internal before external is a waste of time?

[I-mon]

for young practitioners, from what i've seen (obviously there is infinitely more that i haven't seen than what i have seen), judo would be excellent; gymnastics with a good teacher. swimming + track and field; wrestling in america or europe or india (not much going round in new zealand when i grew up); certainly gjj or bjj if there's a good teacher; capoeira's tops if it's available (combination of music, singing, dancing, rhythm, play, relaxation, spontaneity etc)...feldenkrais stuff is the best I've seen for understanding how posture and movement should naturally develop during infancy and childhood so really if the parent's were doing that and had a good idea of how it works then they could get out of the way and let their children develop into naturally mobile and strong humans without all these messy developmental postural imbalances that most of us have and unknowingly teach our kids to have.

[johnwang]

Why is the taiji form a waste of time for most people? because they have no foundation, weak legs, poor posture, tension everywhere, and can't fight,

I have seen many Taiji guys has great foundation, strong legs, excellent posture, extream Sung. The only problem is "they can't fight". The reason that they can't fight just simply because they have not fought enough. Their foundation may be excellent but their fighting experience is still "green".

[onyomi]

My teacher was very keen on working basics the first year.

My only concern is "how much basic is enough?" I like to teach application first and then enhance the basic later. Even today, I'm still working on my own basic enhancement. I don't see anything wrong to reverse the order.

I agree very much with this. You can always work more on your basic structure, strength, conditioning, flexibility, qigong, etc. The fact that you are not yet able to do a perfect mabu over a candle for an hour doesn't seem a good reason to wait to learn other things. Of course, some people will never develop strong basics if you don't force them to, so maybe that's the reasoning behind the whole "basics/internal cultivation before application/external movement" thing. But so long as you keep working on your basics at the same time you learn applications and the like, I don't think there's a problem at all.

[johnwang]

some people will never develop strong basics if you don't force them to, ...

For those people, they are hopless anyway. You can only help those who are willing to help themselves. For the others, they are only bean sprouts and never be able to grow into tree. Will it be nice if a teacher can train for his students?

[Patrick]

I would like to remark, that I think you rock (most of the times) Sir John Wang.

[Ian]

for young practitioners, from what i've seen (obviously there is infinitely more that i haven't seen than what i have seen), judo would be excellent; gymnastics with a good teacher. swimming + track and field; wrestling in america or europe or india (not much going round in new zealand when i grew up); certainly gjj or bjj if there's a good teacher; capoeira's tops if it's available (combination of music, singing, dancing, rhythm, play, relaxation, spontaneity etc)...feldenkrais stuff is the best I've seen for understanding how posture and movement should naturally develop during infancy and childhood so really if the parent's were doing that and had a good idea of how it works then they could get out of the way and let their children develop into naturally mobile and strong humans without all these messy developmental postural imbalances that most of us have and unknowingly teach our kids to have.

good stuff. even if this doesn't lead directly to fighting skill, I think more important than all that is developing eyes to see, figuring out how proficiency can be replicated (learning how to learn), and associating movement with play rather than eating bitter.

[Wanderingdragon]

Internal before external is a waist of time, only if you don't know how to fight.

[Bhassler]

From an interview with Moshe Feldenkrais (http://semiophysics.com/SemioPhysics_in ... Moshe.html). There's more there-- if you want to read it this particular section of the interview starts about 3/4 of the way down the page.

He's talking about Ki in the interview, but one could easily substitute IP. I think it's not an either/or proposition. I invite anyone to unambiguously define internal and external movements and then show a video of either one happening totally independent of the other.

The other day when we were talking, you said that if you talked about ki, nobody would publish it, that they wouldn't want to hear about it. Right, you said that?

Mmmmm.

So my feeling is that I would like to talk about it anyway and …

It's not that I don't want to talk about it, but for me this starts with the organization of the body. To me, ki is not a thing and not a spirit and not an anything, but the way a body is organized to function and that way in which it functions best. It means that a body can produce with it's weight, with the muscles that it has, with the brain it has, the greatest amount of work possible with a particular organization of that body and that particular organization turns out to be central to the thing we are talking about. It's a complex appreciation of how a human body is made, how it functions: That it has a head that must not be involved in the movement but which must be free, whatever the movement is, to move anywhere and that the lower abdomen must be in such a state that it can do all the things that it needs to do without disturbing the head. The rest of the body and the arms are not to be used to produce strength. And that is the truth. Once you get that, if you do, you can do Judo throws, the most difficult ones; the heaviest person, you can throw him if you get that. But to the people who are keen on mysterious things of ki and chi, this is a complete come-down, and they are not interested. They don't want to listen to it. They don't want it to be like that.

