ok, so i’m not thinking that i want to go “shut em down” or anything, but i am curious as to what the general consensus is on the quality of the teaching at these schools (in THIS forum at least.)
They actually look like crap from the websites. My guess is that it’s performance wushu with meditation mixed in. A place to go if you are more interested in Buddhism than anything else.
So I don’t really know without going in and watching them. The sites aren’t promising though.
Liokault tells me that the UK branches of the ‘Shaolin temple’ have started putting a few competitors up in San Shou and that one won an event recently.
from what i have heard it is modern wushu, but finding out the truth is the reason i started the thread.
i know for a fact that several students at all 3 schools i directly mentioned have gone to other TCMA schools to learn how to fight. as much as they liked the training they all felt it was unrealistic and that they were not being taught fighting.
Sounds like you already have some good information from your friends.
I would expect schools to have rivalries in NYC. I expect there to be some old dudes trying to run quality control, and pruning the competition. I expect major politics. Am I wrong? But if I’m right, where do those dudes stand on the “Shaolin Temple” dancers?
See, these are the people you want to interview. I agree there are subtle influences that may be missed by a beginner.
Thing is they haven’t been totally indoctrinated with BS yet either. Trust me this is experience talking. I went to a BS school for 9 years and taught the BS for 3. If I had of listened to my little voice earlier…
My old kung fu brother studied at the USA Shaolin Temple under Shi Yan Ming while he was a West Point. He was very impressed with the movements and the forms, but said most of the students seemed to missing quite a bit of it.
I don’t think they sparred though and it focused more on forms. I’ll ask him later today for more details.
i have been asking around, and i hear the same thing.
USA shaolin temple = all forms and they are good at forms. it seems that there are a lot of students who are under the impression that they know how to fight despite never trying to do so.
official shaolin temple (queens, chinatown and brooklyn) = mostly forms and cardio conditioning. their san da classes involve a little pad work, no bag work and no work on throws!!! also they have a chin na class which no one i talked to had attended
I spoke with by kung fu brother and said Shi Yan Ming is one of the best teachers he has ever seen and that he teaches very well. He said that it is very unlikely that anyone who trains but also has a job would be able to reach the point that Shi Yan Ming is at. But Shi Yan Ming teaches the basics and forms first, and only after a student has a very strong foundation are they allowed to spar.
My friend lectured me on why this is important (he obviously agrees with the approach) and I see some of the logic. But what this style of teaching inherently means is that the student is not a fighter by any stretch of the imagination for quite some time. How long it takes to get to the point where the student gets to spar and actually apply the forms and conditioning depends on the student. My friend got there in a few years of training - he could only train at the temple on the occasional weekend since he was at West Point.
As for the issue of whether or not the curriculum that Shi Yan Ming teaches is more modern wushu or authentic shaolin, my friend thought it was the latter. He is much better than me and will always be much better than me, but I don’t know how he was able to base this observation (learning other authentic shaolin vs. modern wushu). Right now he does a mixture of Xingyi, Taijiquan, and Bagua. He still uses the Shaolin, but it isn’t his focus.
Shi Yan Ming was shown on one of those Discovery Channel specials…it was either about qigong or Shaolin. I no longer have my VHS tapes so I don’t have it.
If it’s actual Shaolin going on there, I’ll go on the record for agreeing with your friend. No sense in trying to do something you can’t. You have to get conditioned and learn how to move. I think it needs to become a part of you before you can use it. You are going to do what you will do naturally, and so it goes.
i’m pretty sure that i have that discovery show on tape but have no way to convert it to digital video.
i could actually mail you the VHS tape if you like, mr. m… PM me an address and it’s yours.
looked like wushu to me, though.
as far as learning the basics before you spar (using hung ga anyway…) i think that if you work hard, 6 months to a year and you should be able to spar. you can do mild resistance sparring DRILLS earlier than that for sure.
i CAN say that if you have no horse stance, and don’t have the proper hip rotation when going to cat, bow or dragon stance that the techniques will indeed be useless… it just doesn’t take 2 years to get that out of a decent student (and the “other” kind of student may never get it.)
Thinking back the demo looked like my interpretation of modern wushu, but I have little to base that on.
As for my friend, he was busy with ice climbing and training for scuba school so he didn’t get to NYC as much as he would have liked to. But he is the type that rapidly becomes the senior student blah blah blah. He’s committment to training has always been, and always be quite annoying.
I would love to get video of him doing some of the shaolin stuff he learned, but he wouldn’t agree to that…unless maybe he is attempting to crush my head with it. Hmm…
I have the tape, and I’m going to digitize the yao ming part soon. Then it’s a matter of posting it up for review.
Whet I saw looks like wushu to me too. I found it particularly amusing when he was trooping the lines moving people’s punches like an inch here and there. Give me a break:qshatter:
So, even though it would just be an exerpt, it’s a pretty big exerpt. Are there any suggestions on how we can pass this around?
we can use bit torrent and i can “seed” the file once mr. mantis sends me the digital version, but then we need a tracker, and i’m not sure how phrost would feel about us using the tracker on this site, it might be ok, but it might be copyright infringement. legal team??
i have some spare bandwidth on my website, and could host the file for a week or so while you guys download it as long as the file is compressed to VCD quality mpeg.