Forms: The Good, The Bad, and The Art
Why to Practice Forms and Why Not to Practice Forms
Let’s get this out of the way: I love forms. Experience shows I need to say this before I go on.
The thing is, as I’ve said here, there are more effective and time-efficient ways to teach someone how to fight, and if you want to get newcomers into the fight game, studying forms isn’t the way to go. Forms are long choreographed fight sequences, where you do anywhere up to 5 minutes (looking at you, Fu Hak) of blocks, strikes, counters, and sexy poses against an imaginary opponent who does exactly what you know they are going to do ahead of time. So before I talk about the good side of forms, let me describe my problem with forms the same way an old friend told me his problem with musicals.
It’s not that improbable to see someone happy (and maybe on drugs) loudly singing a happy song as they walk along a city street. They may even dance on the infrastructure, Gene Kelly style, and look at an invisible camera/audience no one else can see. Maybe they just got a promotion, or just got laid.
It starts to get a little weird when a complete stranger, also in a good mood, jumps in and sings a second verse that matches. But it’s still possible, especially if you’re in the Bay Area of California.
When a crowd busts out of the cafe and everyone starts singing a completely different set of lyrics to form a chorus, all believability goes out the window. And therein is the problem with forms, while our punch attacks become slightly more believable.
Punch Attack 1A, Charles Gaylord Method: Slip/brush block and step forward as the right hand outward blocks, front kick to the groin, bottom fist and right cross.
Breaking that down, if someone throws an old fashioned straight cross at you, the slip/brush/step is believable, like the random guy singing by himself on the street. We hope to immediately follow that with the kick and a variation of the ol’ 1-2, a three-hit combo that has seen success in MMA numerous times.
Will that combo work now? Maybe. That depends on all kinds of variables including the skill of the attacker and your luck that day, so success here is as believable as a stranger joining the one-man musical. If you have experience trying to make your Punch Attacks work in sparring, like Ron Esteller made us do, you’ll know that there’s a good chance you’ll have to improv at the slightest drop of a hat, because life is as unpredictable as a spazzy white belt on crack. That front kick may become a roundhouse or just a step forward.
But to follow that kick-punch-punch combo with 30 more back and forth moves that the attacker will most likely not follow as written - that’s where the problem arises. Sure, forms are meant to have combinations that you can pick and choose from to use when necessary, but why do we have to practice them in a specific order? It just makes more sense to practice mini-forms like boxing combinations and jiujutsu flow drills.
BUT…all that being said, you can benefit from forms as a fighter. Here’s what you have to keep in mind.
Four Ways to Practice
The last sentence of this next paragraph is a Sixth-Sense-style twist ending.
There are four ways to practice, as GM Bill Gifford taught me so succinctly: slow, soft, strong, fast. Start slow with no power, to perfect the techniques and targeting as you put the motions together. Then, add the minimum amount of explosive/snapping power, so that you can practice the timing of strikes to maximize efficiency. Next, add more power to start making it real. Finally, add speed to make it a cardio exercise, but don’t lose the technique, flexibility, and timing you’ve been working on. Ultimately, the movements should have the perfected technique and timing of moving slow, while using the power and effort of moving fast. I’m talking about boxing combos by the way - it’s just that this advice is also perfect for working forms.
Embrace Your Inner Dancing Queen
Forms are a dance. Don’t fool yourself. You’re dancing. In pajamas. But that’s not a bad thing. Dancers make the best fighters.
In 1958 Bruce Lee became a Cha-Cha Champion in Hong Kong. Fast forward to the modern day: I’ve joked so many times about Ron Esteller’s dancing skills and how they translated extremely well to his fighting and forms. Every once in a while he’d do a disco spin on the dojo floor for us. And, for part of the time I trained with him, our school was next door to a dance school, and some kids would cross-train Kajukenbo and dance, and guess what: those kids became some of our best fighters.
It might be the traditional Japanese folk dances that look like a distant cousin to hard kata, or the energy of Caribbean salsa music you feel in the constant shifting of Kung Fu soft forms. The line between forms and dancing is thinner than my neighbor’s patience when my wife and I blast Black Sabbath on our stereo.
Balance, flexibility, rhythm, timing, hand-eye-foot coordination. A dancer with basic dodging skills is a hard target to hit. If you want to improve your fighting, you may even want to add some dance training to your repertoire. In the meantime, make your forms a dance that you practice slow, soft, strong, and then fast.