It sounds like F. M. Alexander's concept of “use” would be a more useful concept than that of ki.

Oh no, that's not true because his “use” is a limited “use.” With his use you can't throw anybody, you can't even throw yourself, you can't roll with that. So that's “use.” Movement, motility, you can see and my way of presenting chi was acceptable to Koizumi, a man whose movement was superb and effective until the age of 80, being able to throw anybody, even if it was someone five times his own weight. He was pleased to think that chi's not a mysterious thing

[johnwang]

I invite anyone to unambiguously define internal and external movements and then show a video of either one happening totally independent of the other.

It will be great if we can find internal clip and external clip side by side so we can clear see the difference. I'll suggest the following 4 pairs different clips for both "internal" and "external".

1. punch to the head.
2. kick to the chest.
3. lock on the elbow.
4. hip throw.

People may ask about, sticky, yield, follow, ... To me, those are "defense" and not "offense". So let's start from those 4 major offense tools. Let's start from a "punch to the head".

[brennanos]

I invite anyone to unambiguously define internal and external movements and then show a video of either one happening totally independent of the other.

It will be great if we can find internal clip and external clip side by side so we can clear see the difference. I'll suggest the following 4 pairs different clips for both "internal" and "external".

1. punch to the head.
2. kick to the chest.
3. lock on the elbow.
4. hip throw.

People may ask about, sticky, yield, follow, ... To me, those are "defense" and not "offense". So let's start from those 4 major offense tools. Let's start from a "punch to the head".

Sounds like a challenge. Surely some member of the board could make such a video. I think I could, although it would be hard to meet the requirement of one being "totally independent" of the other. The easiest would be the punch to the head, where its pretty easy to punch using only the muscles of the shoulder and arm with no movement anywhere else in the body (which I would consider a purely "external" punch). The others are a little harder.

[johnwang]

to punch using only the muscles of the shoulder and arm with no movement anywhere else in the body (which I would consider a purely "external" punch).

This statement truly put down all "external" styles big time as if their IQ is below 20. You may find something like this in foreign art such as:



but you will never find it in TCMA no matter which "external" style that you are looking at.



If longfist, mantis, Baji, Lohan, WC, Zimen, and white ape are all "using only the muscles of the shoulder and arm with no movement anywhere else in the body", I would study boxing long time ago.

[XinKuzi]

to punch using only the muscles of the shoulder and arm with no movement anywhere else in the body (which I would consider a purely "external" punch).

This statement truly put down all "external" styles big time as if their IQ is below 20.

...

If longfist, mantis, Baji, Lohan, WC, Zimen, and white ape are all "using only the muscles of the shoulder and arm with no movement anywhere else in the body", I would study boxing long time ago.

I totally agree. I don't care for the whole internal/external distinction. Some explanations for it make some sense to me, but as far as what most people seem to mean when they say internal/external, it falls apart pretty quick in the real world.

[johnwang]

Here is "external" longfist horizontal punch:



Here is "internal" Taiji brush knee:



Can you tell any difference between these 2 clips? Can you see any "using only the muscles of the shoulder and arm with no movement anywhere else in the body"?

[brennanos]

Jeez guys. I didn't mean to imply that so-called external styles of Chinese martial arts punch this way. Good lord. I wasn't actually thinking about the external/internal style classification. I was just thinking about describing the least "internal" possible way to execute a punch, when trying to show the difference between "external" and "internal". Not even boxers use 100% and only muscles of the arm and shoulders.

John: I have studied some Long Fist and I study Tai Chi and Xingyi. I find the only real difference is scale. Long Fist (in the beginning) is big, open and stretched out. This makes the mechanics easier to see and easier to learn. Tai Chi and Xingyi reduce the scale. I think anyone wanting to learn one of the internal styles should start by learning tan tui.

[johnwang]

I think anyone wanting to learn one of the internal styles should start by learning tan tui.

Agree 100% there. When you have proper body alignment such as from your head, shoulder, chest, waist, hip, upper leg, and low leg are all in a straight line, you won't have problem to learn any style that you want. This requirement can easily be seen in this basic training.



It's easy to see this is not the case in someone's Taiji.



Which body structure and body alignment do you like better? Which body structure is even more "pleasant" to view and "difficult" to perform?