There is only one class per week in the National Martial Arts Museum, and each class lasts at most half an hour, or one hour. The shortest class is so short that it is beyond your imagination.
There is no roll call in all the courses. The National Martial Arts Museum does not stipulate what classes students must take. Students of the National Martial Arts Museum can choose the courses they want to take!
There is no such thing as grades or classes in the National Martial Arts Museum. All courses are open to all students in the museum!
The most important point is that there are no assessments or exams in the National Martial Arts Hall! Anyone who stays in the National Martial Arts Hall for six years or advances to a warrior will automatically leave.
Based on these points, Yan Liqiang felt that if the people he knew in his previous life who were in college would hear them, they would probably cheer for joy. For those who spend all day thinking about skipping classes, picking up girls, and playing games, a martial arts hall like this is simply heaven.
In a sense, the National Martial Arts Museum in Pingxi County is not like a school, but more like a martial arts club where young people gather.
Shi Changfeng and other masters of martial arts halls are more like coaches of clubs.
In a martial arts hall, the master will teach you some things that are not easy for ordinary people to learn outside. But relatively speaking, since those things can be learned by everyone, then those things are not that precious.
There is a large library in the National Martial Arts Museum, where students can borrow various books, but those books are all about literature, history, classics, and philosophy. In the entire National Martial Arts Museum, there is not a single martial arts secret book that you can borrow.
There is only one class a week in the National Martial Arts Museum. In the beginning, Yan Liqiang was a little surprised and thought that the museum had too few courses. But after the class started, he understood that one class a week was not too few, but too many. Because in martial arts practice, all the skills are in practicing calligraphy, not talking. Almost all the skills are acquired through hard practice. As the saying goes, a master can only lead you to the door, but the practice is up to you. Many times, a master's words of instruction may require you to spend several years of hard practice.
His first class at the National Martial Arts Hall was shorter than Yan Liqiang had imagined.
The class was taught by an old man in a large classroom at the National Martial Arts Museum. In the classroom, the old man faced seven or eight hundred new students who had just been admitted to the museum that year. He only demonstrated a horse stance and said three sentences.
The old man's first words were, "Horse stance is hard work that takes time. You can't be lazy. You have to stretch your muscles when you squat!"
The second sentence is, "You have to squat until your whole body is relaxed, your mind is quiet, and your body and mind are at peace. Then you have almost passed the horse stance test!"
The third sentence was, "I will not come to the horse stance class in the future. Kung Fu is practiced, not talked about. No matter how much I say, it will be useless. You can practice on your own. It will take a few years. If you can endure the hardship, you can practice well. Okay, get out of class is over!"
The whole class was over in less than three minutes. Until the old man left the classroom, many people looked at each other, still unable to believe that their first class at the National Martial Arts Hall was over like this.
The horse stance class is held in the first week of every month. Since the old man won’t come anymore, it means that there will be no classes in the first week of every month from now on.
This is the teaching style of the National Martial Arts Museum. The master here never cares how many students come, nor how well they learn. He will explain the really useful things to you in a few words, and then the course is over. As for the rest, you don't have to expect anyone else except your own hard practice.
Yan Liqiang later found out that the old man who taught them horse stance was Song Tianhao, the owner of the famous Longqi Martial Arts School in Pingxi City. This was the horse stance that Song Tianhao could teach everyone in public. If you really want to learn the more advanced Hunyuan Zhuang horse stance from Song Tianhao, you must go to Longqi Martial Arts School to become his disciple. Of course, the cost of becoming a disciple is at least 100 taels of gold, which is not something that ordinary people can afford.
The teaching styles of the subsequent masters of various academies are exactly the same as Song Tianhao's. What they teach is concise and clear. After teaching, it is up to everyone to practice on their own.
The same goes for the sword-fighting lessons taught by Shi Changfeng.
