A New Phase of Learning

Today’s session marks the second phase of the project. The apprentices will be introduced to 3 new instructors to focus on learning one specialty from them.

Madam Ge’s group began with Xingyi and learning its footwork. While there were no Chinese students to translate for Madam Ge, she was encouraged by their enthusiasm and used simple English commands to direct their movements. As they progress, the students learnt how to generate power from their feet and transmit it through their hands through whole body movement.

Master Chan’s explained the importance of the power of the mind and how we can use our mental focus to generate power and direct it through the training of the Fist of 5 Ancestors. He showed them how they can manipulate their opponents centre of gravity by developing a sound physical structure and aligning this with the correct mental focus on where to direct their force.

Master Loh’s was a highly energetic bunch with lots of laughter. Even though Master Loh also faced a language barriers with the students, he quickly bonded with them and won them over through his engaging warm- ups and exercises. Master Loh's style of Traverse White Crane requires the students to define how each segment of the body moves along its own axis- what appeared to be simple moves became challenging when the students needed to co-ordinate their footwork and hip-turns together wit their hand movements.

It was clear to see that the highly energetic students had very short-attention spans; but this is where the experience of all 3 veteran instructors shown through as they each showed how they utilised different approaches to engage the students. For the Project Team, it affirmed our belief that bringing the younger and older generation of Singaporeans together in this manner help eliminate the generation gap and make us more inclusive.