nicklinjm wrote:Trying to get this thread back on-topic (although it may be too late), thanks for the write-up Origami. I get that you feel Alex has a great teaching methodology, that comes through clearly.
What is not so clear is how you feel his skills compare to other teachers / branches and what made you choose the current members of the Dong family. As you know, there are plenty of 'flavours' of Yang out there - Fu Zhongwen, CMC, Yang Zhenduo / Yang Jun, etc etc. What skills does Alex have that put him a cut above?
To be blunt, access. We met well and got along and his teaching has been delivering solid results ever since. I see no reason to look elsewhere when I'm getting significant return on the investment from an existing relationship.
It developed over time, at first I only learned the sabre form to get back into weapons, then I kept going back for weekends when he came to Austin and getting more exposure to the material and the students. I honestly didn't think much of the style at first to be perfectly honest. I was sitting with Dong Zheng Chen and his wife going on about the HSS material. I was mainly attending to boost the numbers and support my friend Jane and her work with the Veterans.
That was mainly due to my first exposure being T. T. Liang's system and 150 posture form, which has influence from a number of lineages, chiefly Cheng Man Ching, and the Huang Sheng Shyan material through Adam Mizner which is also largely CMC influenced.
The forms and postures have been tuned differently. CMC is undeniably tweaked in favor of energy work and healing. If you're coming from that on first glance a lot of things the Dong family does seem "wrong" but really they're just keeping to older tradition that in my opinion maintains more of the martial spirit of the practice. When I started giving their movements a chance it was like night and day the difference in my development.
What really sold me was seeing the photos of him, his dad, his granddad, and his great granddad, and they are all doing the same thing. There may be some changes in the pedagogy but the body method is the same. You don't get a lot of quality control documented and illustrated so clearly in this field of interest.
If I were to go on and say too much.
I wouldn't try to rank people based on skill when any one of them is so much better than me that it doesn't matter anyhow, I don't see myself ever catching up. Like I am no badass, people make me step all the time in pushing. Not many people can make me stumble across the room or fall down at will, or at zero intensity from either of us and he can do that effortlessly.
His attitude and approach and eye is excellent. You're working the whole time in class and all of it feels productive. In pushing he invites you to try whatever you want and tells you that you should be ready for anything, punches, kicks, chokes, never know what somebody is going to do. Calls out invisible corrections from across the room or when not even looking.
But the important thing here, my own guidance regarding picking a teacher, doesn't matter WHAT that teacher has done or can do outside the classroom. What matters is how they get the knowledge out of their brain and body and into yours. Working with him I get the feeling that transmitting that knowledge is his first priority, and I always leave feeling tangible improvement. When I'm better than him maybe I'll look for an upgrade, but he's got a bit of a head start.
Wayne may not see it but I know I'm improving, I have video working with the same people over time to prove it even.
I even brought up the idea of a subscription type approach like Adam Mizner, $50 a month for a 5-10 minute video each week and his response was that sort of thing placed too much focus on the business over the learning.
Another reason I wanted to write this up was to let anybody else who might have a chance to attend a class or workshop know what they'd be missing if they passed it up. I could kick myself for the wasted year or so before I started committing to the style.
They do it behind closed doors. Behind the curtains. Hidden from the public. 
