The Mechanics of IP

[lazyboxer]

lazyboxer,

Thank you as well for taking the time to provide insight into the matter. This thread has been the single most useful on the entire forum for me in terms of providing insight into the kind of thing Dan is teaching. Further, it has shed some light on some of the crucial similarities that all truly high quality internal arts practices include. I, too, was taught and still practice/teach a number of methods like the one jjy has shown, including one that is more or less the very same practice. The way I was taught, even basic circle walking is a continuous exercise in manifesting the Yin/Yang pump, heavy/light, empty/full, kou/bai, up/down, left/right, etc. Done strictly, I get more internal work out of one trip around the circle than a lot of guys get in an hour of what is typically shown as circle walking. In fact, I can work up a sweat after just one trip each way.

Bagua certainly doesn't teach or promote a strict squaring of the hips and shoulders in a single plane, and such would violate the Cross the Great River principle for the art whenever kou or bai are being employed, but perhaps I have misunderstood or misread what you meant. For reasons I outlined previously, I'm certainly not a fan of extreme spinal rotation regardless, nor extreme hip pronation or supination for similar reasons. Beside the potential risk of injury in some cases, the biomechanics are such that compound movements are almost always at their structurally strongest when the involved joints are kept within the middle of their ranges of motion, and thus maintaining the principle of keeping to the middle way.

Thanks again for the very specific technical discussion. We may be enjoying a moment of unusually close agreement here, but even when we disagree we may still find some very fascinating and useful exchanges of perspectives and information.

Chris,

I still have my eye on the ball, and will attempt to respond more fully later. I'm frantically busy right now, and don't want to give anything less than the clear and considered response this topic deserves.

For the moment, I'll simply say that my comments about the square hip/ shoulder configuration were highly contextualized (!), and as such easily misinterpreted. It's to do with a specific type of power development and expression. One can, of course, also move shoulders and hips in opposition, in parallel, or even one at a time while the other remains immobile. There are also differences in cadence, tempo, intensity and so on. Even why you train will have a bearing on the outcome.

[Chris McKinley]

No problem, man. I'd rather see quality than quantity anyway, so take your time.

For the moment, I'll simply say that my comments about the square hip/ shoulder configuration were highly contextualized (!), and as such easily misinterpreted.

Kinda figured it was something like that. I look forward to more discussion however it goes.

[jjy5016]

My logic for not twisting (wringing) the spine comes from wanting to keep from injury. Having the shoulders and hips going in different directions can get one injured quite seriously if an opponent releases at that moment. But perhaps there is a reason and I'd certainly like to hear arguments for and against.

Here's another bit that factors into my mechanics. Sinking the qi, reverse breathing or whatever one will call it. The physical action is to drop the diaphragm down into the cavity below while pulling up on the per1nium thus creating pressure in the abdomen which pushes out like a tire around the belt area (under the floating ribs and especially at the ming men point). When I learned how to do it I was told that it could add 200lbs of pressure to my strikes.

Good day all.

small John

[GrahamB]

jjy5016 - There are many things to be gained by twisting the spine in the horizontal plane. After a lot of years of Tai Chi I met my XingYi teacher and he introduced me to the concept of moving the hips and shoulders in opposite directions to each other, yet still in harmony (we are not talking about gross movements here - we're talking about small internal adjustments) - at first it seemed totally wrong and strange (from my Tai Chi perspective), but after practicing the concept using Beng it began to make sense - that was a little window into a whole new world for me. This "Dragon Body" concept ran so deep through his XingYi that it connected everything together - power generation, defence, footwork, taking really hard blows without collapsing - it all tied together as part of one complete system. Perhaps looking at it in isolation is difficult - would be hard to 'get it' from that.

One thing that helped me understand was the bow analogy - if you draw a bow it has potential energy. Without being drawn there's no potential energy. If you put the twist into the spine you are doing the same thing as drawing the bow - or cocking your hand back ready to punch - the potential energy is there and you can release it into the fist without having to withdraw the first from its position or wind it up somehow. It's an invisible 'wind up' of power that your opponent can't see. And it's very quick and sudden to release. But like I said, that's just one element of it - it ties in to how you move, how you spiral in a linking sequence, how you thread power throughout the body. In his system the different animals used this Dragon Body in different ways as well - Horse and Bear not so much, Dragon and Snake made the most use of it, obviously and all sorts of varieties in between. If you look at Yi Quan from a XingYi animals perspective it looks very 'Bear like' and perhaps therefore the Dragon Body was not needed/used much and dropped out of favour (total speculation on my part there and not a theory I would like to get involved in arguing).

