What determines which of two forms is the more difficult/advanced?

[exile]

This query is really a spinoff of Lauren's excellent thread here about different views of the order in which one best learns forms (hyungs, since it's in the TKD forum). There's a clearly related question that nonetheless seemed best raised and discussed separately, so as not to hijack Lauren's OP topic, which you could usefully phase as follows: if you were shown two different MA forms, what criteria would you use in deciding which of the two forms was the more difficult?

The connection to Lauren's thread of course is that we tend to believe the order of learning to correspond to the degree of difficulty. But as Lauren herself points out here, there are advanced forms, part of the post-shodan curriculum, which are very similar to low-level colored belt forms. Are the small differences enough to make one of them way harder than the other? The general sense is, probably not. But if we're going to make comparative judgments about difficulty (even if we wind up concluding that there isn't all that much of a difference, in certain cases), then we presumably have some guidelines and principled bases for saying that one form is more, less, or equally difficult, with respect to some other form. So what are those guidelines/bases/criteria? Are they purely subjective? That doesn't seem very satisfactory. But if there's some objective basis for concluding one way or the other, then what is that basis? Is it useful to distinguish kinds of difficulty—form X may be easy to learn but hard to perform, whereas for form Y the case may be exactly the opposite, say? Who gets to decide just how hard a give form is, relative to others in the same art?

... those are the kind of questions that strike me as being worth asking in connection with this idea of `degree of difficulty' of kata, hyungs, hsings, etc. Any thoughts?

 

[newGuy12]

... those are the kind of questions that strike me as being worth asking in connection with this idea of `degree of difficulty' of kata, hyungs, hsings, etc. Any thoughts?

Whooo Boy.

The "degree of difficulty" that comes to my mind is the ability to see the hidden meanings (I cannot yet do that -- I need to read through Abernethy's work, I have not yet done that). That is the great precious skill to be acquired! Then, even the "easy?" hyung are something very deep!

Add in more motions -- not just a few motions, but more disparate motions (as in higher level forms) -- this means more analysis, does it not?

Also, let's not forget -- a front stance in a white belt form is also a front stance in a black belt form. Same stance!

 

[terryl965]

Sometimes the easiest form/kata's/poomsae have the most hidden application to them. This is why they are put in that order. Sometime easy is hard and hard is easy.

 

[Flying Crane]

I think there is no universal guideline here, and it can even be counter-intuitive.

In Tibetan White Crane, our first form, Chuit Yap Bo Kuen, is very long and very complex. In the 1950s, it was broken in half, and turned into two separate forms because most students have a hard time even surviving to the end. I practice it both ways, as one long form, and as two shorter forms.

This form was used as a "weed-out" form, testing to see which students were dedicated enough to stick with it. I think they found that not many were, and thus the relative obscurity of the art today. But it is also arguably the heart of the system, with most of the useful methods found within it. If your curriculum only included this form, and the second form, you could develop solid skills in White Crane, working from this material alone.

The second form, Lok Lik Kuen, is very simple and basic, just throwing a series of basic punches in a line up and down the floor.

The "advanced" forms are more complex, like Chuit Yap Bo Kuen, long and gruelling, and fast moving with lots of complex stuff in it. But I think it's difficult to say that they are actually MORE complex or advanced than CYBK. They are just different, but equally difficult.

Sometimes it's pretty obvious what is more advanced. In Kenpo, our first forms are quite "simple", consisting of only basic stances, basic steps, basic blocks, and basic punches. Very important stuff, but sort of isolating the basics to give them focused attention.

The forms that come later are sort of obviously more complex, and include more sophisticated fighting methods. But at a certain point, I don't think it makes a whole lot of difference if one were to be taught before or after another. In fact, it seems that some of the Chinese material that has been borrowed into our lineage of kenpo sort of gets inserted at certain points, but it doesn't seem to be really written in stone exactly when it needs to be taught.

There is a lot of gray area in this idea.

 

[Bigshadow]

The "advanced" forms are more complex, like Chuit Yap Bo Kuen, long and gruelling, and fast moving with lots of complex stuff in it. But I think it's difficult to say that they are actually MORE complex or advanced than CYBK. They are just different, but equally difficult.

I think you hit on something...

