FORMS

ITS REAL IMPORTANCE

Although its not common to all styles of Chinese Martial Arts the forms are part of the syllabus of most of the schools. A big mistake that has been happening is the exaggerated value that some schools are giving to the practice and the quantity of the forms. In some cases they use forms from different systems that have nothing in common to the main system lust to offer great variety to their students. The forms have their own specific function and it will not help to be learned without the basics. In other words: the forms of a style are useless if you don't know and practice all its basics. Its common to find Chinese martial arts practitioners asking among them how many forms they know and/or what ARE the styles they practice. This phenomenon only and exclusively happened with Chinese martial arts. Maybe because of the beauty of some styles, some teachers found out this was a great deal, since teaching the forms does not require major effort, but to memorize it. But they forgot to tell that learning a style's form without the proper knowledge of this style is the same as memorizing any choreography. It is just a bunch of wasted movements that has nothing from tradition except the name and the location from which they came from. Its comic to see people who practices or teaches a style through didactical material, trying to learn forms of others styles hoping to learn and even teach. We know that even being very dedicated; they will be nothing but a Mimic, just copying what they were shown. Let's comprehend the goal of the forms inside a complex structure of a traditional martial art school: The first contact the student has when he enters in a school is the warm up exercises (specific or not) and the elementary movements of the style. Then he will pass to the study of the movements combinations and its applications. Usually the styles have some introductory forms that start to be learned by this phase with the basic movements. However some styles may use the elementary forms from others styles, which are usually modified to act as introductory form in that particular school. As an example we can mention the "Tan Tue (Tan Tui) or the form Lien-Bu" (LingPo) that are usually found in many styles from the north of China. There are styles that have a large number of forms and others who give it less importance and have a reduced number of forms, but every one have their basic, intermediary and advanced form.
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So the form is just a part of a teaching method. It allows the practitioner to practice the learned techniques in a linked manner. Comparing the learning of a style of alphabetization, hypothetically we would have more or less this board:

Martial A Style rt
Simple movements learning Movement combinations Movements applications Forms Fight

A lphabet
Vowel and consonants learning Syllable formation Words Dictation Redaction

So we can conclude that by no mean the forms should be taught as a central line of a style. Its practice without all the knowledge of the style's mechanism is useless. Is just the repetition of some movements without expression and functionality.

MARCELLO TEIXEIRA
http://www.xingyitchuen.com.br - mailto: contato@xingyitchuen.com.br Rio de Janeiro, May of 2002.

ASSOCIAO BRASILEIRA DE XING Y I TCHUEN

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