There is a decided difference between DVD instruction and real life. But this new series from Sifu Adam Hsu shows us that the gap need not be too large.
There are a lot of things we treasure when we have a teacher in front of us; this true teacher teaches variation, re-arrangements, different approaches to acquiring skill. His instruction is spontaneous, his asides intriguing. He entreats us to live in the form and interact with it. He gives us backstory to understand how correct and determined practice places us in a lineage, connects us with past masters.
What makes this series different? Sifu Hsu sincerely wants people to love and promote CMA and, to encourage us, he gives us context, history, theory, principles, applications and formal instruction; he offers us different practice methods and significant variations for everything, creating an interactivity with each subject; all aimed at letting us walk away knowing not only the reasons but the goals.
The Adam Hsu new DVD arrived today. So far I have only seen DVD 1 of the 4 Tan Tui disks.
Adam in my opinion is truly an artist and thinks out of the box.
His teaching of the lines in the order of difficulty not just 1-10 is excellent. Excellent detail on postures and usage. I think that I will really enjoy this set.
Between Jason’s (Tsou’s) Tan Tui DVD and this one you have an excellent understanding of Tan Tui.
…By the way, the Adam Hsu Xingyi DVD set is EXCELLENT and really made me think about how and why others do things differently. My only complaint was that he did not seem to spend as much time going over the actual physical line drills (integrating footwork and hand patterns) as he did a lot of other background material and that would have been very helpful. Still, overall I highly recommend it. I hope he (Adam Hsu) has more DVD’s in the works!! Do you know if there will be more?