Of relevance to Wing Chun

[Liddel]

Toby had posted......

I totally disagree with the school of thought that relaxation is the path to internal mastery. There is nothing correct in that video from my perspective, nothing at all. We are also taught that in the first section of SLT there is a lot more going on than meets the eye, but none of that is evident in anything else I've seen. Simply standing there and saying relax and feel the chi in the fingertips, nope, doesn't do anything IMHO.

Life is about balance and so to is anything you do IMO. But a balance between what depends on the thing your doing. We are doing Kung Fu so its mainly physical.

To fully relax is to cut off your nose despite your face IMO. So i agree with toby somewhat.

One thing about that clip i noticed is, from my POV his body mechanics suffer as a result of trying to relax.
As an example - after the center punch most lineages turn to Tan Sau then roll that action into a fist via huen sau and take it back.. "huen sau sau kuen"

When i do this action (huen rolling from tan to Kuen) my elbow is straight, Why ? to isolate the wrist for huen Sau giving it a better range of motion trianing my inch power in the wrist more so than if my elbow was bent slightly.

Try and feel with elbow bent then elbow straight. Isolating the wrist improves the training of the action IME.
Now in the clip his relaxed elbow doesnt isolate the wrist so the heun isnt as effective in improving power dexterity etc etc.
Now perhaps hes focused on just the relaxation and his explosive power but thats to the detriment of improving his inch power or wrist force which is fairly important in my VT.

So with that example in mind, which applies to other actions i saw in the clip to.... relaxing is fine but one needs to know how much relaxation to have and how that affects other atributes of your training...ESPECIALLY IN THE FORMS.

He may not be concerned with isolating the wrist which is his perogitive but looking at clips of others and trying to make it work for you can be a hit and miss affair IMO. More than likely you may have differnt priorities.

For me, im about body mechanics and trainnig muscles and tendons to work together with my VT techs, so im relaxed in ways seperate to whats shown....i have my own version of balance between relaxation and body mechanics based on what im trying to accomplish physically.

IMHO one common example of using relaxation in the forms seen today is in CK.

Some schools in the second section turing with Lan sau then turning back to middle Bong etc. some pull lan Sau and then turn straight from the Lan into Bong.
Others lower the hands from Lan into a crossed wrist type position around the waist then turn the horse and into the middle Bong.

When i noticed the changes or difference to how i was taught years ago i asked my teacher and he had told me his teacher Lok Yiu had made that change in the form (for our lineage anyway) for two reasons. One of which was relaxing the shoulders after than Lan Sau.. the other was to help emphasise the elbow force which is more apparent when turning into bong with the hands coming from a lowered waist position.

So depending on your purpose relaxing is fine just be aware of its downstream effect on your habbit actions and behaviour of body mechanics.

My view on SLT is far removed from a Chi Gong (sp?) exercise. and i can still be very soft if you touch hands with me.

DREW

[anerlich]

Meaning that the tan takes about five minutes to reach the right position. If that is one breathe then you are doing good.

If you can do five minutes for one breath, you should consider trying for some freediving records. Staying totally relaxed while taking this long to breathe, stretches credibility.

As long as you use your abdominal breathing it should not matter. The first section should also be done with force. This teaches with the slow movement, constant forward pressure.

Opinions vary widely in WC, but my lineage too practices this section with some tension and constant forward pressure, including thinking forward while withdrawing the wu sao hand.

I share the opinion that this duration of practice is not optimal. I suspect that some teachers do this to avoid having to provide their students with more material. 3-4 breaths out and the same returning is ample IMO.

Total relaxation while performing dynamic movements is an oxymoron. One wants to move with a minimum of tension in muscles and tendons not assisting the movement for efficiency (like relaxing the shoulders, as Drew mentioned), but the movements you can perform without a muscle contraction are rather limited. The best way to relax a muscle is often to tense it first, per PNF.

Many athletic disciplines have developed sophisticated approaches to incorporating breath with movement and body alignment for maximum efficiency and effectiveness. This is what IMO we should be trying do in TCMA. Good health per se comes from a wide variety of good lifestyle choices, not just unusual breathing patterns accompanied with unusual body movements. A lot of KF guys died young, whereas Helio Gracie is still kicking.

