Old Internal Masters and there training!

[fiercest tiger]

Hi,

Does anyone have any stories and training tips that there Masters, founders etc used to train apart there chi kung. Such as weights, body weight, stone ball, stone locks or any other strength and power training?

What is your view on strength training such as weights etc and internal chi cultivation together, with lots of stretching? Do you think they can make you better then just doing chi kung?

I Personally do stone ball and body weight, cardio as well my chi kung, sparring...I know some think weights slow you down or hinder movement or can restrict chi moving but i dont believe that and like to here your views?

Anyone care to add!!

regards
Garry

[count]

I've heard that Grandmaster Liu wore a heavy, iron jacket for more than 2 years. 24 hours a day.

I've heard Master Gong Bao Tian had his students train speed and mobility by having them chase chickens around his courtyard.

Are these training methods internal?

Here's some more about Liu and Gong BaoTian.
http://kabooom.com/htmls/bagua.shtml

[fiercest tiger]

Thanks Count,

I think its important to have the specialty training such as the iron jackets, balls, indian clubs, stone locks, and all the correct methods that apply to the type of style and way you fight. Apart the fighting it also gives you a strong body and has many healing benifits, muscle toning etc.

Garry

[Repulsive Monkey]

All depends. If you're talking about Iron shirt qi-gong then yes long chronic use of say chain mail vests have been known to have some effect.
But a lot of weight WILL stagnate your qi and probably negate a lot of your qi gong work.
You may not like hearing it but stretching YES is good, but when your contracting muscles and pumping Iron, you totally increase your chances of causing qi stagnation whilst you try to undo that work by releasing blockages via qi gong.

You may not believe it that weight training is detrimental to qi gong, but, sorry to say, it general is.

Repulsive Monkey

[TaiChiBob]

Greetings..

I just hosted a weekend seminar with Dr. Yang Jwing Ming.. we had great conversations about "old times".. two things he said struck me as interesting.. that the most important aspects of Taiji are power and rooting, techniques are empty without these.. and, that a minimum of 4 hours per day of training are necessary to advance to "high level skills".. He is a strong advocate of Taoist breathing (reverse abdominal breathing) as complimentary to "martial" intentions of internal arts.. Dr. Yang indicated that beyond 60-70 years ago Taiji was a solid martial art, that his master was a respected fighter of Taiji lineage (Yang Ban Hou).. He largely blames modern comforts for the downfall of Taiji spirit.. riding in comfort rather than walkiong or riding animals, having machinery do our work, entertaining ourselves with TV and such rather than pursuing life enhancing disciplines.. in short, we have become lazy and separated ourselves from our environment.. he says that too many people see Taiji as a novelty, not its illustrious heritage.. something they can dabble in 2-3 times a week and become teachers as soon as they learn a form.. very sad, he says.. Originally, he said that martial arts, including Taiji, were combat oriented and the end result was killing or disabling an opponent.. niceities are a recent evolution. Although he does favor the controlled escalation of force in a conflict, he said we must, as Taiji tradition indicates, be trained and prepared to end a conflict decisively..

Our lifestyles are based on money and wealth acquisition, on accumalating possessions and creature comforts.. not on improving our health, really improving it.. most westerners have serious issues with their spines, largely from lack of vital exercise and sitting for long periods of time.. too few of us are really willing to commit the time and effort to reap the profound benefits of Taiji..

Old Taiji training included pushing-hands on Plum Flower Poles 6 feet high, hours of sitted and standing meditation to finely tune focusing skills, and many hours of practicing two person fighting sets.. applications had to be instinctive, and instincts for fighting are not found in forms alone.. listening skills (core skill) are only developed by training with partners and only useful at combat speed if trained at combat speed..

We need a critical evaluation of Taiji to maintain its legacy, a renewed dedication to its principles..

Be well..

[SPJ]

All three are needed.

1. strength, endurance training. hard.

2. Qi Gong breathing exercises.

3. soft, relaxation or stretching all all joints.

[SPJ]

I will mention the relaxation method of the shoulder and back exercise from Tong Bei.

1. you swing your arm, the hand was on the front of the thigh and swing it upward to touch the back of your neck. you then swing downward to touch the back of your hip. you are drawing circles in your front. you then step on toes when swing upward. you lower your heels when swing downward.

2. you swing your arm to your front and then back. you draw circles on your side. when your arm is in the front, you step on toes, when you arm is in your back, you lower heels.

3. bring your hands close to you and bend knees. you spring your hands forward to your front and stand up. again step on toes and then lower your heels.

etc etc.

They are called swaying the arm methods or Shuai Bei Gong.

[fiercest tiger]

Hello Taiji Bob,

Very true what Dr Yang says indeed, since my training is based on strength using the Sphere/ball and core body, softness, meditation, and much more i know Taiji has a sphere / ball as well and DrYang does have dvds out. Does he mention the ball training to you and its purpose for the Taiji art? Good points and bad points doesnt matter love to here what he thinks as well yourself and anyone else for that matter.

What weight ball is uses etc?

kind regards
Garry FT

[omarthefish]

Hey Count!

