be learned and have value. And I make no secret of the fact that the foundational skills are far more important than the forms. If one were to study and train the foundational material only, and learn to apply it well, that person could become a highly skilled martial artist without ever learning a single form. The forms simply take the foundational skills to a higher difficulty level which raises the level of training, and opens one's eyes to a wider horizon of what is possible. The forms are learned gradually, and we make it a part of our regular training moving forward. It isn't the only thing we work on, and we spend more time on other things than we do on forms, but it is a regular part of what we do. Over and over. Sharpen the knife on the stone.

Given that we don't do belts, there is no concern over making sure someone knows this or that form in time for their next test. It is a non-issue. Our forms are very long and rather complex, and cannot be learned in a weekend. They take weeks and months to learn, and then years of practice to polish the skills that they build. It is an ongoing process that is never finished. And there is a certain order in which they are meant to be taught, but I believe that order is not carved into stone as absolute. And neither does one need to learn them all, for them to have value. They are not a "complete set" in that way. Some people might have a need for more forms, other people for fewer. If the lessons the forms are meant to teach are grasped after learning five forms, then learning another five may be meaningless and unnecessary. On the other hand, if one has not grasped those lessons after learning five forms, then I am not sure learning another five will be helpful, and the extra material might simply spread your training too thin and make it more difficult to develop your skill. Forms teach concepts and options, but do not define the body of curriculum. So you don't need to learn all the forms in order to have a legitimate claim on the system. In my opinion, if you have learned the forms, they are valuable tools, but at the same time, if you have not learned the forms, you are not necessarily missing anything. I know that is a bit of a paradox, but it is the conclusion at which I have arrived.

When the teacher decides a student is ready to learn the next form, then that process is begun. But it does not hinge on "mastery" of the previous form, because that term has no meaning in this context. But they should have a solid grasp of the first form before the next one is begun. And the process continues to open one's eyes to a wider horizon of possibilities.
 
They are not performance art. They were never meant to be put on display for the uneducated public to gawk at.
I partially disagree. I belive some old forms were exactly performance art. a spectacle to watch to gather a crowd at which time you could then sell your snake oil medicine. This is what I remember being told but I wasn't in China so I can't say for certain. I would also point out that modern Wushu is very much all about performance art.
But yes I understand the point you were making.
That being said I don't disagree with your post but I see things a bit different.
The purpose of forms is to encapsulate and transfer the style to the next generation. This is a difficult concept to explain. A style is not a system. A system is a collection of collaborative techniques that work together in a harmonious way. A system has a function of producing consistent output. A system is empirical based on quality and effectiveness. If results are not satisfactory the system is modified to produce more effective students.

A style is completely different but it takes a subtle eye to see it. A style was created by a founder. The founder is the ideal. He set forth a curriculum that encapsulated his own concepts but also the essence of who he is. His mannerisms and quirks included. The purpose of a style is to replicate this essence and pass it down to the next generation. It is based within Confucius thought of Ancestor worship.
No modifications are allowed (normally, but drift will happen, ie. genetic mutations, ill explain later). When questions or problems arise in a style the answer is always held in the replication of the founder.
Once you understand this concept you can understand that the underlying purpose for forms is to teach the student the essence of the founder and enable the student to replicate it. A form gives you nothing technically that you can't get in another way. But its the only way to replicate the founders essence. This is why MMA has no use for forms. They are working on a platform of a system, forms are meaningless there.
A style solves the problem of scale and time frame. A system only contains the techniques within the system. The techniques included will change over time and will not look the same over long periods of time.
In a style once the essence is part of the student and embodied, anything that student does is penitrated and infused with the founders essence and is limitless.
Sorry if this sounds hokey or mystical but it's an ingenious solution to long term replication that is actually found In nature. Understanding all this is the domain of evolutionary biology. If you substitute a living creature with martial arts, The adaptive value becomes apparent.
 