In my experience, Xingyi claims the most precise targeted effects on the body via movement, breathing and alignment. Each of the five element and animal movements is meant to activate a specific set of nerves emanating from the cervical and thoracic spine, and this is meant to affect the corresponding organ associated with the TCM element, etc, with which it correlates.

We also had a set of five movement and breathing drills my Xingyi teacher called "Taoist Yoga", which we did daily prior to 36 macrocosmic/microcosmic orbit breath cycles taken while sitting in seiza (kneeling) on a hardwood floor. My feet still hurt just thinking about it.

My teacher at that time was one of the first Gwailos to qualify as an acupuncturist in Taiwan and HK, as well as his MA qualifications, which for Xingyi and BaGua came from Hung I Hsiang and Wang Shu-Chin, both mentioned at length in Robert W Smith's "Chinese Boxing: Masters and Methods". My teacher had a wealth of knowledge in these areas. Like too many others, he liked to play games with his students about this stuff (some have pulled the wool over their own eyes as well as their students, but that's another story).

His personal life was a train wreck with two failed marriages and four kids behind him, and then stealing his business partner's wife from under his nose.

I lived this stuff for over five years, with meditation, etc. thrown in. I was healthy, but I wouldn't say unusually so - I went on some weird diets, and did some other questionable health practices which were prejudicial IMO. Basically, if anything extraordinary was going to happen to me as a result, it would have in this time. And my own personal life was seriously out of balance also.

Diminishing returns eventually kicked in. My next foray into MA was looking for effectiveness not dogma.

As we are told constantly with scams, "if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is."

When i do this action (huen rolling from tan to Kuen) my elbow is straight, Why ? to isolate the wrist for huen Sau giving it a better range of motion trianing my inch power in the wrist more so than if my elbow was bent slightly.

We do a tight Huen with the wrist isolated in Chum Kil, but a wider Huen incorporating the elbow and shoulder as well in SLT. I see value in isolating the wrist to get the action correct - a lot of beginners seem to find this difficult - but do it in concert with the other joints most of the time as incorporating more joints leads to increased movement efficiency.

We used to do another SLT with the isolated wrist before learning this version, but dropped that a while ago. I'm wondering now if that was a bad idea.

My view on SLT is far removed from a Chi Gong (sp?) exercise. and i can still be very soft if you touch hands with me.

Same here. If total relaxation is my goal, I'll jump in a hot tub.

[HardWork8]

Toby had posted......


Life is about balance and so to is anything you do IMO. But a balance between what depends on the thing your doing. We are doing Kung Fu so its mainly physical.

To fully relax is to cut off your nose despite your face IMO. So i agree with toby somewhat.

One thing about that clip i noticed is, from my POV his body mechanics suffer as a result of trying to relax.
As an example - after the center punch most lineages turn to Tan Sau then roll that action into a fist via huen sau and take it back.. "huen sau sau kuen"

When i do this action (huen rolling from tan to Kuen) my elbow is straight, Why ? to isolate the wrist for huen Sau giving it a better range of motion trianing my inch power in the wrist more so than if my elbow was bent slightly.

Try and feel with elbow bent then elbow straight. Isolating the wrist improves the training of the action IME.
Now in the clip his relaxed elbow doesnt isolate the wrist so the heun isnt as effective in improving power dexterity etc etc.
Now perhaps hes focused on just the relaxation and his explosive power but thats to the detriment of improving his inch power or wrist force which is fairly important in my VT.

So with that example in mind, which applies to other actions i saw in the clip to.... relaxing is fine but one needs to know how much relaxation to have and how that affects other atributes of your training...ESPECIALLY IN THE FORMS.

He may not be concerned with isolating the wrist which is his perogitive but looking at clips of others and trying to make it work for you can be a hit and miss affair IMO. More than likely you may have differnt priorities.

For me, im about body mechanics and trainnig muscles and tendons to work together with my VT techs, so im relaxed in ways seperate to whats shown....i have my own version of balance between relaxation and body mechanics based on what im trying to accomplish physically.

