When the time's right

[Bak Mei]

I've been playing with the HSing-I step for nearly 10 months. It had power, but inside I knew something wasn't right, the force was going up to much, instead of deeply out. Not a hop as a lot of people do when they are doing it bad, but still not right.

My master came back after being a way for a month and showed me one little thing and "Whola!", I have it now. It comes from the hip, not the knee. Not only does this now save my bad knee (he gave me material to fix that too) but now the force is penetraying and 100% linear.

Man, how important is a good teacher? A great system? The two go together I guess. It does in my case.

Happy New Year.

[Budokan]

The teacher is more important than the style, I think. No matter what style you choose to train in, (real styles, not commercial venues targeted towards overweight women and pink flames) if your instructor is crappy you won't get anything worthwhile out of it.

You are lucky to have such a welcome combination, especially with so many of the bad MA schools out there...

[scotty1]

You are really lucky. In my town we have two clubs. One does a lot of sparring, but its geared toward competition. Not much realistic applications, and the class is only an hour long. In fact its billed as Kung Fu/Kickboxing, so you get the idea.
The other is two hours long, lots of cool conditioning, realistic techs, but no bloody sparring, well, not enough anyway.

What a choice, huh? They're both different styles but seeing as I'm going travelling in May and I'm not going to be living here when I get back I try and go to both of them on alternate weeks. I'm not really getting into any particular style but I'm getting good base skills and fitness from both. When I get back, I'm probably going to go live in a city called Brighton, where I'll get into something properly.

[Bak Mei]

Believe me, I know how lucky I am. I spent a lot of time trying to find Sifu Chan Bong. The man is a genious, he sees things others miss, and he explains things well.

Just last night, with my knee problems, I told him I was swimming to try and drop some weight to help take preasure off my knee, this is what he said:

"Swimming is good. But you can only cut so many costs. Better to make more money."

How great is that. So now my knees are getting stronger, but I'm taking some weight off anyway. I'd rather fight at 190 then 210. I'll fight the bigger guy on the street, but why not have every advanatage going into "boughts".

Peace
Happy New Year
Ray

[NafAnal]

What hsing-i step do you mean bak mei? can u describe it?

[Bak Mei]

I believe the technical term is the chicken step. It's part of the Pat Kuen, they (my chinese brothers and sisters) keep calling it that, don't know if its spelt right. Its the part of the internal posture, San Ti. You kind of keep a nice pushing angle in your back leg (femur vertical to the ground, from knee to heel should have an agnle like this -- / -- but even steeper. The front leg has an angle like this -- \ -- but the knee is behind the heel so it does not colaspe.

This way you can push and pull with maximum power -- the potential for both is there (play with a wall and make believe tug a war). The step occurs when I step in and make contact with the attack, or just notice an attack and put my shield up (crossed double hands to cover fave and neck, back of hand facing out.

We make contact, my right with your right, my right is being supported also by my left. I maintain the shape but pull down and in using the shoulder, ALMOST like starting a lwanmower, the force used when cutting with a broadsword, a draw cut), as it clears awhole, I explode with the chicken step to drive through that opening, various hits can follow.

The hitting is easy, its opening and closing the door. The hands just create a whole, the driving step blasts thorugh it so the hit is delieverd with the force of your body.

Hard to explian, but you know what is up.