Samurai Jack
06-22-2003, 07:33 PM
I started training in Aikido in January and love it so far. I sometimes have trouble breaking 10+ years conditioning in punch and kick arts though. All the time I'm feeling like I should be popping my opponent in the nose HARD, and instead I'm trying to dislocate his elbow, since it's supposedly the more "humane" thing to do!;)
Anyhow, something really interesting just happened in class last week were my Sensei pulled back on my scapula (shoulder blades) and said something to the effect of:
"You're going to have to work hard to correct this mis-alignment. Your structural integrity depends on it. Until you get it right you're going to be weak with ki extension."
The trippy thing is that George Xu once gave me similar advice at a Chen Taiji seminar. I ignored him at the time since he was sort of harsh with his critisism in general, and I thought it was "too hard". He said something like, "You're posture is bullsh1t!" :rolleyes: Yeah, and I'm sometimes sceptical of all this internal ki/chi stuff.
Anyway, later on during the class, I started really feeling like my throws were effortless. Every time I re-align my shoulders according to Sensei's directions I feel this surge of power, sort of like I'm a few inches taller, and the throws get alot easier. My partners usually ask me to ease up after awhile which is funny since to me I feel like I'm hardly doing anything!
So what do you guys think? Is this ki, or just good body mechanics? Or psychosemantic? Is this similar to "internal" style power like taiji or bagua?
Anyhow, something really interesting just happened in class last week were my Sensei pulled back on my scapula (shoulder blades) and said something to the effect of:
"You're going to have to work hard to correct this mis-alignment. Your structural integrity depends on it. Until you get it right you're going to be weak with ki extension."
The trippy thing is that George Xu once gave me similar advice at a Chen Taiji seminar. I ignored him at the time since he was sort of harsh with his critisism in general, and I thought it was "too hard". He said something like, "You're posture is bullsh1t!" :rolleyes: Yeah, and I'm sometimes sceptical of all this internal ki/chi stuff.
Anyway, later on during the class, I started really feeling like my throws were effortless. Every time I re-align my shoulders according to Sensei's directions I feel this surge of power, sort of like I'm a few inches taller, and the throws get alot easier. My partners usually ask me to ease up after awhile which is funny since to me I feel like I'm hardly doing anything!
So what do you guys think? Is this ki, or just good body mechanics? Or psychosemantic? Is this similar to "internal" style power like taiji or bagua?