IMHO one common example of using relaxation in the forms seen today is in CK.

Some schools in the second section turing with Lan sau then turning back to middle Bong etc. some pull lan Sau and then turn straight from the Lan into Bong.
Others lower the hands from Lan into a crossed wrist type position around the waist then turn the horse and into the middle Bong.

When i noticed the changes or difference to how i was taught years ago i asked my teacher and he had told me his teacher Lok Yiu had made that change in the form (for our lineage anyway) for two reasons. One of which was relaxing the shoulders after than Lan Sau.. the other was to help emphasise the elbow force which is more apparent when turning into bong with the hands coming from a lowered waist position.

So depending on your purpose relaxing is fine just be aware of its downstream effect on your habbit actions and behaviour of body mechanics.

I'll just say interesting opinions and approach.

My view on SLT is far removed from a Chi Gong (sp?) exercise. and i can still be very soft if you touch hands with me.

And that is where many of the externalists misunderstand "softness", where one is soft and relaxed yet "heavy" and without floppiness. I am afraid that the only way an externalist is going to understand, is by being shown by a sifu, a REAL sifu I might add.

[Liddel]

- a lot of beginners seem to find this difficult - but do it in concert with the other joints most of the time as incorporating more joints leads to increased movement efficiency.

I totally agree Andrew newbies do find it tough., our view is that its better to get it right in the beggining to forge habit, so begginers can have a rough time at our school.
Our approach is very step by step, more so than other schools ive visited and the incorporating of more joints is slowly introduced. mainly in touching hands parts of VT which we teach before CK. Which is when you put the SLT actions on the CK horse for the whole body experience.

I'll just say interesting opinions and approach.

I like to use the word - pragmatic.

And that is where many of the externalists misunderstand "softness", where one is soft and relaxed yet "heavy" and without floppiness. I am afraid that the only way an externalist is going to understand, is by being shown by a sifu, a REAL sifu I might add.

This infers my Sifu isnt a real Sifu. LOL .crack up

Dont think that because one doesnt see SLT or any of the forms for specifically training chi kung, they cant hold the attributes that youd get from doing so.

I am very much

soft and relaxed yet "heavy" and without floppiness

but FOR ME its born out of doing the actions in a fighting context not from specific breathing during the forms....its from doing !

Chi Dan Sau Poon Sau Gor Sau Luk Sao... fight.

DREW

[HardWork8]

This infers my Sifu isnt a real Sifu. LOL .crack up

Maybe he isn't or maybe he is or just maybe he is somewhat limited in whatever he teaches. Maybe he teaches the external aspects very well? Who knows.

All I know is that the internals are present in all kung fu and they are balanced with the external aspects of each given style by design.
If one aspect is not taught, then THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG SOMEWHERE!

Dont think that because one doesnt see SLT or any of the forms for specifically training chi kung, they cant hold the attributes that youd get from doing so.

You can only get the attributes of internal training from internal training, which by the way, is not solely limited to breathing exercises!

I am very much but FOR ME its born out of doing the actions in a fighting context not from specific breathing during the forms....its from doing !

Don't assume that we don't practise the actions in a FIGHTING CONTEXT. The forms training is just one aspect (important)of the internals and don't make the mistake of thinking that the internals are only about the breathing exercises!

Chi Dan Sau Poon Sau Gor Sau Luk Sao... fight.

So do we and so do other traditional schools but we also do the internals. Why do you think that is the case?

[Liddel]

You can only get the attributes of internal training from internal training

Ok

which by the way, is not solely limited to breathing exercises!

I had mentioned that myself in the last thread so we're lost in translation...

For the sake of the discussion please let me know what you consider internal training, meaning the main specific methods and what results they yeild compared to someone not having internal training...(dont worry about breathing cause we already touched on that)

Then perhaps ill get a better understanding of what exactly you mean by internal...

