Chris Meistre

The first short weapon form that I’m learning is the Cain Form.  Strange weapon you might think, as did I.  Thinking more about it though, you realise it’s actually quite a practical application, especially consider most of us will be walking with walking sticks sooner or later.

It’s not just there to teach you how to fight using a cain, but instead I see it as having an easier way of teaching you the basic workings of short and even longer weapons (staff).  Once you can grasp and feel comfortable doing the Cain Form, I’m sure the other weapon forms will come easier as you’ll already have this basis.

I’ve learned up to about 70% of the form now.  There’s a lot of repetition in the form, so it comes easy to remember all the moves, but the difficulty is remember what fits where!  When I first heard about this form, I really thought it would be a slow paced form to make it appropriate for all people that actually use walking sticks…. WRONG.  It’s quite fast paced with some nice moved in there.

I’m really enjoying being part of a Kungfu school again.  It’s still a long way until I’m on the same level as fitness as what I used to be, but I’m getting there.  I initially found it very strange that we go right into the forms at this school, whereas with the previous school we did a LOT of basics before we moved onto the forms.

But the teacher mentioned something on Thursday evening that made me realise why they do it like this.  The forms and basics we’re learning now are more there to practise our coordination, build on our stamina and get our fitness levels up, rather than for self defence purposes.   I’ve stopped with the Ninjitsu training for now to see how it goes with the Kungfu classes, but I think we’ll carry on with that for the meanwhile.  It’s nice to see the contrasts between the chinese and japanese martial arts.

The Tai Chi classes are very nice as well.  I’m finding it easier to learn with someone being there to show you the way, than trying to work it out from the DVD we’ve got.  I really think the DVD was just not put together well.  There are a lot finer things to it than just imitating moves you see.  The way you walk, the way you move, the way you move your hands, which of your hands your eyes are following, etc, etc.

I finally found a Kungfu school in Port Elizabeth that offers both Tai Chi and Kungfu as seperate but integrated teachings.  Most Kungfu styles do incorporate a bit of Chi management, but I’ve always felt both needs to be treated as seperate, but they need to be integrated as well.

The style is called Wudang Wushu, and Sifu Jurgens Lamprecht founded the South African Wudang Wushu Institute.  The website is available on http://www.wudangwushu.org/.  Dr Margo de Kooker is in charge of the Port Elizabeth school.  We went there last Tuesday to go and have a look how it is in joined in on the first class.

It’s very different to the way our previous Kungfu school use to teach, and it’s something to get used to.  One main difference is that they tend to concentrate on the forms (a set of various moves performed one after the other) a lot.  So within 2 lessons we were taught about 4 different forms.   I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with it though, because you get use to all the techniques in these forms and you learn them a lot quicker.  In the previous school we went through a lot of self defence grabs first before we started with the technical side of Kungfu techniques.

The people there seem very excited about the lessons, so it’s a nice group of people.