Abstract Training vs. Concrete Training

[Steve James]

Do you want to make love to an abstract girl, or to make love to a real girl?

Is practicing a stealing step by yourself abstract?

[johnwang]

Is practicing a stealing step by yourself abstract?

It depends on the rest of your body function. When you do your stealing step, if you

- hold hands on your waist, it's abstract.
- swing your arm as hay-maker, it's concrete.

[robert]

I truly don't know who can punch harder, the Baji master, or the Chen Taiji master.

If you categorize CMAs into internal and external there is a whole range in between the two. It's like temperature - there isn't just hot and cold, those are the extremes; there is also warm, lukewarm, cool, and so on.

Some Baji looks pretty internal.

[Trick]

Why do you even want to train

- broadsword if you don't try to learn how to cut your opponent's head off?

I was very young when I started with fencing and very young when I quit fencing(6-9years old) The head coach of the fencing club was an old gentleman who everyone just called 'Maestro' cause he was not only a teacher but also an Olympic sabre fencing champion. As I recall there where never any talks about 'cutting heads off and pierce bodies' in that club, of course it was all practiced as a sport so maybe therefore the no need to talk about cutting of heads. The Maestro was considered one of the best fencing masters in the world, his skill came of course from sparring and competing. So I agree with JW to a big extent about concrete training......But then the concrete training can get a little too concrete... The fencing club shared the facility with a jujutsu club, one day I saw a couple of guys in Gi's come rushing out from the gym to jump in to a car and quickly drive away, I noticed blood on the ground, turned out they had been practicing with a big kitchen knife and someone's ear had been cut off.

[MaartenSFS]

Modern fencing is a far cry from proper sword fighting, even more so than Taekwondo is from unarmed fighting. It's a sport.

[Trick]

Modern fencing is a far cry from proper sword fighting, even more so than Taekwondo is from unarmed fighting. It's a sport.

well modern fencing was for a modern world

[Trick]

Modern fencing is a far cry from proper sword fighting, even more so than Taekwondo is from unarmed fighting. It's a sport.

The Maestro at the fencing club was of the early days of modern fencing so he might actually have had knowledge about how to handle more 'live' swords. https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francesco_Gargano

[MaartenSFS]

I truly don't know who can punch harder, the Baji master, or the Chen Taiji master.

If you categorize CMAs into internal and external there is a whole range in between the two. It's like temperature - there isn't just hot and cold, those are the extremes; there is also warm, lukewarm, cool, and so on.

Some Baji looks pretty internal.

I would absolutely add Bajiquan together with other internal styles, but this chap is lacking a bit of power. Not bad, just not that impressive as far as Bajiquan goes.

[robert]

Watching videos there are some martial arts where some of the people look internal, but other people seem external and stiff and I don't know whether that external and stiff is considered an acceptable variation or if it is a bad representation of the art. Watching Baihe I see the same thing - some people are pretty internal, but others are external.

[johnwang]

Some Baji looks pretty internal.

That's my point. I have trained both the Baji and Taiji. When I punch on my heavy bag, I don't know I'm doing the Baji punch, or the Taiji punch. When you have cross trained more than 1 TCMA system, you pretty much mix them up and it become your system. One day a Taiji instructor touched my arm. He said I had more XingYi than Taiji. How could he know that by just one touching? If people say that they can use Taiji to fight on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and use XingYi to fight on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday. After this many years, I still haven't figure out how to do that yet.

[Bao]

About 15 years ago I bought a Baji applications instruction VCD when I travelled in China. Damn, he was so soft and relaxed and every single app was the same as what you can find in Tai Chi, Bagua and Xingyi. He did everything with a perfectly relaxed body. Very good IMA instruction vid, though the label was Baji. So yes, even if I've never practiced the style, I can understand why you refer to Baji.

[johnwang]

If we consider Taiji Lu as 3 steps:

1. the set up,
2. the function,
3. the ending.

Abstract training - you only train the part 2.



Concrete training - you train 1, 2, 3 the whole thing.

[everything]

It is good to do all kinds of concrete arm bars.

But then through the body's natural inductive reasoning you find you may combine pluck and split in many ways.

So maybe one distinction is:
- concrete training by example
- abstract principle understanding from it. Apply in various ways

[everything]

I'm not "good" at throwing arts or any sports but I've improvised fairly easily in randori only by knowing/feeing - move your top lever one way, bottom other way (split).

This is abstract and on the fly.

Maybe concrete is better at Olympic level but I'm sure they understand abstract.