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This thread is specifically aimed at folks who teach or train a style that uses forms, but does not use a colored belt system to measure the curriculum. How do forms work in your curriculum? How do students know which forms to learn, or how do instructors know which ones to teach? Does it matter what order students learn them in?
I focus on posture, balance, and coordination. We have forms, but I don’t teach them in the regular beginner class because I don’t believe there is any point to teaching forms to somebody who can’t stand up straight or who doesn’t have a foot. The forms are important, but only if all the foundational basics are being applied while doing them. I think of forms training in steps. The first one is a long basic form with no kicks that has a looping 2 person form contained within. When they get that and can work the 2 person part then we can move on to the more complicated forms. We have a Southern CMA family style so advanced students usually help newer students in the forms class. I’m lucky because many of my training brothers have been with me for over 25 years. I readily defer to them where they are more skilled than I am in certain aspects of our system. The newer students essentially have 6 teachers that rotate in and out in addition to having me there. We all learned the forms in the same order. That order is just by default because the subsequent forms just get longer and more difficult.
 
I partially disagree. I belive some old forms were exactly performance art. a spectacle to watch to gather a crowd at which time you could then sell your snake oil medicine. This is what I remember being told but I wasn't in China so I can't say for certain.
This may be true, but would not be representative of the training forms from traditional martial arts. A school may choose to keep some of this kind of thing within their curriculum to be used at publicity events (if they choose to take part in such things) but I would imagine they would be a very small part of the curriculum.
I would also point out that modern Wushu is very much all about performance art.
Modern Wushu is its own animal. It was created at the direction of the Chinese Communist Government specifically to be a cultural performance and competition/performance art form deliberately separated from the older combat methods. It was never inteneded to be a viable combat method even though it was based on a mixture of older combat methods. In the early days of Modern Wushu (the 1950s) it was probably much closer to the original combat methods on which it was based and there would have been a greater deal of viable material within that performance art. However, today's Modern Wushu has continued to push the envelope in extreme techniques (crowd-pleasing, not combat-effective) and one would be hard-pressed to present a believable argument that Modern Wushu continues to be an effective fighting method even though its athletes can be impressive to watch in the same way that a gymnastics floor routine is impressive to watch. It is deliberately a performance art and has been since it's inception.
But yes I understand the point you were making.
That being said I don't disagree with your post but I see things a bit different.
The purpose of forms is to encapsulate and transfer the style to the next generation. This is a difficult concept to explain. A style is not a system. A system is a collection of collaborative techniques that work together in a harmonious way. A system has a function of producing consistent output. A system is empirical based on quality and effectiveness. If results are not satisfactory the system is modified to produce more effective students.

A style is completely different but it takes a subtle eye to see it. A style was created by a founder. The founder is the ideal. He set forth a curriculum that encapsulated his own concepts but also the essence of who he is. His mannerisms and quirks included. The purpose of a style is to replicate this essence and pass it down to the next generation. It is based within Confucius thought of Ancestor worship.
No modifications are allowed (normally, but drift will happen, ie. genetic mutations, ill explain later). When questions or problems arise in a style the answer is always held in the replication of the founder.
Once you understand this concept you can understand that the underlying purpose for forms is to teach the student the essence of the founder and enable the student to replicate it. A form gives you nothing technically that you can't get in another way. But its the only way to replicate the founders essence. This is why MMA has no use for forms. They are working on a platform of a system, forms are meaningless there.
A style solves the problem of scale and time frame. A system only contains the techniques within the system. The techniques included will change over time and will not look the same over long periods of time.
In a style once the essence is part of the student and embodied, anything that student does is penitrated and infused with the founders essence and is limitless.
Sorry if this sounds hokey or mystical but it's an ingenious solution to long term replication that is actually found In nature. Understanding all this is the domain of evolutionary biology. If you substitute a living creature with martial arts, The adaptive value becomes apparent.
What you describe seems to me to be consistent with Japanese Koryu martial arts in particular. My experience in the Chinese methods is very different. We do not try to hold the system consistent with the vision of a specific individual innovator. At least not for its own sake. We actually view our methodology as being extremely functional, which provides its own motivation for keeping that consistency. But within the greater methodology lies a lot of room to develop one's own training approach, as long as it remains consistent with the principles and foundational practices upon which the method is built.

Ng, Siu Jung established the specific lineage of Tibetan White Crane in which I train. He was innovative and systemmatized some of the training practices from the older Tibetan lineage, making his method unique in its own way while at the same time being a clear relative to the other Tibetan lineages.

