After my last Kung Fu class, I had the pleasure of meeting Sifu Alan, who trained with my master, Pastor McClure. He was kind enough to give me a brilliant bit of advice: try out as many different styles and moves as I can, but only master the ones which I like. This doesn't mean that you should ignore your master if he teaches something that doesn't appeal to you right away. It simply means that, for each common attack scenario, you should have at least 3-4 signature moves which you know so well that you can do them with your eyes closed.
Doing this will prevent you from getting what I call "combat brain freeze", which is what occurs when your mind has too many moves to choose from. Basically, the more options your mind has to select from, the longer you will take to pick one. This could get you killed if you are in a life-and-death situation, especially if you are up against an experienced assailant. To make it easier on yourself, pick a small number of techniques which you find particularly effective and drill them as many times as you possibly can. In my case, Pastor McClure taught me one technique from six different styles: snake, tiger, crane, leopard, mantis, and dragon. My personal favorite is the crane technique, so I drill that one multiple times a day. I've also decided to add the dragon one to my signature move list, so I drilled that many times tonight as well. I'm still going to review the other styles, since I am just a beginner in Kung Fu. However, the crane and dragon styles are the ones which I am probably going to utilize the most.
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