Based on my own experience in Bujinkan Budo Taijutsu, generally what I consider more advanced, is often if not always more complex or compounded. I don't mean complex in the sense of a myriad of movements, but what I would call compound movements. It would be movements that require an advanced understanding of it's principles. Beginners would do the same thing, but it would appear straightforward or simple. When done at the advanced levels, it flows and looks slightly different because it most often employs subtle compound moves that are often missed at the earlier levels of understanding. So in their essence they are complex moves. Ironically, it seems to me the complexity is in the subtlety.

Just speaking from my own perspective.

 

[Xue Sheng]

I can show you Tung Ying Jie’s fast form and you would be able to do it and you would likely get the postures correct and the speed correct with time and practice. But you would not understand why you were doing it, where the energy comes form, how many of the applications work, the qinna and the plain beautiful simplicity of the form. You would get hung up on a lot of issues, over think it get discouraged and give up. Or change it to understand it and thereby not ever really understanding it and its brilliance in its simplicity. (If you can’t tell I am incredibly impressed with this form).

But if you first learn the Yang style slow form and work with that for awhile and then work on the qigong training, push hands and possibly even the Yang style fast form (but that is also intricately simplistic) and then I teach you Tung’s fast form it is amazing when all the lights pop on and you go WOW so this is what this is all about. Prior to that you would over think it and you would likely see applications but not the right ones or applications that were awkward where they are really quite natural. You need basic forms to understand advanced forms that are all.

 

[exile]

Whooo Boy.

The "degree of difficulty" that comes to my mind is the ability to see the hidden meanings (I cannot yet do that -- I need to read through Abernethy's work, I have not yet done that). That is the great precious skill to be acquired! Then, even the "easy?" hyung are something very deep!

Right, and that's yet another kind of difficulty—how close to (or far from) the `surface' of the form the intended applications are. Good point, NG. So along with aquirability and performance, there's `interpretability'. That gives three dimensions in which forms can be located, like physical objects in a cartesian system—much more intricate and nuanced than the simple linear scale which is implied by the belt-level/form knownledge correspondence.

Add in more motions -- not just a few motions, but more disparate motions (as in higher level forms) -- this means more analysis, does it not?

Also, let's not forget -- a front stance in a white belt form is also a front stance in a black belt form. Same stance!

Yes and yes. But as Terry points out in his post, the content of the `elementary' forms may be very deep indeed...

Sometimes the easiest form/kata's/poomsae have the most hidden application to them. This is why they are put in that order. Sometime easy is hard and hard is easy.

I'm thinking of the Pinan/Heian kata in exactly this context. They have phenomenal depth; every month, it seems, another book comes out with detailed bunkai for them, and let's not forget Iain Abernethy's `gold-standard' DVD on the Pinans and their applications... yet in the old days, the Pinans were regarded as the ABCs of the kata system. It's funny: in my school, you learn the Pinans at shodan or higher, if you've been good all year! :lol:

I think there is no universal guideline here, and it can even be counter-intuitive.

In Tibetan White Crane, our first form, Chuit Yap Bo Kuen, is very long and very complex. In the 1950s, it was broken in half, and turned into two separate forms because most students have a hard time even surviving to the end. I practice it both ways, as one long form, and as two shorter forms.

This form was used as a "weed-out" form, testing to see which students were dedicated enough to stick with it. I think they found that not many were, and thus the relative obscurity of the art today. But it is also arguably the heart of the system, with most of the useful methods found within it. If your curriculum only included this form, and the second form, you could develop solid skills in White Crane, working from this material alone.

Right, this is just what you're always hearing about `kata sets', like the Pinans or Naihanchi—once upon a time they were supposedly one long form that got parsed into three, four or five simpler kata, with the source form typically being attributed to China. It's not completely clear how accurate that kind of story is, but it tells you something about how CMA forms are regarded... long and complex!

The second form, Lok Lik Kuen, is very simple and basic, just throwing a series of basic punches in a line up and down the floor.

The "advanced" forms are more complex, like Chuit Yap Bo Kuen, long and gruelling, and fast moving with lots of complex stuff in it. But I think it's difficult to say that they are actually MORE complex or advanced than CYBK. They are just different, but equally difficult.