From a conventional martial arts point of view you could look at it and say "why are you breaking the power at the waist?" because that's what it looks like when you're used to seeing the hip and shoulder turn in the same direction together (as they do in most martial arts from Tai Chi to Karate and in some styles of XingYi too).

Anyway, hope my rambling is of some use.

[Aged Tiger]

Graham,

I was taught the same way, using slight opposites to balance a movement. If you think about it, animals do the same thing. (Those who walk on all four anyway), shoulders and hips move in opposite directions. Otherwise, they would fall over....

Good post!

[jjy5016]

Bending the spine side to side is one thing. I also do this. But I can't see the advantage inhaving the shoulders and hips going in opposite directions. Doesn't make sense to me. If I want to hit someone with my right fist then my right shoulder would have to turn towards my opponent. Why would I want to turn my hips in the opposite direction? If the force I'm generating is supposed to come from the ground up and get directed through the waist then turning my hips in an opposite direction seems to be contrary to what my goal is.

Dragon's body as I know it does not involve twisting the upper and lower spine in different directions. It is opening and closing or straightening and curving.

I don't have to cock my hand back to punch using the spine as I do.


Still not convinced gentlemen. But am interested.

[GrahamB]

Thanks Aged Tiger.

Humans do when walking too.

[GrahamB]

Bending the spine side to side is one thing. I also do this. But I can't see the advantage inhaving the shoulders and hips going in opposite directions. Doesn't make sense to me. If I want to hit someone with my right fist then my right shoulder would have to turn towards my opponent. Why would I want to turn my hips in the opposite direction? If the force I'm generating is supposed to come from the ground up and get directed through the waist then turning my hips in an opposite direction seems to be contrary to what my goal is.

Dragon's body as I know it does not involve twisting the upper and lower spine in different directions. It is opening and closing or straightening and curving.

I don't have to cock my hand back to punch using the spine as I do.


Still not convinced gentlemen. But am interested.

Hi,

I think that in your post you have made a lot of assumptions about internal arts, and that is fine. Most people have these natural assumptions and that is fine. I did too once. I also wouldn't expect you to be convinced by some words on a discussion forum. My Xingyi teacher only explained this concept to me after he had hit me with a kind if power I had never experienced before. It's hard to describe in words but it was like he just put out his hand towards me in a fist shape and it was like he'd run me through with a sword. After that I wanted to listen I'd been hit a lot by my tai chi teacher before and it always felt like effortless power coming from the ground. This was different - it was Xingyi power and it came from the body not the ground. I later learned how to do it and it's true - it comes from the Dragon Body, the twist of the spine, not so much the ground.

In this method when you punch with your right fist your right shoulder is forward, but it's your left hip that is urging forward not your right, so the twist is always there ready for the next strike. I'm trying to think of ways to explain it in words - think of a dog when it's shaking water out of its fur - its power is not coming from the ground but from the twisting of the spine with counter rotation of hips and shoulders.

I have found Xingyi to be very different to what I thought it was, and that to really grasp the little of its essence that I have i have found it was necessary to unlearn a lot of what I thought was 'common sense' martial art knowledge.

Hope that sheds some more light on it.

G

[Chris McKinley]

Graham,

Regarding the support muscles of the spine and how they are used in the IMA, I wrote previously in this thread: "The real point to using those muscles is the great degree of torque that can be generated for outgoing, not incoming, force. It's an additive component, not a stand-alone parlor trick."

Here's a response to jjy in my Realistic Combat Applications of IP thread that also covers it:

jjy,

Chris when you speak of spinal torque it makes me think of a horizontal movement of the spine instead of the vertical stretch.



Yeah, that's because it's mostly about generating large amounts of torque, with sections of the spine twisting slightly in opposite directions, and only a small amount from a change in the length of the spine. The spine's length can physically only be altered by flattening the curves of the thoracic and lumbar sections, causing momentary lordosis and kyphosis of those sections, respectively. You create that effect by thrusting your chest out and flattening your lower back simultaneously. The force generated from doing so is noticeable, but not as much as that which is generated in the form of torque by the transverse twisting of different sections by the multifidae and other muscles. The latter is exactly the same motion seen when dogs shake water off their bodies, though dogs have a much greater natural and conscious control over the motion than humans.

And a relevant excerpt from a response to paranoidandroid in the It has to be shown thread:

It is quite often the case that in the pursuit of a full and complete understanding of the facts of what's happening in a kinesiological analysis, it's often necessary to get down to the nitty gritty of very numerous, very specific, and very technical terms for things, just to make sure that everything is being covered thoroughly and accurately. However, once everybody is on-board with their understanding of all that, it's often the case that you can all then go back to using a much simpler and more colloquial set of layman's terms for things from that point onward. For instance, I can (and have on more than one occasion) give a precise, detailed, and technically and scientifically accurate description of exactly what happens in generating spinal torque for hidden short power in the internal arts, from the muscles and bones involved, the force chains, all the way up to how the specific motor cortex engrams are formed and reinforced physiologically. Sometimes such an exhaustively detailed description is necessary if a bunch of folks are arguing over what they think is happening and some of them are getting it all wrong.

