QI QONG: ITS USAGE IN A MAN TO MAN FIGHT !!!!!!!!!!
Is qi qong only good for demos only ??,why to date except in movies or magazines ,have we not seen its effectiveness in real street fights.I have good first hand experience in this.,as before a full contact fight ,i saw this person demonstrating iron shirt ,as well as breaking power of his qiqong and i ended up fighting this person and to my surprise he was just an ordinary person ,nothing special.Also we had a middle age kungfu sifu in our block who demonstrates some amazing qiqong but was seriously hospitalised by a street brawler who took him on in a fair fight(fair means he wasnt jumped on ).SO WHAT HAPPENED TO THIS QIQONG.........................
power
Why it didnt work on the street
Coz all those examples you have heard of. Those people obviously didnt know anything about qiqong, and were most likey fakes. Or perhaps the qigong they practiced was very weak. Thats the plain truth about it.
I'v seen some crazy stuff but hey, the stuff of this nature can only be experienced. Coz no matter how you try to convince someone, it makes no sense till you seen it for yourself.
Nice to see so much maturity in these posts
Qigong or chi kung is a body of information concerning breathing and visualization exercises for the purpose of "directing and controlling the energy of the body."
For those monolinguists of you out there that are only English speaking (and so are poorly prepared to grasp the multi-layered meanings of so many martial arts terms), before you start squawking about either the validity or absurdity of qigong training, first you need to understand what the words mean.
The character for qi is a combination of two radicals, those of rice and wind. Rice symbolizes life in this instance, and so qi is "life wind." However, the direct definition/translation of the word contains the meanings of air, gas, steam, vapor, spirit, moral, breath, influence, smells or odors, bearing, and weather. So it does NOT actually refer to that mystical and elusive quality of martial skill exclusively, but includes many other meanings. Gong or kung, as we all know, refers to work or development.
While it is very common these days in CMA schools in the US to spout tons of Chinese terms, I think very few really understand what those terms mean. Qi is used to refer to hundreds of different qualities of fighting skills, from stickiness to the ability to withstand blows from baseball bats.
If you view things from a slightly less subjective perspective, you can see that perhaps the use of the word qi was what best fit as a label for phenomena that were difficult, at the very best, to identify, quantify, and label. I think many people forget that for quite some time human beings thought the sun was a god of some sort and that thunder and lightning were the tools of angry deities. It is not such a stretch to think that people with limited scientific understanding of certain phenomena labeled them in ways that would make sense to them. And the labels stuck.
As far as the legitimacy of qigong training? If nothing else, it enhances focus, breathing, perception of the body in relation to other things in 3 dimensional space, timing, rhythm, etc. It can also be shown to improve reaction times, power of strikes, etc. How does it do these things? I dunno. Don't much care, either. I know that people in my school (meaning those above and below me) CAN fight with qi. The same ability to split cinder blocks and solid (not spaced - that is cheating) stacks of concrete slabs is still in that punch that contacts the opponent's chest. The same ability to stand seemingly rooted to the spot is still in that stance as the strike is landed.
Perhaps many people expect those who demo their skill in qigong to be capable of the feats often found in kung fu B movies, with high jumping ability, sliding across the ground in the splits, running across the top of water without leaving marks (much less falling in), etc. And if this is what they REALLY expect of qigong, then maybe they should spend a bit less time watching those B movies, and more time studying from people that won't try to BS them with the mysteries of qigong, but instead will show them what it is really for.
Just my humble comments. I hope I have helped form understanding of some sort. It is no longer the age of wild tales and mystical explanations. Qi exists, though science cannot yet measure or quantify it. But there are those who would like to see more believe in it without actually having to explain it properly. It is more than body mechanics, but without proper technique it means nothing.
I'll put away the soapbox now. Thanks for listening.
Matt Stone
