The ultimatel body method?

[johnwang]

I like this "body method" very much. It's much easier to discuss "body method" if we can reference to a clip.

[willie]

I like this "body method" very much. It's much easier to discuss "body method" if we can reference to a clip.

That's a nice move.

[Bao]

Some people want to be slim and 'fit', some want good grappling or striking, some want good movement, some want good self defense, some want high Cardio thresholds, some want 'freedom', some want tradition and lineage ..... The superior method for each of these considerations will often be a different approach and a different method.

...

So i guess, IMO, the answer is definitely 'Its all about whats superior FOR YOU'.

Nice post.
I Saw your signature, the quote from Ido Portal. I guess this is what's it's all about, finding your own voice, regardless what you do and make the method your own property. Not copy a teacher or someone else, not trying to be something you are not. Finding your very own potential and using your own body in the best way for it. And this goes for everything you do, regardless what your aim is with a certain method. Then you can achieve a sense of freedom of movement and freedom in your body. I guess that fighting against yourself or fighting your own body is something you need to let go of, if you really want to achieve freedom.

[middleway]

Thanks Bao, I completely agree

Which brings the interesting point - is the IMA dantien-driven method always the best regardless of what you're doing"? I believe that the people who are big on 'internals' feel so.

No I can say with certainty it is NOT always the best method regardless of what your doing .... and I can demonstrate so with the most Elite IP people in the world within 30 minutes, maybe even 5 minutes for some.

thanks
Chris.

[GrahamB]

Just as I was reading this, this post appeared in my Facebook feed - lol It seemed relevant:
From Steve Morris:

Old Article ...Down in Horsham I always used to tell my students that sometimes you have to interconnect like wet spaghetti, sometimes like an iron bar, and sometimes like a kid's superball that bounces all over the place. Different situations require different responses, different levels of tonus, recruitment, and joint angular changes in alignment, sequence, rate and timing. There's no such thing as one standard interconnectivity.

People in tai chi, aikido, and many other traditional martial arts place great emphasis on this idea of connectivity, but they often do so in a very abstract way. The creation of this concept of connectivity becomes more important than the function that the connectivity is meant to support; i.e., punching, kicking, grappling, etc. within a live, non-compliant exchange.

Sure, it would be tempting to conclude that there is such a thing as one interconnectivity, and that it can be honed and perfected within a safe environment against compliant training partners as we see in Tai Chi and aikido demonstrations. But such connectivity has been built specifically for that controlled environment with its limited problems, and it does not translate to the chaos of a fight. If it did, the fight would look more like Tai Chi.

So how do you achieve a connectivity that's going to work for you? First of all, get rid of all the 'move from your centre' mumbo jumbo shit. Don't get caught up in the how, get caught up in what you're trying to do.

So I would say, rather than looking for a particular exercise that's going to connect up your body, the answer is that it's your kinesthetic perception of the body in action which needs to be built.

Now here's a caveat about kinesthetic perception, and it's a problem that's rife throughout the martial arts: those who engage in this 'watching of the body in action' often get caught up in the gratification of the movement. It's almost like masturbation. You get people comparing sensations, and this posing and posturing and comparing notes about the flow of the chi, it can become quite obscene!

Go to the fight. Whatever mythos the martial arts might promulgate, the fact is that a fight is a fight....

[RobP2]

Boom!

[Michael Babin]

Middleway's post on page 2 and Steve Morris's quote says it all on this topic as far as my opinion goes.

I will add that connectivity through a competent method seems essential to me for most practitioners in the early years. Granted I only taught dozens of serious martial taiji and bagua students compared to the hundreds of people that I have taught solo form to since 1985 but in both groups the hardest thing was usually to get people to really connect their feet to their hands in a meaningful way. Sometimes those who said they had a lot of recreational martial arts experience were those who had the most trouble "getting connected".

In the end, you should start by learning to connect yourself in better patterns and then learn how to take those patterns apart in yourself [and others, if you want competence at any of the aspects of martial activity. It's not "one size fits all"].

[D_Glenn]

There's a difference between moving with or moving from the Lower Dantian, which most people don't know or understand because they're trying to sync everything up in the wrong way. But it's still just movement or adding more of your body weight into something.

Or you can use the segmented way of moving your body.

But what is not being learned is how to do the movement that jolts what's cultivated inside the Lower Dantian. But the movement isn't even the important part, necessary yes, but what's important is the Daoist or Buddhist cultivation practices that actually fills up the Lower Dantian.

People brag about not-being thrown, or being immovable. That's low-level skill. "Fine. Don't move, it'll just make my doing a 'Zhan' (Serrating) strike easier and more effective."

External shapes are not in danger of being lost. It's the Internal Jins, Basic Jindao (Jin paths) lead to more and more variations, but the saying "You have to be hit, in order to learn CIMA." is not about being punched hard, or building up the body by smashing limbs, it's that you have to feel the internal jins, and then you gradually learn how to shape them, but you can't even recreate them if you don't know the mechanism that fires off the internal (the trigger), and you won't have anything to play with if you don't do the cultivation exercises (storing up ammo). With a good CIMA teacher the hitting part is done 10%, but the Internal Jin still comes in to your body, and the teacher says that is 'Zhan'. It's physical yet also conceptual. It's a Xing-Yi (shape made by Yi).