In the first two months after Yan Liqiang came to the National Martial Arts Hall, Shi Changfeng taught four classes on basic swordsmanship. In these four classes, Shi Changfeng only taught for less than ten minutes in each class. In these ten minutes, he only taught two or three basic movements of swordsmanship - chopping, stabbing, pointing, lifting, collapsing, intercepting, wiping, piercing, picking, lifting, twisting, and sweeping. After that, he ended the get out of class and let everyone practice on their own.
In comparison, Shi Changfeng speaks more when teaching literature and history classes. Each class lasts about an hour. After each class, Shi Changfeng will introduce a book and let everyone find it and read it by themselves. Then the class will end.
There are other courses as well, such as those introducing swordsmanship, hidden weapons, archery, and Tiger Roaring Fist, but these courses are either general discussions or focus on practice, and what they actually teach are not very deep. After all, the goal of the county-level martial arts hall is to train only warriors, and warriors, to some extent, have only just stepped into the door of martial arts practice.
The skills of the masters here may not be limited to this, but if you want to learn real skills, you must become an apprentice. The conditions for becoming an apprentice are very harsh. Yan Liqiang heard that except for Song Tianhao who opened a martial arts school, the masters of the national martial arts school here basically rarely accept disciples, because each master comes from a different family or has a different master. Disciples cannot be accepted casually, and real kung fu and secret skills cannot be passed on casually.
What is taught in the National Martial Arts Museum is not profound, and there are no secret manuals for you to see, but there is one thing in the National Martial Arts Museum that is worthy of praise, and that is that it can provide students with the best environment for practicing martial arts. Such a martial arts environment is something that many people had not dared to imagine before.
In the National Martial Arts Museum, if you want to learn archery, there is a special Kyudo Hall for you to practice. If you want to learn horse riding, there is also a horse farm in the National Martial Arts Museum, and the horses on the farm are all rhinoceros horses. If you want to practice gun skills, the National Martial Arts Museum also has a special gun training venue. If you want to find someone to compete with, that's even simpler. The entire National Martial Arts Museum has dozens of different arenas, from hand-to-hand combat to wearing full body armor and fighting with weapons, all are available.
Even if you want to practice squatting, the National Martial Arts Museum has set up a place for you to squat in a pine forest. Yan Liqiang heard that if many people practice squatting together, there is that atmosphere, everyone can supervise and promote each other, and compete with each other in the spirit of hard work and endurance. The effect is better than squatting alone, and it can also make it easier for people to pass the horse stance test...
Although he felt that what he learned in the martial arts hall was a little simpler, Yan Liqiang did not relax, but practiced hard in the hall every day.
Apart from the time he spent practicing Yi Jin Xi Sui Jing in the basement at home in the morning and evening, Yan Liqiang basically spent the entire two months after school started in the gun training ground, the archery hall or the sword training ground of the National Martial Arts Museum. He would not go home until he had exhausted himself every day.
During these two months, Yan Liqiang's strength gradually stood out among the seven or eight hundred students of the new class of the National Martial Arts Museum. In particular, he often competed openly with Shi Dafeng on the arena of the National Martial Arts Museum, sometimes competing in boxing and kicking, sometimes competing in weapons. He was always able to suppress Shi Dafeng. Sometimes he would also compete on the stage with a few freshmen who were itching to watch, and he basically never lost. Gradually, the name Yan Liqiang became famous among the new students of the National Martial Arts Museum, and some people even said that Yan Liqiang was not only the first among the top three in Qinghe County in this national martial arts competition, but also the first among all freshmen.
Of course, Yan Liqiang just smiled and didn't care about the statement that he was the best among the freshmen.
After two months, by November, Yan Liqiang felt that he was about to pass the stage of stretching his muscles and bones...
Shi Changfeng had once told Yan Liqiang that he hoped he could pass the Stretching Bones and Tendons stage within two years, but Yan Liqiang's training speed exceeded everyone's expectations. Even Yan Liqiang himself didn't expect that he would pass the Stretching Bones and Tendons stage so quickly...
(End of this chapter)