And besides: pajamas are really comfortable.
Don’t Under Exaggerate
Fighters who like forms run into a specific problem when rationalizing their love of forms: all those exaggerated motions that don’t have realistic application.
On the one hand, there are unnecessary and flashy techniques that are performed in forms for the sole purpose of getting extra points from the judges at a tournament. These are stupid and if you do them you deserve a swift kick in the nuts.
On the other hand, there are other seemingly unnecessary techniques in forms, especially older Kung Fu forms, that hide their meaning and/or are simply there for flexibility exercise but are worth doing. Some of them are literally just stretching with no combat application intended in the first place. Question every technique you come across in a form, but be aware that sometimes the application is health-based rather than fight-based. If you’re focusing on self defense, it is still possible to keep your movements efficient, even if it looks flashy - just consider what the form is actually trying to teach you, because in “self defense” you’re often practicing the idea of moving from uncomfortable or unnatural positions and situations; not just from fighting stances.
One more thing: My Aikido friend and Kajukenbo student Dave Fulvio also described an Aikido idea to me that is good to keep in mind when working exaggerated motions in general. You practice the techniques “big” but in a real adrenaline-fueled situation it quickly becomes small. For us, for example, over exaggerating your kicking technique in practice ensures that in a fight, when you’re moving as fast as you can, your technique remains sound.
Practicing “big” ensures that you do the technique correctly when you have to move fast and your technique becomes “small”.
Meditation
Meditation is defined as the act of focusing one's mind for a period of time, in silence or with the aid of chanting, for religious or spiritual purposes or as a method of relaxation. It’s said to reduce anxiety, improve your mood, help you sleep better, lower your blood pressure, improve your immune system, and generally help you focus on what’s important in life. For those who don’t like sitting still for too long, yoga is an art that allows you to meditate while moving once in a while.
For those of you who like punching the hell out of each other, forms are a meditation that let you blow off steam your way.
Doing forms slow like Tai Chi is an easy way to see meditation with fight motions, but even doing the hard kata motions with correct timing becomes a form of meditation when done right. They say if you don’t have time to meditate for five minutes, you should meditate for an hour. Maybe we need to look at the mental health benefits of forms for us in Kajukenbo, too.
Let me put it this way: everyone’s mind works differently, and different things help us stay mentally healthy. Heavy metal helps me relax at the same time it melts the faces off of the local crochet club. Meditation, as well, works differently for different people, and if you like smacking your friends in the face, forms may be a form of meditation right up your alley.
It’s Art, You Heathen
One last reason to do forms: it’s art.
Why do humans feel the urge to create art? Music, paintings, fictional theater…they won’t feed you. Play society right and you can trick it into giving you money for creating art, but singing a song doesn’t provide food for you the way hunting does.
The reason: art is an expression of the soul, of all the pain and suffering that’s torn your soul apart and ripped your heart to shreds, mixed with a dash of good times and drunken nights that never disappear in the coldest winters. Art speaks out when words don’t cut it and feeds our souls when bread doesn’t. It makes you fight on when all is lost. It keeps some people from killing themselves.
And, like dance, forms are art. They’re not the best way to learn how to defend yourself anymore, but they are a violent dance. They’re as violent as the haka, as violent as a typhoon on a wedding day, as violent as a mourning child.
Kajukenbo is training to fight, but not all fights are physical and not all fights are against another person. Mix the aggressive anger in your gut with the expression of art, and your forms will become something you never thought you had in you.
Take everything written in this article, and bring it to your performance of a form. You don’t even have to do it for other people - do it by yourself when no one is looking. That’s the best time to do forms. The storm raging inside of you will still be there.
Make your forms an art, and as a fighter you won’t regret what you’ve created every time you do a form.
Stick that in your coffee and stir it. And if you really got guts, get good and angry and post a video of one of your forms. You may be surprised what it does for you.
Writing this last section made me good and angry, so I’m gonna keep it simple this time. If you like what you’ve read, check out my books available here on Amazon, “Blood, Sweat, and Bone: The Kajukenbo Philosophy” and “The Path: Book 2 of the Kajukenbo Philosophy”. If you’re not a pussy, record yourself doing a form nice and angry.