DREW

[bennyvt]

No we dont use it as Qi gung. The main idea is that by moving slowly you learn what contstant forward pressure is. It also teaches the most important thing in a fight, will power. To stand for about an hour take alot of mind control whiich will win fights. Wong shun leung , yip man and barry Lee all did hour forms.
No I dont do it in class as it only goes for 2 hours, we do a quick one (15mins) then check each others form. I do it on my own as I dont have a class that goes all day. I normally do it at work as I work as a security gaurd doing patrols every hour so I have the time.
Wong had a very dim veiw of "internal" arts, he was hit with a dim mak in a fight and lived for another 20years, left people when he was young because they used used qi as a way of making claims and trying to look good.
Long forms make better stances, more control, learn to relax what you need and tense others, mind over matter and many more.

[HardWork8]

No we dont use it as Qi gung. The main idea is that by moving slowly you learn what contstant forward pressure is. It also teaches the most important thing in a fight, will power. To stand for about an hour take alot of mind control whiich will win fights. Wong shun leung , yip man and barry Lee all did hour forms.

You have just mentioned some internal elements there, even if they are not part of deep internal training. If that is how you train then fair enough and it is good training.

We do the long version of the Siu Lim Tao and tend to concentrate a lot on the breathing.

Wong had a very dim veiw of "internal" arts,

His view of the internals is very well known.

he was hit with a dim mak in a fight and lived for another 20years,

And then he died suddenly! Umm, I wonder...........Maybe it was a very,very,very delayed death touch???

Seriously though, a lot of people claim a lot of things about kung fu. The fact is just because who Dimmaked him didn't kill him doesn't mean that such techniques don't exist and that Internal training is bad.

There are a lot of crooks in the external side of the martial arts as well. It does not mean that these martial arts are bad!

left people when he was young because they used used qi as a way of making claims and trying to look good.

A lot of people who practise external MA's claim to teach the ultimate selfdefense techniques as well. Many of these "functional" martial artists are crooks as well. That does not mean that all such martial artists are con men.

Long forms make better stances, more control, learn to relax what you need and tense others, mind over matter and many more.

You are correct, but there are forms that have internal aspects that are not always taught, because sometimes they are considered "treasures" of a given system.

However, and because of the former fact, many sifus do not know of their existance and hence do not give such aspects the "respect" that they deserve. By the way, I am not talking about Wing Chun necessarily as this type of "richness" more often exists in the major internal styles, such as Hsing I, Tai Chi and others.

[HardWork8]

For the sake of the discussion please let me know what you consider internal training, meaning the main specific methods and what results they yeild compared to someone not having internal training...(dont worry about breathing cause we already touched on that)

I am not going to go into specifics or "methods" as those are kept within the school, but I will tell you that the "non breathing" exercises involve the development and training of tendons for combat application.

This is considered internal as well! And by the way, we do this kind of training more in my non Wing Chun school. But the fact is that there is more to internals than just breathing exercises.

Then perhaps ill get a better understanding

You have plenty to work on there.

of what exactly you mean by internal...

The more correct way would be to say "of what the original masters of particular styles of kung fu meant by internal." As these are not concepts invented by me. I don't invent styles, even if it seems to be the fashion nowadays!

[anerlich]

From another site:

In the 1950's, Chang Tung Sheng, grandmaster of the Pao Ting Chinese wrestling system, national free sparring champion of China and undefeated in all challenges (and would remain so the rest of his life!) gave an interview in a Chinese news paper. He said that for years, he had heard people say that wrestling was not effective because to get that close, you could be subject to the fabled death touch of dim mak!

Chang found the comment amusing because he said that in all his years of fighting, it had never happened. It had never happened even when fighting so called experts at Dim Mak. In a nut shell, Chang said two more things. First, that if he could get close to you, he could hurt you! (It was the truth, pure and simple and if you've ever seen tapes of the 70 year old Chang tossing people you'd understand completely). Second, he said the whole Dim Mak thing was created by NON FIGHTERS to avoid fighting, keep their students and take money from other non fighters.

Chang then issued a very public challenge with money involved for anyone to Dim mak him. For another 30 plus years (the rest of his life) it never happened.

[anerlich]

There are as many different definitions of "internal" as there are people claiming to know something along these lines.