Sometimes it's pretty obvious what is more advanced. In Kenpo, our first forms are quite "simple", consisting of only basic stances, basic steps, basic blocks, and basic punches. Very important stuff, but sort of isolating the basics to give them focused attention.

The forms that come later are sort of obviously more complex, and include more sophisticated fighting methods. But at a certain point, I don't think it makes a whole lot of difference if one were to be taught before or after another. In fact, it seems that some of the Chinese material that has been borrowed into our lineage of kenpo sort of gets inserted at certain points, but it doesn't seem to be really written in stone exactly when it needs to be taught.

There is a lot of gray area in this idea.

This is kind of what I've been thinking. My sense is that yes, there are differences in difficulty amongst MA forms, but it's not a simple transitive relationship (A is harder than B and B is harder than C so A is harder than C), at least at the more advanced levels. The Kicho/Taikyoku set of forms is wonderful, with some very brutal and effective combat techs incorporating pins, elbow strikes, throws and whatnot, but they're definitely not as complex, or as performance-intensive, as Palgwe Chil Jang or the kata Empi. But when you get away from these gross, large scale differences in the topography of difficulty, and start comparing the great classics, or the third-dan TKD forms with the fourth-dan forms... it starts becoming harder to justify the concept of a ranking in terms of difficulty, probably.

Still, I think there are different `shapes' in the kata-difficulty space I was talking about, with the dimensions of learnability, performablility and interpretability. And there could be other dimensions as well...

 

[Steel Tiger]

I only teach five forms and two of them are considered less advanced, one is sort of intermediate, and two are advanced. Let me see if I can explain why.

The first two forms I teach are the Tiger and the Snake. These forms are considered almost on par with each other with students progressing from Tiger to Snake. The difference is not in their content, though they are quite different, it is in their mental positioning. The Tiger is designed to teach the use of power and controlled aggression. The Snake is designed to teach evasiveness, subtlety, and precision. So, in this regard the Snake is more advanced than the Tiger.

Then we move on to those forms which are more complex. The first is the sort intermediate Dragon Shape Baguazhang. This form, while not simple, is considered an introduction into the intricacies of circle walking form work. It is long, repetitive, very technical and involves concepts which are difficult to wrap your head around at first (its a neijia, it takes time to understand). What makes it more advanced than the Tiger and Snake? It introduces new technical and mental concepts and principles. The Tiger and the Snake both moved in straight lines, the Dragon Shape Palm moves in circles, for instance.

From their we move to the two most advanced forms - Eight Thunders Serpent Palm and Swimming Dragon Baguazhang.

Eight Thunders builds along the same progression as the Tiger and the Snake. It is a Liu style bagua form so it is linear and designed to exemplify technical aspects. this is done through 30 double palm techniques. Each technique is performed on each side, they are not identical, there is a little asymetry involved. The technical elements are long and there is no repetition.

Swimming Dragon is well known to many people. It is a complex form designed to accentuate the concepts and principles of bagua's circular movement. Like the Dragon Shape Palm it works on the circle and involves repetition.

I don't know if this helps anyone understand how we determine which of the forms is more advanced or not. Like many of you, I can see which of the forms is more advanced but might have difficulty expressing it.


In a general way, when I look at forms, there are two broad criteria that I look to to determine whether or not I am viewing an advanced or basic form. The physical and the mental. For the physical there are things like length, repetition and complexity of individual techniques. For the mental there is expression of emotion and presentation of concepts and principles core to the art.

 

[Kacey]

For the Ch'ang H'on gup (color belt) tuls, it's fairly apparent which patterns, between any two, is the more difficult; as you progress through the gup ranks, the tuls become longer, contain movements that are more difficult, and become less symmetrical, with less repetition.

For the BB tuls, it's a little harder. There are 3 tuls per rank from I-IV Dan, one each in 3 separate categories: 1 physically difficult, 1 technically difficult, and 1 that's really long - that last one, however, is usually the one most people like the best. The physically difficult tul at a particular Dan rank may well be harder physically than the other 2 at higher Dan ranks - but the technical details - both in the tuls themselves and in the performance of the tuls - are what truly separate them from each other.

