A Little Background

REMEMBERING OUR LESSONS

It is often the case that students become frustrated by the difficulty of trying to remember their lessons. I don’t believe anyone has been immune to this in the years I have trained. Kung Fu is so vast and expansive that to try to remember it all could, as a former teacher once said, make your head explode… Here is a strategy to deal with the sheer volume of information you are immersing yourself in. The “why” of the strategy will come with practice.

Once you learn the format of class, and the basics to Kung Fu – how to do a form, how to work out, and a few lessons – you are ready to start picking up speed in your development. After about a month or two:

1) Pick a few of your most recent lessons before each class.

2) During your open workout, train the lessons until you gain some proficiency. Then, blend them together to create new lessons and expand your range of capability. Here is the art, or creative aspect, to San Soo, and can be quite a fulfilling experience.

3) Next, learn your new lesson for that day. Work it on a couple different people. Be sure you have an adequate understanding of the lesson before you write it down (i.e. the sequence and body positioning).

4) Go home and write it down. Shadow-box it during your solitary practice time.

5) Then, be sure to KEEP COMING TO CLASS. KEEP TRAINING.

Be sure to do your most recent lessons, even if you aren’t completely perfect at the ones from last week. You’ll see them again; expand your repertoire. We learn so much information in so short a time that it is the repetition of coming back to class and doing and re-doing your lessons that will make them effective for you. There is no quick-and-easy substitute for this. The techniques need to be ingrained into the fiber of your being. Intellectual understanding is good and necessary to an extent, but it isn’t nearly enough. In fact, there is an entire way of training that bypasses rational thought, freeing up your mind to ingrain the lessons into your thought-free reactions. Making this art second-nature is our goal, and it can only be achieved by coming in consistently and training.

If you have confidence in your teacher’s ability, come in and train your recent lessons and the one he gives you, and over a short time you’ll watch your abilities grow. This is how to get the most from our everyday class. The more you train, the better you get and the quicker you get there.

Classes that you can wrap your mind around, that take a more comprehensive and in-depth look into selected topics, are reserved for seminars, specialty courses, and private lessons; all of which are either available now or in the making.

Keep with these five points throughout the life of your training and over time you will see some remarkable improvements. They are easy enough to convey, but to experience the deep meaning and power behind them takes consistent and persistent practice. Indeed, a book could be written on these, alone.

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