How long ... ?

[Legion]

how long would it take for me to be able to defend my self successfully ?

 

im 16 and attend upto 3 weekly classes in kung fu and tai chi chaun

 

does it take years? .. months?

 

im into my 3rd month of MAs

 

Orange belt in kung fu ( see below )

[sAtelitte]

I don't know how your grading system works but if you started out with a white belt or no belt (like the system i follow) Orange belt seems to be awfully fast in three months to me. i can't really answer your question cause of my situation:

 

I currently hold no sash and i'm doing Kung fu for three months just like you. I figure i'll have my white sash somewhere in oktober or november, then yellow and i'm not even thinking about orange (probably in a year or two). Anyway in my opinion it takes a lot of time to be good at kung fu (matter of years), a lot of forms and moves you have to know and each form has soooooo many details you have to be aware of.

[TheDevilAside]

If you're a complete beginner to fighting.. meaning, you've never gotten into a brawl with anyone before or haven't taken any type of martial art before, then I'd say it would atleast take you 2-5 years depending on how your school trains. Againt, this is such a broad statement and could be 0-100% true to you.

 

Acquiring the skills to theoretically defend yourself would probably take you little over a year. However, the part that can take a life time is learning to succesfully apply your skills in a given situation.

 

Uhm... I guess my point is, I can't really answer that question.

[Draven Chen Zhen]

I'm in the same school as sAtelitte, but I'm following Kung Fu for 6 months now and I haven't even got my white belt yet.

 

5 june is my first examen for white (hope I make it)

 

So maybe you want to tell a little more about your grade system.

 

And what style of Kung Fu is it?

 

Greetzz ChenZy

[italian_guy]

It also depends on what style of kung fu are you in.

 

Tai chi chuan it takes a lot. Raughly I can say not less than 4-6 years but depends on a lot of things like the quality and the flavour of the teaching and your personal ability.

 

If you take also shaolin it may take less time to be self defence effective but again depends on the factors I mentioned before.

[Legion]

im not sure about the kung fu style but my tai chi is tai chi chaun by master chen man ching ... the reason i got my orange so fast was because i took kung fu when i was 12 and could still remember all the stuff .. it was just applying it all

 

and nope not been in a 'real' street fight yet .. although one guy jumped me once .. got rid of him then realised he had about 20 freinds with him .. age old fasion of run away came in handy on that night

[Drunken Monkey]

simple answer is:

 

it depends on how you train.

 

if you are a tai chi student and you train applications then i don't see why it would take you longer to defend yourself.

 

it has been said that the most important factor in training is you.

 

if all you do is run through forms ten times a night, 47 seconds for each form, with no consideration for what the forms mean then hell, i'll come beat you myself....

 

we try to get people to be able to defend from day one (whether you can or not is a diffrent matter...)

 

forms always comes later.

 

the first things we do are punch+receive+stance.

 

pak sau+punch is the one thing that we do everyday from the first day we begin.

 

you could say that everything always goes back to pak sau+punch.

[sAtelitte]

we try to get people to be able to defend from day one (whether you can or not is a diffrent matter...)

 

forms always comes later.

 

the first things we do are punch+receive+stance.

 

That doesn't go for the school where i go (almost the complete opposite even), from day one we get to see the traditional animal and shaolin forms, a few locks and the basics for fighting with the staff. That's pretty much it until you advance to white or yellow sash. Again i don't know how the trainings are at legion's school but if it's anything like here it will take a longer while to be able to defend yourself.

 

For the record, i didn't start with shaolin kung fu with the intention that i want to be able to defend myself as soon as possible. I've grown very fond of the forms so our training schedule is good from my point of view. Although i'd have to admit that i miss a little sparring, kicking draven chen zhen * would be great .

[italian_guy]

simple answer is:

 

it depends on how you train.

 

if you are a tai chi student and you train applications then i don't see why it would take you longer to defend yourself.

 

it has been said that the most important factor in training is you.

Not necessarely by you only. My tai chi school has a very long work on the basic (but I think this is common in Tai Chi Chuan) it takes at least 2 years and a half before you start practicing actual fighting applications. They show you some application before, but just to explain you the details of the form itself and also as a memorizing help. But Tai chi movements are not very easy to do and you must have a sufficient mastery of the movements before actually using them. This is different from karate or kickboxing where movements and application goes togheter (kickboxing) or almost togheter (karate).

[Draven Chen Zhen]

Although i'd have to admit that i miss a little sparring, kicking draven chen zhen * would be great .

 

I feel the same lolz

 

Greetzz ChenZy