Forcing Better Stances

It has been a long time since I've posted here. I've been keeping myself busy with teaching Kung Fu, starting Shaolin Iron Palm again etc. Last night as I was working on the two person cudgel form with some of the late class students, I was harping on their stances (as I do every class) when I became frustrated with the state of the stances in the school. After reminding them that they needed to work toward better stances I let it go but took a mental note that I would come up with a solution to the problem of sloppy basics.

Every class I push the students to work their stances lower. I push them to clean up their stances, clean up their movements, and demonstrate in their forms that they know what the application of the movements are. This would be fine if I could look back over time and see improvement in these areas. Yet I still see high, half-hearted stances and muddy movements (this is not a kids class, by the way).

In light of this, I am now on a mission. I want my students to look like Shaolin monks when they are doing stances and forms. I want their core basics to be flawless, so that they have a solid foundation to build sparring, grappling, and other street level fighting techniques on.

My first step, logically, will be to discuss this with my Sifu. After that conversation, if I still feel the need, I may be visiting various Kung Fu forums and blogs and see what I find there and perhaps begin topics about this. I am looking for ideas on techniques and creative ideas to push the students in ways that will inspire them while getting them to do the hard work it will take. I know what inspires me as I train and I have shared this with students, I'm not sure if it is a tool that has helped any of them yet.

Don't get me wrong my students learn well and work hard, but their foundation seems to be lacking and progress seems stagnant. I will be posting my progress here.