A Few Thoughts on the Perfection of Form

By Al Case

After forty years of practicing the martial arts, of studying Karate and Shaolin and Aikido and other arts, one thing about learning to fight has become very apparent. This truth is that people who study classical martial arts become better fighters. And, inversely, people who don't study classical martial arts don't always become better fighters.

The very interesting thing about all this is that most people don't really know what fighting really is. People are locked into the bang and pow of such things as reaction time, and they never really open up to the subject of developing intuition. Only through classical forms, such as are taught in such classical martial arts as wing chun or Shaolin, will a person make serious inroads into and start to develop the reality of this subject of intuition.

Most training methods in todays consumer related karate, you see, rely on making muscle, on increasing speed, on being bigger and better and faster. Yet, the sad truth is that being the biggest, bestest, fastest does not always make one into a good fighter. The best fighters in the world are the ones who have trained themselves to perceive what is coming before it arrives.

Most martial arts training methods in modern times, you see, because they rely on reaction time, have reaction time built into them. Reaction time means that you are moving because something else has already moved, which means that you are moving too late, you are moving after the punch is on the way and nearly there. To not learn to move too late you must train in a classical method, such as Krav Maga or ninjitsu or Aikido, which teaches you to move before the punch is thrown.

Thus, to accelerate yourself as a fighter, to improve yourself on every possible level, you need to study martial methods, such as form training in classical styles such as hung gar and wado ryu, which address you in areas other than just muscle and reaction time. The forms of the classical arts accelerate your ability to fight as I am discussing here. Yes, they sometimes seem unweildy and one does often have to adapt and change what they learn to make the various teachings work, but the benefits are great and far in advance of meat and muscle and bone, and a person will be vastly improved, on an intuitive level, as a fighter.

When you do a classical form from a classical art you are traveling down the same, old street. After a while of traveling down that street you begin to realize that you are seeing the same things over and over. After a while you gain the ability to predict what is going to happen on that street before you make passage.

This kind of prediction is just the start of the martial arts, however. The real key lies in finding the silence of the form, which is available through such arts as Uechi ryu and Goju ryu. In the middle of silence you can find and define the exact thought that must precede every action.

Nothing in this universe moves without thought. Thus, the study of the classical martial arts, done correctly, with correct form, with correct training methods, approach the fighter on the basis of developing intuition. Yes, studying forms, such as in Isshin ryu and shito ryu, opens your mind and allows you to access greater abilities. - 31491

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