Certainly, as a IV Dan, I could learn the V and VI Dan patterns (a total of 3 - 2 at V and 1 at VI), and probably perform them without embarrassing myself; there's not that many new movements in any of them, compared to the 22 I already know. However, anyone who is senior to myself, who knows those tuls correctly, having been taught them rather than attempting to learn them out of a book, having had the time to develop their technique to the level appropriate for their rank - they would know, by watching, that I am not yet at the rank that should be doing those tuls.

It is an often-repeated idea that any senior could line of a group of unknown students junior to him/herself, without belts or any other indication of rank, watch them all perform any tul that all of them know, and place them in order by rank, by watching how they perform. I have no doubt that this would be true for many styles.

The key here, I think, is that at new ranks, as the student learns new details of the art and refines old ones, every tul already learned must be relearned to include the new details. Certainly, I could teach a white belt to perform any of the black belt tuls that I know - but that wouldn't give them the understanding of the movements that is the key to performing the tul correctly, nor would it provide the knowledge of how to apply the movements.

 

[newGuy12]

You people enrich my life with your discussions.

So along with aquirability and performance, there's `interpretability'. That gives three dimensions in which forms can be located

Perhaps more dimensions. Consider the "mood" or "personality" of the pattern (please excuse me because I do not know of these things, but they interest me).

For example, CMA practitioners sometimes talk about this "emotional" content in the forms:

For the mental there is expression of emotion and presentation of concepts and principles core to the art.

"The Tiger is powerful, but the Dragon always has a choice." That type of thing. Now, the TaeGuk forms each stand for a trigram. The trigram is traced out on the floor of the dojang when you execute the form. I reference this here:

http://www.barrel.net/patterns.php

Poomse Taeguk/Palgwe Pal Jang -- Earth

(North, Mother) The associated trigram of this Poomse is Yin: the end of the beginning, the evil part of all that is good. Even in this darkness, there is still some light. Performing this Taeguk/Palgwe, one should be aware that this is the last Taeguk/Palgwe to be learned, it also is the end of a circle, and therefore it is also the first, the second etc...

Its not good to try to fight with the Earth, is it? The Earth will win.

Now, Keum Gang is a Mountain, a Big, Beautiful Mountain. It has stances that are as strong as a Mountain, and it traces out on the floor a character that stands for -- yes, MOUNTAIN. So, when I do this form, I also am aware of this intention. This should have a heavy/solid feel. I may be just thinking fancifully, I do not know much about this, but it interests me a lot.

Perhaps different patterns are best practiced with a certain "state of mind". If that is so, then, some personalities may more quickly "get" some forms, and not others.

I can't help but thinking that some people may more easily embrace a "Tiger" type of CMA form than they would a "Snake" type of form because their personality may be more close to being that "type".

This is either going to be a good post here, or it will be silly. In either event, I will learn.

 

[Steel Tiger]

"The Tiger is powerful, but the Dragon always has a choice." That type of thing. Now, the TaeGuk forms each stand for a trigram. The trigram is traced out on the floor of the dojang when you execute the form. I reference this here:

http://www.barrel.net/patterns.php

The TaeGuk forms sound very interesting and it is entering into the realm of bagua (eight trigram) theory. In bagua, like the TaeGuk forms it seems, the trigrams have a particular influence on the associated palm forms. The trigrams are not traced out as the form is performed, they influence intent through concept and principle.

Now, Keum Gang is a Mountain, a Big, Beautiful Mountain. It has stances that are as strong as a Mountain, and it traces out on the floor a character that stands for -- yes, MOUNTAIN. So, when I do this form, I also am aware of this intention. This should have a heavy/solid feel. I may be just thinking fancifully, I do not know much about this, but it interests me a lot.

Being aware of the intention is exactly how I applied the gua when I am doing my forms. Of course my forms are not so specific to the gua as yours appear to be, but still Zhen (thunder) has sudden power, Kun (earth) is mysterious and balanced, and Qian (heaven) is open and forceful.


These concepts are not something that beginners have to deal with normally. In CMAs the initial forms are all about basic techniques and are usually governed by a single conceptual position like the Tiger's power and controlled aggression. So in the CMAs if you see something like the gua principles or the 13 principles of taiji, you are probably dealing with a more advanced form.

 

[tellner]

Mmmm. There's a heavy flavor of "Mu!" or "Unask the question!" here.

More difficult and more advanced should have little or nothing to do with each other.