However, once I've provided that crushingly boring description, and I've made sure that everyone in the conversation is now fully up to speed, I can usually simply refer to the whole shebang as "the dog shake" from then on and they'll all get it.

[jjy5016]

Not assuming anything about the internal arts Graham. It seems that you're making assumptions as to my level of experience in them.

It's how I was taught. Not only taught but yelled at for not doing it right, quite often. The gentleman who taught me was schooled in yiquan and hsing yi by 2 of the best fighters in their time and I'm quite comfortable with his hows and whys.
And yes the power comes from the body but one still has to use the leverage of the ground for support.

If one's kua is open enough he need not push forward the opposite hip in preparation for the next strike.

[GrahamB]

Jjy - it seems you have things pretty well figured out. I was just explaining a counter opinion, as requested. Feel free to reject it if you like. I'm not interested in who has the largest male member.

[jjy5016]

Graham I'm not interested in that either. You wrote that I'd made assumptions about the internal arts in my post. To me that's almost the same as saying that I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about. So let's just leave it alone.

A buddy of mine PM'd this to me and apparently he's thinking along the same lines as "youz gize" Leads me to believe that this is something I'm going to have to see and feel.

Hi John,

It'xxxxxxxXXX! I saw you posting in the "mechanics of IP" thread, for once it looks like there's actually some positive discussion on this damned site.

I don't qualify for the elite Distillery section, but here are some thoughts from the material I've picked up from the Shang-style xingyi for your consideration.

- The dragon-body is also interpreted as a twisting in this branch of xingyi.
- He also showed me a not-public version of dragon-body, where the spine shifts around the thoracic portion.
- My current interpretation is that the twist is a transition position before the final strike with full force delivery. If you think of a typical and simplified progression of a Piquan strike (we call it Eagle Snatch but same difference):
1) Kua/hips and shoulders are relatively square with each other and generally squarely facing the opponent.
2) Kua/hips turn, shoulder does not turn immediately...this is the transitional dragon-body shape and the force is stored in this twist.
3) Release the twist and shoulder turns, force is released through arms.

Now the question is why would you want to delay the shoulder turn and potentially block or impede the force during the transition? I used to throw the discus and shotput in high school, and this was basically the way a throw worked. The torque "builds" on each other from the bottom up. Same thing with my previous experience in Olympic-style lifting. If you do a snatch/clean & jerk, you don't blow your wad in one movement. It was taught as two distinct phases: an initial push up from the legs with no arms at all, then suddenly add your shoulders/trapezius/arms into the finishing movement to get the bar as high as possible.

Now disclaimers...I haven't had a chance to verify any of this with the teacher...he's been in China for about 10 months now so I've been self-exploring his material. Just thought I'd add something for your personal consideration, that website is too full of asshats for my liking. I think the difference here is the definition of "whole body". With the technique you described, I feel the force from the spine directly transfers with the body being more or less a giant, one-piece force conduit. With the method I described, the attempt is to get the different body parts creating additive forces. Maybe that's a whole other thread...

When I run into him I'll ask for a demo.

[edededed]

Hi John,

Awesome information on this thread, thanks for that!

I am more interested (than the spine twisting part) in the making the tire around the belt area aspect - although I have learned (vaguely) some similar movements, I've no idea how to translate this into power... Such as, if I "inflate" that area, how does that affect my arms/hands?

As for the spine, I've no idea personally - I've not been taught to rotate the spine in my xingyi, but the "maodunzhuang" postures in yiquan do perhaps do the rotating in different directions thing (but of course in a static posture).

[DeusTrismegistus]

There are quite a few throws in shuai jiao that require active rotations of the spine and hips in opposite directions. I am not sure how this translates into a striking context but you can certainly generate power with opposite rotation.

[jjy5016]

"I am more interested (than the spine twisting part) in the making the tire around the belt area aspect - although I have learned (vaguely) some similar movements, I've no idea how to translate this into power... Such as, if I "inflate" that area, how does that affect my arms/hands?"

Hello Ed,

I wouldn't call it inflating the area, more like pressurizing it quickly. When I do it I feel a kind of expansion in my hip and shoulder joints. It seems to help put more force into a punch. Makes the floor in my house shake too. No stamping necessary. Don't get me wrong, it doesn't cause my belt area to bulge out like a tire but when I do it my lowerback expands noticeably. Sides and not much if any, at all.