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[littlepanda]

External shapes are not in danger of being lost. It's the Internal Jins, Basic Jindao (Jin paths) lead to more and more variations, but the saying "You have to be hit, in order to learn CIMA." is not about being punched hard, or building up the body by smashing limbs, it's that you have to feel the internal jins, and then you gradually learn how to shape them, but you can't even recreate them if you don't know the mechanism that fires off the internal (the trigger), and you won't have anything to play with if you don't do the cultivation exercises (storing up ammo). With a good CIMA teacher the hitting part is done 10%, but the Internal Jin still comes in to your body, and the teacher says that is 'Zhan'. It's physical yet also conceptual. It's a Xing-Yi (shape made by Yi).

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+1


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[marvin8]

Is there any video showing the internal “body method” being used in competition or real fight, not a demonstration? There are many videos of trained athletes' KO’s, ippons, submissions, etc.

How would internal "body method" help improve these athletes’ body method and outcomes?

[johnwang]

Is there any video showing the internal “body method” being used in competition or real fight, not a demonstration? There are many videos of trained athletes' KO’s, ippons, submissions, etc.

How would internal "body method" help improve these athletes’ body method and outcomes?

That is the question that I have tried to asked in the past 20 years in this forum.

1. What should "internal body method" look like when you apply "hip throw" or "single leg"? Can someone just put up a "demo" clip?
2. Why do you need "internal body method" if you only care about "heath" and you don't care about "combat"?

[Bao]

How would internal "body method" help improve these athletes’ body method and outcomes?

A lot of artists from various external styles including boxers and MMA people practice tai chi because they believe it makes them relax better, coordinate their movements better and improves their reaction time and their speed. If I remember correctly even John Wang practice Tai Chi.

[amor]

Or you can use the segmented way of moving your body.



.

There's a difference between moving with or moving from the Lower Dantian, which most people don't know or understand because they're trying to sync everything up in the wrong way. But it's still just movement or adding more of your body weight into something.

Interesting note, I take the 'moving with' usually as when beginners move to co-ordinate their 4 points (2 kua's, shoulders nest) because they have no perception of the lower dantien, so you can't really generate much power this way even if you do cultivate somewhat. You would just be moving in a 'semi-connected'
manner but not like a hydraulic-system system that typifies moving from the lower dantien and moving in a centered manner (baihui and huiyin are mostly in alignment).

External shapes are not in danger of being lost. It's the Internal Jins, Basic Jindao (Jin paths) lead to more and more variations, but the saying "You have to be hit, in order to learn CIMA." is not about being punched hard, or building up the body by smashing limbs, it's that you have to feel the internal jins, and then you gradually learn how to shape them, but you can't even recreate them if you don't know the mechanism that fires off the internal (the trigger), and you won't have anything to play with if you don't do the cultivation exercises (storing up ammo). With a good CIMA teacher the hitting part is done 10%, but the Internal Jin still comes in to your body, and the teacher says that is 'Zhan'. It's physical yet also conceptual. It's a Xing-Yi (shape made by Yi).

Zhan is from the crab system?

[amor]

Oh boy.
For starters you have
1. Three different ways to use heaven/earth/man to make stability and power.

2. Using the back line- united but without dantian
3. Using the body in two distinct ways that are different from each other (I won't discuss, how) that both make power but lack the other type of movement.
4 using dantian driven movement in conjunction with the above.
Then...
4. Another way that uses any of the three heaven/earth/ man models combining two different uses from example #3 along with dantian.
5. Using them with different external manifestations

And this is just fast while I am having family visiting.

Interesting categorization.

Out of all the methods you've listed, I wonder how you would rank them in terms of power and sophistication? And are there some that are better suited than the others for specific purposes?

Sorry I know this wasn't for me but I'll have a go partially anyway. The 'uniting the back line' thing is, I think, typical of the uechi-ryu variants of japanese hard styles. Achieveing this 'uniting the back line' is a pretty big achievement in itself but then one wonders why anyone would stop here because this is the pre-requisite for getting on to the dantien development stage where it's time to work the yin fascia even more. My guess is that the practitioners would stop here because they get used to a hard style of fighting and these guys did a lot of the punching iron type stuff so it was in grained into their psyche to be 'hard' all the way even though they had just begun to master the initial benefits of softness but weren't able/didn't want to carry on with it.

[amor]

[quote="johnwang"]I like this "body method" very much. It's much easier to discuss "body method" if we can reference to a clip.

John I want to ask you when you get into a stance should you put more weight on front leg or more on back. My old kung-fu teacher said you should put more weight on the front leg (that is facing your opponent) in case they decide to kick you leg then they can't knock you over or break your knee. But this seems wrong to me now because hard meets hard - its not good - for your leg.
I say the leg facing opponent should be the relaxed leg and then if your opponent tries to break it with a swift kick it will break less than if you were to put significant weight on it.
What do you say?