I have never been able to get your web pages to open from China before. Frustrating. Finnally I figured out that I could see them thorugh www.anonymouse.org and imagine my suprise.....

Pretty cool seeing my little credit up there.

Also, since Bob put it up on emptyflower lately I've been seeing little things that need revision. It is a bit rough but I am still proud of it. The content was not easy. Specifically the little note you added about this part:

"Bian zhuan xu shi, bu zhong can.
Turning and changing between empty and solid, there is majesty in the footwork.

can (pronounced tsaan) is a tricky word. Today, it commonly means to participate but in classical Chinese it is used as an honorable term of address. It sometimes means, to explore or to examine. I would need a gong-fu expert to explain the meaning of the last line as it doesnt seem to be addressed in the following explanation of the poem.

I found another meaning for "can" that seems to make sense. In one of my dictoinaries of classical Chinese it has a meaning listed a "to move" so maybe something along the lines of:

Movement and change between empty and solid contained within the steps.



As I see SPJ is here maybe he could give us a second opinion. Here is the original phrase in Chinese:

变转虚实,步中参

[count]

Well that's just great. I guess the Chinese censors don't want information about Chinese Martial arts to get in to China. That anonymous.org site is useful, but they control your options and filter javascripts, cookies and run a slow proxy too. That's as much as censorship in my view. I don't know which I detest more. I don't care for their pop advertisement on every page either.

(*hint* to the mgmt.)

Omar. you can pick up that little snip of a perl cgi they're using, and run it on any server you want. Than at least you have control over your options. But if it gets out to the public, be prepared for some massive bandwidth.

The article about Liu seems to be getting refined over time. Kind of like good kung fu. I think it shows a lot of truth and good information, from the perspective of an outside observer, translated by someone with both language and martial experience who really cares about the meaning. Maybe the character is solid but the meaning is sometimes taught as full. Thanks again for translating it.

I hope you read this the way I wrote it. If you want more information about anonymous.cgi, I'll e-mail the source code. In the meantime, I would find a different isp for your connection. I get hit by servers in China and the the whole Asian belt all the time.

And don't even bother checking out my site with anonymous.org. You can't even access or even see half of what I put up there.

and
編審肏

[omarthefish]

Send me the file and I'll give it a shot. I really don't understand code but I often figure stuff like that out just by immersing myself in it when I have time. I didn't know anonymouse filtered that much. My other "trick" is to goto www.proxy4free.com and try various servers untill I get one that works but they never seem to last for long. The speed is sketchy and one week later I have to find a new one anyways.

I only found out recently that there even existed alternate ISP's here. I thought it was all China Telecom but apparently there are 2 or 3 others as well. I'm pretty sure that they all go through the same international geteway though. I can get domestic downloads sometimes as fast as 1 meg/sec...rare but I've seen it. Typicall is about 100 kbs. For "foreign" sites though, it's just like dial up. Dial up on a good day but still. I'll get about 10-20kps or on a really good day 100. So I assume there's a bottleneck at the border.

[count]

Check your PM's of course.

[TaiChiBob]

Greetings..

fiercest tiger: Dr. Yang did 3 hours of Qinna on Friday evening (quite enough for one weekend, i'm typing with my elbows).. 6 hours of Taiji Ball on Saturday, excellent energy work.. and, 6 hours of combat applications on Sunday.. all in all a great seminar.. He presents good science to back up energies and their relationships to Taiji without removing all of the mystical possibilities.. he can back up all of his talk with decisive action.. and, he has a great sense of humor..

We spent a fair amount of time working on correct breathing (Taoist, reverse abdominal breathing) and coordinated physical movement.. what a difference fine-tuning makes..

I use several spheres (gotta watch the ambiguous use of certain words, here).. a 5.2 pound 8 inch diameter cherry wood.. a 15 pound medicine ball.. and a volleyball (for when my arms get tired).. the training set lasts about 40 minutes and is about half of the total set.. neatly, Dr. Yang convincingly showed us how to relax and move softly even while working with heavy spheres.. power magnified!

If you are familiar with flat plate exercises, the wooden spheres really work well rather than the plates.. Taiji Ball Qigong is a superior training discipline, i highly recommend it.. but, it is detailed and requires complex breathing coordination (which is becoming more natural day by day)..

Be well..

[wiz cool c]

My teacher recommend wearing weights instead of lifting them. I wear a 20 pound weighted belt and wrist weights while I do my Ba Gua,also do bag work wearing weighted boxing gloves also recommend by my teacher. Both work great. I do cardio as well and sparr every week twice.

[SPJ]

变转虚实,步中参

the article was compiled from the editorial team as a special report on Taiwan's Gong Bao Tian ->Liu Yun Qiao "Wu Tan" Ba Gua Zhang.

It is a very nice article with pictures of Master Liu and Yin's basic 8 palms.

Omar, your translation is very good already.

"Can" may also mean study, exam in reference or comparison.

"Can Chan/Zen" means study and cross exam Zen.

For the change, transformation or conversion between the emptiness and the solidness, one has to study or cross exam the steps.

So if you say they are from the steps, it is correct.