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Getting flow/continuity
Hi chaps - not posted for a while as I took a 2 month break from training whilst I decided what I was trying to achieve
Anyway - I've found that the break did me a lot of good (my conditioning was shot though - nearly broke my wrist on the bag) - I've been able to isolate a lot of problems that I was unaware of before.
One thing that still eludes me (been training Taiji for nearly 4 years now) is flow. I still go through the form movement by movement - I don't feel that I'm pausing between postures, but I do feel like I'm hiccupping/breaking after each movement. For example - if I'm going from single whip to raise hands I complete the single whip, and then break before I drive into raise hands.
I've recorded myself doing it and it isn't visually obvious, but I can feel it happening. I thought maybe it's just where my waist has recoiled after the strike - to go into raise hands I need to turn my waist clockwise again, so maybe the break is just the waist reversing direction. I certainly don't feel dead or double weighted...
comments?
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Is it your movement that doesn't feel fluid enough, or is it your breathing?
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the movement, although I guess the breathing is involved too as the end of one posture is marked by the end of exhaling
maybe the pause coincides with the transition from exhaling to inhaling
right, just did a posture or two - I think the pause I'm feeling is actually the change in breathing
I think :)
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Is this the modern day (as in Red China) Yang 24 or 48 or 108 you are practicing, Kaitain?
Remember that those are COMPETITION forms designed to maximize degree of difficulty.
Traditional Taiji is much less ornate and is, in my opinion, easier on the practitioner
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Have you done lots of holding postures, like zhan zhuang using the form postures? sometimes a big emphasis on holding in your practice can make you pause in between movements. Also, what I do if I feel like things aren't flowing well is try not to think of the form as "postures" but "movements".
Huang--how are the gov. routines more difficult? I've never seen them before. Just rough pictures in some books and on the net.
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Actually, the 24 Posture form was designed to be easier. The bad romanization of the name besides 24 Posture is Chien Hua Taijiquan - Simple Taijiquan...
It has easier stepping for Gong bu. the wave hands mechanics is simpler, the routine is shorter and less complex.
48 Posture was designed to be more challenging than 24 and to give an exposure to the various traditional styles. It is a good routine to get a flavor of the other styles ...helps a lot if figuring out if you want to study one of them or not.
108...not sure what that one is..but you may mean 88. This routine is, to be blunt, a rip off of traditional Yang style...with some strangeness.
42 is the competition routine. It DOES have some level of difficulty moves in it....but overall, it is not that difficult of a routine.
I personally find that doing traditional Yang WELL is much more difficult...but then again, doing traditional Yang poorly is very very easy.
The 42 sword...now THAT is a more difficult sword routine...but it is very well constructed. Of the new routines, it has more traditional flavor than most of the others and virtually no fluff at all.
There are competition routines for Yang, Chen, Sun, and Wu styles. The Sun is a decent routine and close in flavor and method to the traditional set. Chen is not a bad routine.
The Wu routine is a little strange in some places....haven't really made up my mind on it....
The Yang routine...it is (IMHO) just plain bad. It does NOT have the flavor of Yang style. While the other three have virtually no movements that you do not find in the traditional sets, the Yang set has things I have never seen in ANY Yang long form. It is basically hard to look at and does not flow well.
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I do traditional Yang family 108
yes I train/ed all of my postures as standing post
I've done the form a few times since posting and really examined what I'm doing - the pause seems to be a result of recoiling the waist and then rotating again for the next posture/movement. I guess if I want to flow more I'll have to reduce this - I think I'm overexaggerating it. I'm doing the same amount of rotation and recoil that I do if I'm actually striking with fajing.
I know it's hard for you to say without seeing my movement, but I think that I'm just opening and closing as I should be.
Finding it hard to find the right words - when I train the form it's like I have a slide show in my head. So as I complete a movement there is a mental pause as I move to the next 'slide'. Does this sound familiar? If so is it something that reduces over the years?
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Kaitain,
Speed it up. My instructor tells us that we shoudl vary our speed to work on different things. I do 24 postures the rate he has us go at makes it last about 8 minutes. I don't know how long a 108 form lasts.
He says, if you feel your balance is suffering, it will help to slow down to a ten minute run. If you feel you aren't getting the flow, if it feels like you keep pausing, it will help to speed up to a 6 minute run.
I don't know but it's worth a try, right?
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s'worth a shot - I'll let y'all know on Monday
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I also do Yang 108(although chen is becoming more and more attractive), and heres my $.02.
As you do your form, rather than the images of the slides, try focusing on the thought, as one movement ends, the next begins.
It works for me.
I also struggled for smooth flow, btw, and found focusing on this thought as a useful tool to reach it.