"Difficult" is pretty simple. Within the normal variations of human physicality it's pretty easy to say which of two forms is more difficult. It's the one that has more physically demanding motions. A simple block-punch-step-kick-turn sort of form is less difficult than a longer one with level changes, acrobatics and the jump triple-spin reverse head butt. One which requires more precision to perform correctly is more difficult than one with looser tolerances.

"Advanced" is a much richer vein to mine.

In any well-developed martial art there are progressions, and what you learn later depends on what you learn earlier. Things are connected. If it's competently taught you will see those connections. Given that, a more advanced form is one which embodies principles or concepts which depend on material learned earlier.

More advanced is often, though not always, simpler. When I did Uechi Ryu we were told that everything in Sanseiru is in Seisan and everything in Seisan is in Sanchin. Sanchin is the simplest kata. It is also the most advanced. In the style of Silat I study there are several juru juru, many sambut sambut and countless techniques. Some of the techniques are quite elaborate and difficult. The sambuts build off the jurus. So in a sense they are more 'advanced'. But they are not as essential. And there is no point at which you can say they are redundant and can be dismissed. They encapsulate information which one absolutely can not do without. Individual techniques add little or nothing to that fundamental knowledge.

In another sense the form that spans the most material with the least movement can be said to be the most advanced. You could boil most of Sera down to one simple movement. Honestly, you could. But it would be completely worthless unless you already had the skill, the understanding, the knowledge and the training that went into that distillation. Sanchin is karate for the master. And you have to be a master to really get everything out of it. It's good that beginners start with it, but let's be real. You have to have done a lot to research what's in there. By the time you're there you're not finding hidden nuggets. You're using it as a reference for all that you've learned and experienced.

That touches on two things I find perpetually irritating - quantity and technique.

A lot of styles have way too many forms. When most of the movements are redundant and a form doesn't add to one's knowledge of anything except choreography it's useless and worse than useless. The time spent memorizing endless patterns could be more profitably used in a thousand other ways. The kata become status tokens that you collect instead of aids to becoming a better martial artist. And no, I do not consider the pursuit of a belt qua belt, doing something "just because" or bragging rights over the number of routines one knows to be part of being a better martial artist.

The other bugaboo is "hidden techniques". After many years of blindly following the Revealed Wisdom of the Inscrutable Asian Masters a lot of people realized that the Masters weren't that masterful and that they could be scruted on a clear day That and the students' breakfast cereal Reality Chex was past its sell by date. The solution was to claim that there was all sorts of esoteric knowledge "hidden" in the forms just waiting to be released. Do the form a million more times, Potato Bug, and all will be revealed.

Sometimes that may be true. But more often with new martial arts it's a little different than that. What happens is that a practitioner learns something through research, sharing or getting hit and remembering what happened. He finds a physically similar movement in a form and all of a sudden it "really" contains everything from ground grappling to combat acupuncture.

Did it always? Who knows? Probably not; what's "discovered" always seems to be what's trendy at the moment, what the art was heretofore deficient in. Covering and backfilling is an ancient and honored tradition in martial art

What you're seeing is the process by which a martial artist internalizes the curriculum he's learned. He starts putting things into the external movements as a mnemonic aid and reference system. If he's a decent teacher he'll pull stuff out of the forms to give the students something to refer to, a practical handle attached to a confusing or seemingly useless motion. That's how they learn to fight with what they've been taught.

Besides, technique is technique is technique. Anyone who has been at this for long enough has all the technique that a person would ever use. It's not a matter of adding more. It's a matter of being able to generate it as needed and use it creatively and efficiently under pressure. Four thousand techniques or 108 forms - both are things that two styles brag about - become what my teacher calls "Organized despair."

To quote the ancient soldier/poet Archilocus

πόλλ οἶδ ἀλώπηξ, ἀλλ ἐχῖνος ἓν μέγα
"The fox knows many things. The hedgehog one big thing."

Oh yeah, and this one, too...

I have a high Art. I hurt with great cruelty those who would damage me.

 

[MJS]

This query is really a spinoff of Lauren's excellent thread here about different views of the order in which one best learns forms (hyungs, since it's in the TKD forum). There's a clearly related question that nonetheless seemed best raised and discussed separately, so as not to hijack Lauren's OP topic, which you could usefully phase as follows: if you were shown two different MA forms, what criteria would you use in deciding which of the two forms was the more difficult?

