I skipped out on class last week (making it nearly three months since I’ve gotten to spar), flew to Las Vegas, and got married. There’s a huge gallery of pix if you’re interested.

I’m the tall one.

While in Vegas, I had an opportunity to train with Shi Xing Wei, a Shaolin Buddhist monk teaching Shaolin Chan Wu Xue Yuan at the Shaolin Institute just a few miles up Sahara Drive from my hotel. It was quite a bit different from the way that classes are taught at my kwoon.

We started out with Sifu Xing Wei leading the class in some stretching exercises that were a lot more dynamic than the routine I’m accustomed to doing, and I think I’ll probably use this method when I’m warming up solo. It’s fast and it got me loosened up really well.

Next, the class all bunched up at one end of the single long room and divided into two lines side by side. Sifu called out a move and one student from each line stepped forward and while moving forward across the room performed that move as many times as the distance allowed. When both lines had all done it, we went back across the room doing the move on the opposite side. These started out with very simple things, like basic footwork and stances, simple snap kicks and front kicks, but quickly increased in difficulty. We did inside and outside crescent kicks, jumping butterfly kicks, more and more combinations, and eventually worked up to some really sophisticated moves including some tiger and mantis techniques. I had a lot of trouble getting the hang of the more complex combinations, mostly because I was trying to learn them by watching the people in front of me doing them at full speed and I just don’t learn well that way. It didn’t help that I am accustomed to generating power and shifting weight and balance in a way that’s quite different.

Quietly talking to some of the other students while waiting in the lines, I was told that many of these combinations are taken straight from their forms, so that when the time comes to learn those forms, the student finds that he already knows the difficult parts and it’s just a matter of stringing them together. That’s pretty neat.

After a minute or two to rest, we moved on to forms. Sifu had us all spread out around the edge of the room and picked out two or three students at a time and told them which form he wanted them to do. They did it, then he’d offer some corrections or suggestions on how to improve their performance, then let them go back to the edge and call up another group, going from the most advanced students to the least. For the students that were learning a new form, Sifu slowly and patiently walked through several moves, had us do them a couple of times, then moved on to the next group. After a few times demonstrating those new moves, he’d show a few more. For me and the other guy visiting the school, he got us about a dozen moves into the first form.

I think each pair or trio of students got called up to work forms at least ten times or so and the more advanced students were asked to do different forms nearly every time. It seemed strange to me at first, but in retrospect I really like this method of instruction. Every student gets very personal attention and fast feedback, so he doesn’t discover that he’s been doing something wrong for weeks. There’s some pressure to perform well since you’re in front of the rest of the students and nobody wants to look bad, but I think that pressure helps to ensure that a student pays attention and works hard to get it right. I know that the people I saw all seemed to have a really good grasp on their forms and weren’t at all self-conscious about performing them. This also allows for a class to include a broader range of students all working on material specific to their experience level simultaneously. It cuts down on the number of repetitions of each form for each student, but I think that a student gets a better quality of instruction than just having the whole class run through a particular form dozens of times. Allowing the instructor to focus on just a couple of students ensures that those students have a better grasp of the material and can practice at home more effectively.

Class finished up with another round of stretching and exercises, though this time it included some strength and speed building stuff as well as a long horse stance. Holding a horse for a while is a little different from doing tiger squats and I thought I might not make it, but I didn’t want to be the first to drop out. That’s pretty much the only thing that kept me in a deep, solid stance until the end.

From the other students I learned that the kung fu classes don’t spend much time on applications, or at least not until you’re quite far along. I know that in the class I attended, exactly zero time was spent on partner work, chin na, or applications drills, so I was a little disappointed. On Friday nights, though, they have sanda classes. From what I understood, that combines all the sparring, standing grappling, throws, and practical applications. It seems weird to me to separate it like that, but I’m not the monk here.

All things considered, I’m really glad I went. I didn’t learn much in the way of technique, but I had a lot of fun and I think I got some good perspective on how to train.