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In my own experience a staccato form is the result of not using the dantien to completely power your movements. I know you think it's because you're over exaggerating the dantien movement, but this is like sinking too much into the kua-- it can be done, but only by people who are really skilled. Your waist should move the same amount when you perform a move with or without fa-jing. This is a key point in internal arts there is no structural difference between movements that issue and movements that don't. As is often pointed out all the movements in the form can be performed with fa-jing. Unfortunately what is not said is that there is no real change in the movement. A key reason why I believe you are not using your dantien as much as you think, is that you are recoiling your waist and then rotating it again. You should never have to do this. The whole point of moving with the dantien is that the dantien rotates 360 degrees, and therefore at any point in the movement you are already loaded. In other words if you stop half-way through a move you should be able to issue. Having to recoil is often a sign of one of the following: not sinking into the kua, twisting the hips, being double weighted, or the dantien being "dead".
If I were you I wouldn't worry about trying to figure out what your doing wrong in eachmovement. Instead, I would work on improving the movement as a whole. The form, in my experience, is not a very good tool for doing this. This is especially true for the yang form which in my opinion is an advanced form. The best exercises for improving dantien movement are silk reeling/pulling exercises.
Personally I would (and when I had this problem did) use Feng Zhi Qiang's silk reeling set http://www.silkreeler.com/articles/s...ng_names.shtml. Note: I'm not affiliated with FZQ. I had a similar problem about two years ago . So, I stopped practicing form, and began doing FZQ's silk reeling, and the taiji ball for an hour and a half a day. In about three months I began to see improvements and today my form flows. Of course now I have a whole different set of problems.
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Hey josh, are you the student of Terry Chan? I think I remember you. Anyway, how can the dantien rotate 360 degrees? I find it physically impossible. What are the taiji ball exercises you talk about? Thanks.
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How is your quality of release after a movement is finished? Perhaps a clearer dissolve would allow better flow. The Tissue often opens to express a Jin and then contracts to allow to allow the space for another to emerge. Yin and Yang after all...
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The reason you still practice it cut up is because in your mind you learnt it like that, cut up.
if you look at traditional forms say siu lim tao you build a few moves on it every lesson or every week or whenever and you learn those moves and build up with a few new moves but in your head all of these moves flow because they are short moves one tan sau one pak sau one huen sao , repeated on the other side.
whereas in taiji when you learn a move its a series of moves that lasts maybe 30 seconds so you see it as one move and the transition between that one move and the next is obvious , whereas because the transition between huen sau and tan sao in siu lim tao isnt obvious, because the pause is equal length.
The easiest way is to focus on the parts where the changeover is and just do the isolated moves one after the other as if its a new mini move, for example in 24 form you start with lifting water thats one move and then the left hand goes underneath left leg pulls in and you start a new move which in fact is a series of moves which lasts 30 seconds , isolate the switch over point and practise it repeateadly as if to make a new ""Joining"" part of the form and you will notice the form has no more mental breaks in it.
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Kumkuat,
Yes, I train with Terry Chan. I'm afraid you have me at a disadvantage, when did we meet? You're not Zach by chance?
Re rotating the dantien: Remember the dantien is not the same as the waist. rotating ones waist 360 degrees would be physically impossible. The dantien, however, moves as a result of two straight lines. One is the opening from one kua and closing into the other kua.( think dantien change/single whip from laojia). The second comes from bowing and unbowing the back and opening and closing into both kuas (think squatting monkey/ or the opening of laojia). By combining these two straight lines the dantien moves 360 degrees and the body will always be stored for a release. If your in the Bay Area I'll be glad to show you what I mean. To do this does take a fair amount of work, I recently took a six month hiatus, after which I couldn't move my dantien at all. It's taken me about eight months to be able to move from my middle again.
Re: Taiji ball: I do Chen Qingzhou's taiji ball set-- http://www.nnrs.org/sphere.html
As I'm sure you know there's nothing magical about this set. Theoretically you could probable get the same workout with a good spear. I like the taiji sphere set for several reasons. First, you don't have to worry about bringing the jing to the tip of spear, and correspondingly the ball requires less spiraling . This means one can concentrate on moving the dantien. Second, the heavier weight of the ball provides more feed back then the lighter spear. I have a really nice spear that probable weighs close to ten pounds, but I prefer the feed back from my sixteen pound bowling ball. Third, there are several exercises the ball provides that I don't think can be duplicated with the spear. The exercises I'm thinking of are those that require rotating the ball in a vertical plain and those which require grounding the weight of the ball while standing on one leg. Over all my experience has beenthat the balll is the quickest way to strengthen f the dantien. For developing finesse, or coiling, I prefer the spear.
--josh