Downstream from Sifu Ng, we see a lot of variation from one school to another. Forms are not done the same, and some schools have forms in their curriculum that do not exist in other schools. I have seen my Sifu make changes to a form on the spot, to better fit with a student's strengths or weaknesses. We in no way hold Sifu Ng, nor the curriculum (the forms) as something sacred that needs to be maintained at all cost. We do not try to preserve the greater curriculum to Sifu Ng's vision. Rather, we recognize how effective the overall methodology is and we maintain that, while freely developing our own training exercises that remain consistent to the overall methodology.
 
I believe that order is not carved into stone as absolute. And neither does one need to learn them all, for them to have value. They are not a "complete set" in that way.
Right. Most of the traditional Okinawan forms (I'm not versed in CMA) are compilations of techniques accrued from a variety of masters and consolidated with modifications into a particular master's style. In this regard, there is no such a thing as a beginning or advanced kata. However, since some are "easier" to perform than others they are often taught in order of perceived difficulty. But they were not designed to be taught that way, rather arranged that way after the fact. But there are exceptions such as the pinans (1-5) which were designed as a curriculum and found their way to Japan and Korea.
I belive some old forms were exactly performance art. a spectacle to watch to gather a crowd at which time you could then sell your snake oil medicine. This is what I remember being told but I wasn't in China so I can't say for certain.
This may be true in some CMA, I have no idea of CMA form history, but is NOT true in Okinawan MA where the art and forms were taught in a more secretive fashion during its formative years.
The founder is the ideal. He set forth a curriculum that encapsulated his own concepts but also the essence of who he is. His mannerisms and quirks included. The purpose of a style is to replicate this essence and pass it down to the next generation. It is based within Confucius thought of Ancestor worship.
Most of karate's kata, i.e. Chinto, Kusanku, Wansu and others, were NOT designed by those masters, but by their students. These students (masters themselves) designed a form that were representative of their teachers' style. "These are the kind of techniques Chinto like to use and I'll name the kata after him. Wansu emphasized these concepts in his fighting as illustrated in this form I arranged." And so on. And in doing so, the new master adapted these techniques to fit within his concepts and methods of execution. So, the forms are a representation of another master's personal style infused with his own. The preceding masters were not worshipped, but respected and honored.

A form gives you nothing technically that you can't get in another way.
True, but having a template to work off of makes things easier and preserves some concepts and combination threads that may otherwise be lost over the span of time.
 
The purpose of forms is to encapsulate and transfer the style to the next generation. This is a difficult concept to explain. A style is not a system. A system is a collection of collaborative techniques that work together in a harmonious way. A system has a function of producing consistent output. A system is empirical based on quality and effectiveness. If results are not satisfactory the system is modified to produce more effective students.

A style is completely different but it takes a subtle eye to see it. A style was created by a founder. The founder is the ideal. He set forth a curriculum that encapsulated his own concepts but also the essence of who he is. His mannerisms and quirks included. The purpose of a style is to replicate this essence and pass it down to the next generation. It is based within Confucius thought of Ancestor worship.
No modifications are allowed (normally, but drift will happen, ie. genetic mutations, ill explain later). When questions or problems arise in a style the answer is always held in the replication of the founder.
Once you understand this concept you can understand that the underlying purpose for forms is to teach the student the essence of the founder and enable the student to replicate it. A form gives you nothing technically that you can't get in another way. But its the only way to replicate the founders essence. This is why MMA has no use for forms. They are working on a platform of a system, forms are meaningless there.
A style solves the problem of scale and time frame. A system only contains the techniques within the system. The techniques included will change over time and will not look the same over long periods of time.
In a style once the essence is part of the student and embodied, anything that student does is penitrated and infused with the founders essence and is limitless.
Sorry if this sounds hokey or mystical but it's an ingenious solution to long term replication that is actually found In nature. Understanding all this is the domain of evolutionary biology. If you substitute a living creature with martial arts, The adaptive value becomes apparent.

That's a really fascinating perspective, and I've never considered it in that light before. Thanks for that
 
How is this different from a belt system, then? In TKD, when you've completed the first form, you are invited to test, and then after being tested on the first form you get your belt that signals you're ready for the 2nd form.
I think it's a distinction without a real difference. Just don't tell the Wing Chun guys that just because they don't use belts that they still have a rank system. They just don't test ad nauseum like us tkd guys do.
 
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