the rum soaked fist: internal martial arts forum

Just found this nice article, which sums up most pf the current IMA world:

http://nysanda.wordpress.com/2013/02/23 ... your-sifu/


Any thoughts?

+1. So true.

I'm still only lurking, but have now kicked up my feet and am cracking a beer.

S- bye!

I def am a fan of Sifu Ross blog posts and been following him for years. he pretty much nails it on those goof balls touring on the scene trying to sell "fajin secrets" and other non-sense.

cause we are fucking stupid and it takes time to self-aware.

Just wanted to say that this has been the opposite of my experience. I have learned from wrestlers and bjj a ton, but my ima training seems better to me than literally everything else. As in more useful for fighting. It is special.
Jess

Its a wake-up call but not necessarily be right when we know what we are training for and collect the right methods to fit in ourselves. IMA is actually a treasure to explore.

I have never met Wang sifu (J Wang) but I have noticed that whenever he posts what I believe to be proper training and conditioning; (yes, I am delusional at times ), his methods are looked upon as silly and not 'internal' enough! I wonder why? Are people so enthralled by illusion that they distort their own mental sphere. Jus' sayin', my peeps.

yeniseri wrote:I have never met Wang sifu (J Wang) but I have noticed that whenever he posts what I believe to be proper training and conditioning; (yes, I am delusional at times ), his methods are looked upon as silly and not 'internal' enough! I wonder why? Are people so enthralled by illusion that they distort their own mental sphere. Jus' sayin', my peeps.

I think you got that backwards.

on this site one that is dedicated to IMA strange as it may seem , for the most part things that get laughed or disbelieved are IMA examples posted by others .
the common theme by most who tend to mock or laugh at them, almost always are things that either they cant do, have not studied or have not met anyone in person who can do them.

what was written and echoed by others in the OP, are in gen by those that do competitive events, promote or host them.

they wouldn't be biased for writing or saying what they do, would they

You got that right wind

Just glanced at the article, no problems with it.

yeniseri wrote:I have never met Wang sifu (J Wang) but I have noticed that whenever he posts what I believe to be proper training and conditioning; (yes, I am delusional at times ), his methods are looked upon as silly and not 'internal' enough! I wonder why? Are people so enthralled by illusion that they distort their own mental sphere. Jus' sayin', my peeps.

I took a seminar with John and compared to my teacher He Jinbao, the way their bodies move is fundamentally different. It's a night and day difference between where the movements start, the execution, and the end result of the power.

John's body feels like an old hard, dry oak tree, where Jinbao's is like a green sapling, only thick, like a jungle vine, and it's only getting more green, (younger) with every year.

What's funny is that not only are their bodies complete opposites, but the training and instructions they give are in almost complete opposition.

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Maybe I misread the thread but when I saw the Topic, my immediate perception was about the functionality of IMA compared to other arts. How well does, what we call IMA stand up to scrutiny (generally speaking) without the usual 'my qi is better than your qi" or "my master is The One" but I applaud all versions though the many appears absurd. Jus' tinking out aloud, my dudes!

My opinion of the article...

The problem with internal ma is that there are not a lot of people that have the goods, and can use them. So if you've never met one of them, you don't have anything to compare it to. Thus if one person (or the few people they've met) is a fraud... everyone is a fraud. If someone is bad as a sport fighter, they just suck... a much less offensive insult (and no one's going to call them fake). Guys like this would need to get their asses handed to them to understand the potential of ima, but they will never search out the real deal, and the people with the real skills will never go looking for people like this because they have nothing to prove.

There are a lot of delusional folks in ima, and teachers can get away with a lot of bullshit. Also there is no litmus test for health, so there's no consequence if that's what the teacher is teaching for. For that matter, whose to say that the people teaching you body mechanics know what they are talking about either? Body mechanics might make you healthier, but they won't give you the ability to fight by themselves. If done correctly, they should add abilities to your fighting skill.

Interestingly enough, I began with "external" arts, boxing, judo, tae kwon do, karate, Army hand-to-hand combat and Shaolin Kung Fu. I actually have found Tai Chi and Hsing-I to be more "efficient" and effective for combat than any of the various external arts I had learned. The softer and more relaxed my practice becomes, the faster and more powerful I become.

The issue isn't "IMA" vs reality, but "lack of realistic combat training methods" vs reality.

On difference of the whole body - there's the Chinese nunchuku - where you find a tree of the hardest wood you can find, then pick the section that has no knots, whittle of the softer parts of the wood, find the right grain patterns then shape the wood into a rod shape, then apply oils and burnish the wood to make it even harder, until it's like an unbreakable granite rock.
Then attach a chain which you have to keep oiled and free of rust. You don't really have to worry about the wood unless you tear open the grain and have to reapply oil and re-burnish it, but you do have to worry always about the joints and links of the chain as they will rust unless you have a daily ritual and good supply of oil to keep it lubricated.

The other body type is the jungle vine that takes years to weave it's way through the small cracks and fissures of the granite until it can reach the water hidden deep below and then it starts slowly bringing nutrients, oils, back up the vine, growing thicker and thicker, until the once small cracks in the granite aren't wide enough so it breaks and cracks the granite rocks that are harder then the vine but are now less powerful. You don't have to worry about lubricating or oiling any joints because the vine is tapped into a steady supply that feeds it strength from the inside out.



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