The connection to Lauren's thread of course is that we tend to believe the order of learning to correspond to the degree of difficulty. But as Lauren herself points out here, there are advanced forms, part of the post-shodan curriculum, which are very similar to low-level colored belt forms. Are the small differences enough to make one of them way harder than the other? The general sense is, probably not. But if we're going to make comparative judgments about difficulty (even if we wind up concluding that there isn't all that much of a difference, in certain cases), then we presumably have some guidelines and principled bases for saying that one form is more, less, or equally difficult, with respect to some other form. So what are those guidelines/bases/criteria? Are they purely subjective? That doesn't seem very satisfactory. But if there's some objective basis for concluding one way or the other, then what is that basis? Is it useful to distinguish kinds of difficulty—form X may be easy to learn but hard to perform, whereas for form Y the case may be exactly the opposite, say? Who gets to decide just how hard a give form is, relative to others in the same art?

... those are the kind of questions that strike me as being worth asking in connection with this idea of `degree of difficulty' of kata, hyungs, hsings, etc. Any thoughts?

Wow, thats a tough one. What may appear to be basic could actually be somewhat advanced, but not appear that way because the person viewing the form is obviously not familiar with it. However, I'll do my best to answer the question.

I'll use Kenpo as an example. All of the forms are teaching certain aspects. However, if you look at one of the basic forms, Short 1, you will see that it is teaching the student strictly moves on the defense. You are learning how to block, move and work from 4 basic angles. In Kenpo, we use the clock principle. 12 to the front, 3 to the right, etc. Looking at some of the higher forms, you will then begin to see movements on angles other than what I mentioned above. Additionally, you will now begin working on simultaneous block/strike movements, mult. opponents, weapons, etc.

So, going on what I said above, it should be fairly apparent, even to a non MA person viewing the forms, which is more advanced.

Now, while I don't know what TKD or Shotokan forms look like, aside from seeing clips, I can only go on what I've said above. A shorter kata could very well be for a lower rank, in order to help them get used to movement. How detailed is the kata? As I said with Short 1, all you're doing is defensive blocking, compared to a higher one. Same could apply to other arts as well.

Mike

 

[rmclain]

My opinion is that nothing is really hidden in forms. There are many applications of each movement, bound by the natural motions of the human body.

Of course, there is an original intent of the creator of the form for the self-defense/combat application for the movements. Seems as though many people are searching for the original intent, when perhaps the real lesson is being missed.

The movements of each martial art are so similar that you cannot help but find another interpretation for the same movement of a form if you study and repeat long enough. This is up to the artists that preserve the form, sincerely study, sweat, and repeat it many times. As more people study more than one art, they will naturally find another application to a movement. Ex. What may be a "grab and punch" in a form to a karate student, could be a "grab and armbar" to a karate student that also studies hapkido. Punching motion is really the same as a fundamental armbar - just another way to apply the same natural arm-running motion of the body.

Natural motion example: Arm-running motion (just running in place but not moving your feet). This motion could be used for punching (short, medium, or long range). Now change the striking surface used on your hand - instead of the 1st two knuckles. This is not suddenly 16 different techniques, its just a different way to apply the natural human running motion. Same motion provides the foundation for arm bar, upper-cut, elbow strike behind you (as if someone is grabbing from behind, etc.), among other motions.

I think students should study the classic forms just as the students of other art forms study the classic works from their disciplines ( Monet, Picaso, Bach, Mozart, etc.). These provide sound foundation. But after years of sweat, and sincere study, martial art students could find their own way just as other artists do over time.

R. McLain

 

[Xue Sheng]

After thinking about this a bit and remembering a discussion I had with my taiji Sifua few months back that was on a similar topic I would have to say the answer, as far as I am concerned the answer to what determines which of two forms is the more difficult/advanced?

The Sifu

Too many people go to martial arts classes trying to tell the Sifu what they want to learn and trying to tell the Sifu what they need to learn or what they are ready to learn when in reality if the Sifu is qualified he or she knows better than the student and it is the Sifu that will decide what is advanced and what is not and when a student is ready to learn an advanced form.

Note: I am using the terminology Sifu because I train CMA it could just as easily be Sensei or whatever any style calls the teacher.