Martial Arts: Are You Dancing or Memorizing Choreography?

"Just 'Fu something out!"

I'm in Kung Fu class. I've been coming to Kung Fu class for 2 years and that I knew a little Kung Fu. It's a small school and we're a pretty tight cohort who have come up together learning and helping each other learn the early forms of Shaolin Kung Fu. We were all getting solid enough in the basic-basics that our instructor wanted to up our game and move more toward his style of training and incorporating prep for shan shou (full contact fights). It turns out I was not learning what I thought I was learning. This realization came with the first gentle introduction of sparring into our curriculum.

It was a very simple exercise of just taking turns defending an arbitrary attack and then counter attacking using any movement from one of our forms. I had a knack for getting forms quickly - I'm a fast learner and have decent proprioception - so I thought this would be go alright. My partner went first threw a low kick. Low kick, sweet, I know the movement for this. Block! Now, uh... "Just 'Fu something out!", he says. Sure, just throw uh, straight punch! He deflects and smoothly transitions to a crescent kick. I duck. And freeze again.

And so it went for a few painful minutes. I had no ability to improvise, to see what could follow, and my over-analytic tendencies put me in paralysis when I tried. This was a moment for several people in the class that crystallized what they wanted from Kung Fu. A few folks enjoyed the forms. They enjoyed getting all the movements right and maybe using it like a type of moving meditation. A few other folks knew going in that they wanted to fight. They talked about fights, they looked at movements in the forms and tried to visualize fights, and they were great at this first sparring exercise. I didn't have a preference, or so I thought, and this very basic failure of mine clarified instantly that I would not be happy if I couldn't do both.

Fast forward 6 months and I have failed to spar several times, mildly improved in my ability to "Fu something out", but basically feel like a fraud to myself. I couldn't commit the time to make the sparring classes regularly and frankly was a bit afraid of being embarrassed. Several of my cohort had really committed to the program and even had some full-contact bouts under their belts and who wants to look like an idiot and get punched or kicked by a way more skilled/practiced opponent?

For me, the issue came down to what I thought I was doing versus what I was actually doing maybe without even knowing it. If one practices a martial art, one should know what they want to get out of it and make sure that's really what they're up to. It's a rude awakening to think you've been learning to dance only discover you've just memorized some choreography.