What you can accomplish

Coming from Isshinryu when I began studying with Ernest Rothrock, in tai chi and other studies, I found myself in the middle of many lengthy form studies. I hadn’t accepter I could not do them, and I did. 

 

The first year with him one day I was invited to an in house seminar for his students. While he was teaching the Pai Lum system, but once a year he would share a form for them from another system. This time it was a Northern Mantis form.  The form was lengthy and challenging for me, what I did to transfer the form to long term memory, was to find someone who was having difficulty getting it and assist them throughout the clinic. Thus learning was enhanced by sharing too.

 

This is a one of his students doing an advanced execution of that form

  

Now Rothrock Laoshi was not teaching it in his classes. So on Saturdays when I engaged in free time with his senior students, it was one of the forms we did do. I was moderately successful learning it. 15 years later I used it for a forms competition.

Another time I attended the Bando Summer camp, because my original instructor was friends with them. I struck up a friendship with one of the instructors. Hearing I was interested in the form, because one of my seniors had learnt it at a previous summer camp. On Sunday morning he gave me two of his brown belts and told them to teach it to me. 

Driving home 4 hours after the clinic, I kept going through the form as I drove.  When I got home the first thing I did was go through it on the street outside of my home. A decade later I taught it to my students beginning at Brown Belt Level, and continue to do so 30 years later.

  

This is my student doing that form. 

 

What you can do depends on how motivated you are.

 

No you cannot get everything. But you can but do your best, never starting with restrictions on how much you can do. Then practice, practice, practice.