Creat your own form.

[sensei8]

If you create your own form, which I think is a good idea by the way purely for ones own personal development, how do you know the principles it conveys would actually work?

Some of the older forms come from a time when there were fewer reals and more live combat experience. But how do you test new ideas without smashing bits off a resisting opponent?

That's a good question. I think instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, I'd take moves that already portray distinct self-defense maneuvers and build my form out of them.

Unless I figured something out from my own unfortunate experience of self-defense, and could come up with a way to mimic that movement that would look different than anything I've already seen in a form.

To the bold type above...

I like how you've worded that, Brian..."already portray distinct" because nearly everything taught in ones style of the MA possesses distinct SD maneuvers through Bunkai and/or the like. Slowly pieces of the puzzle come together on the practitioners palette with one distinct maneuver after another until the masterpiece is revealed.

The most basic maneuvers over the most advanced, for me, are the most desired hues.

Distinct!!

[bushido_man96]

Thanks, Bob. I'm glad that made sense...I wasn't sure it did...

[Alan Armstrong]

Lin sil die dar, from Wing Chun, meaning simultaneous blocks/grabs and strikes.

While watching a video of Chi Sao meaning sticky hands, wanting to remember what I had seen, to remember it I made a kata exactly from the movements.