Should I stick with my Kung Fu school?

flowOfTheCentury

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Hi All,

Ive been taking Kung Fu for about about 8 months now. Ive loved my class until recently, when I suddenly started having doubts about it. Chief among them are:

1) I feel like Im not learning how to deliver powerful strikes: our instructor is not a fan of 'overpowering' your opponent, but using leverage, still, I sometimes feel like at least hitting a bag or something.

2) A lot of what we're learning has questionable usefulness: a lot of our time is spent learning to fight with weapons, which is cool, but I cant help asking myself, 'when am I ever going to need to fight with a sword?'

3) Learning so much that I cant remember it all/ dont get to apply it: There is so much to learn in our style, that Im constantly getting new info, without having fully absorbed the old info. The problem is though that the class is not designed to go into great depths about REALLY learning a certain move, because theres always the next thing to learn.

4) I have doubts about how prepared I would actually be for a real street encounter. Its not that the content is not there, its just that its not taught 'in your face' enough for me to remember it in a panic situation i think.

So my questions for you all are:

1) For those that have studied/ are studying kung fu, did you ever reach a point where you felt VERY confident about your ability to defend yourself in a fight?

2) Am I just going through typical newbie growing pains or are these signs that this style not right for me and I should think about switching schools?

Thanks in advance.
 

Xue Sheng

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Kung fu is a generic name.

What style of Kung Fu?

And what do you want form MA?

What is the most important to you when looking for an MA?
 

bowser666

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I would love to hear what style you are studying and have you expressed these fears to you Teacher ? That would be my first step.....
 

clfsean

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I would love to hear what style you are studying and have you expressed these fears to you Teacher ? That would be my first step.....

Eh the style doesn't matter so much. It could be a made up mishmash of a guy doing MA for 20 years, but never getting anywhere so he got frustrated & made his own. OR... it could been a bona fide style from the heartland of China with the teacher having lineage back to the founder of the style, but isn't necessarily a good teacher, but a great MAist. But I gotta admit, I am curious as well just because...

I suspect there's not been a lot of talk with the teacher yet.
 
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