Some see it as nothing omre than correct alignment and structure for transmission of power, or its absorbtion/dissipation.

My Xingyi instructor saw it as movements and practices which adhere to the principles of TCM - Xingyi is based on five element theory, BaGua on the 8 trigrams, taiji on Yin and Yang. He claimed that for this reason styles other than these three cannot be internal. I have seen arguments that the 5 elements can be mapped onto WC movements, and therefore WC can be internal, but IMO the arguments are unconvincing.

Performance in any physical endeavour has to comply with the laws of physics and biomechanics first and foremost, as much as some seem to claim and wish it to be otherwise.

There seems to be an opinion helde by some that Iron Palm training is closely related to Qigong. Not really. Iron Palm, from what I've seen from several sources, involves striking bags and surfaces of varying hardness at varying intensities, coupled with the external application of herbal medicines to assist recovery and achieve the desired effect. Other than the herbs, the recipes for which are usually jealously guarded (meaning there is little comparison of efficacy and thus no guarantee of it, and concepts such as scientific testing and double blind trials an utter pipe dream), there is little mystery here, your body is adapting to imposed demands.

There is plenty of material on point hitting and the alleged affects thereof on the web - Erle Motaigue's site has a huge amount of stuff, some of which stretches credibility. Renzo and Carlos Gracie Jr were dead keen to fight him during an Australian visit some years ago after he insulted Gracie Jiu Jitsu in a mag article, but he surprisingly declined.

William Cheung does, or used to do, a seminar on dim mak. Like many, I have a copy of Yip Man's alleged notes on the subject. After the seminar, he basically says unless you can actually fight without it, it's a waste of time, and if you can fight without it, then its value is still questionable.

Nothing there you won't find in a basic TCM seminar (notes in my .sig)

[Liddel]

Interesting post Andrew thanks for the info...

Hardwork8 - i didnt ask because i have no clue of the internals i asked to get your perspective which you cant offer cause of your secret school policies LOL

Just like who you train under and the 'other style' you train in....ive seen the miriad of threads addressing your BS...
Just thought we could take a step in the right direction, but hey come to a forum to announce you cant announce $ h i t.. WTF LOL

First sign of a trolling keyboard warrior. Its not like i could steal your techs from a worded description...you said earlier you need actuall instruction from a competent master, which i agree with from my own personal experience...

My Sifu is of the same opinion as myself that Dim Mak isnt that effective in a fight.... and as far a 'death touch'.... its legend. Which to me says a lot because as well as being a VT sifu he is a Sifu of Caligraphy and chinesse medicine...so he has a valid opinion in this area....

DREW

[couch]

I am not going to go into specifics or "methods" as those are kept within the school, but I will tell you that the "non breathing" exercises involve the development and training of tendons for combat application.

This is considered internal as well! And by the way, we do this kind of training more in my non Wing Chun school. But the fact is that there is more to internals than just breathing exercises.


You have plenty to work on there.



The more correct way would be to say "of what the original masters of particular styles of kung fu meant by internal." As these are not concepts invented by me. I don't invent styles, even if it seems to be the fashion nowadays!

You're a freaking piece of work. You come off to Drew like he has 'plenty to work on?' (I know he can defend himself, but you're ridiculous). And then he asks you a legitimate question about what YOU mean about training internals and you completely dodge the question.

Answer the questions and don't patronize the people on the forums that are actually putting in work - or go elsewhere.

[Toby]

interesting; what caused you to decide to do so on your own (just wondering about your process in that regard)?

I was taught a version of SLT in class with the in/in, out/out method and that was all well and good, I trained that way for a while. Then a couple of years ago we were working on a few things where inhaling reverse-breathing style initiates movement, so one day I found myself incorporating that into that section of SLT and it felt good. I asked my teacher about it and he said fine, if that felt right and I got the right mechanics happening. He then went on to tell me about the natural, no-rhythm approach. Nowadays I could breathe in or out in that section of SLT and both would feel fine since I've spent time on both. I will say that I very much find myself synchronising all my form movements with breathing, can't/won't/don't do the natural thing at all.

[Liddel]

Clutching at straws 'man'.