A Little Southern Style

[Dan Chisholm]

Currently, the children's program is entirely northern style Kung Fu. Has there been any thought of working a little Hung Gar into the program? In terms of self defense, the long range northern style and the shorter range southern style would be a good combination. At tournaments, registering students in a wider range of events would provide more opportunity to compete with students from other schools rather than mostly students from our own school.

Andrea has been watching the sneak previews on the video tapes and has been asking when she can learn a little Hung Gar. She's still not sure how she feels about the bench set, but some of the others look interesting to her.

Now she's very excited about learning her northern weapons such as the staff and broad sword, so her interest in Hung Gar sneak previews isn't going to distract her too much just yet. Hung Gar is just something that she would like to do some time in the future.

[Raven]

Dan,

Sifu chose BSL for the kids because it moves around more and emphasizes leg flexibility. From what I've seen of Hung Gar, I think it might be more difficult to teach to children.

Also, I'm the only kids' instructor at the moment (though you met the other instructor yesterday from whom I took over and who still might return). I don't know Hung Gar, so it would be difficult for me to teach it . I know the basic Arrow Hand set, which might be good to teach to beginners as a little mini-set, but that's all. Ideally, it would be cool to have an option of which style to learn while still having everybody work out together.

Learning both at the same time is usually not adviseable unless one has a solid foundation in one to begin with. This is because certain basic things differ between the two and would impede one's learning at a critical stage (example: foot placement in the bow stance).

[Dan Chisholm]

Raven,

I didn’t know that the two styles use different variations of the stances. That would be confusing for a beginner. In that case, we’ll remain focused entirely on BSL for now. MMA will have to wait.