What if we disregard the 4oz ideal?

Discussion on the three big Chinese internals, Yiquan, Bajiquan, Piguazhang and other similar styles.

Re: What if we disregard the 4oz ideal?

Postby MaartenSFS on Tue Aug 01, 2017 3:35 pm

The four ounce thing just means that you shouldn't fight force with force and try to exploit the weaknesses of the opponents structure or use footwork and timing to let them walk into your strikes or use their momentum to your strikes to increase the power.. It's an ideal shared by all MAs, they just don't always have the Classics.
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Re: What if we disregard the 4oz ideal?

Postby windwalker on Tue Aug 01, 2017 4:23 pm

wayne hansen wrote:For a start it wasn't 4 oz that is just a western approximation of the Chinese measurement
The 4 oz is on the receivers side on hitting you are meant to add the attackers thousand pounds to your 4 oz
As was quoted from CTH on another thread
To leave anything out makes you a cripple
Never heard that one before Niall but it says it all


A chinese unit of measurement that approximates 4oz the point is?

Taiji sometimes referred to as moving with awareness

In trying to move with awareness the most common mistakes for many are those of
colliding with, or running away from the point of contact.

The point of the 4oz was a way to define a starting point for contact ie to "light or to heavy"
and convey that the contact was not based on using ones own force or frame. .

Depending on teacher, school, method and focus, one should be able to
feel and experience what happens if one tries to apply or use more force.

What should happen at this point is that one should come to some
understanding of why its not a good idea to use more force and start to develop
through the practice what this means.

For some the amount of contact used is defined as skin, hair, and air.

One can only feel ones own force.

One problem is understanding how much force one is using.
Its never about how much force the other uses since all that one can feel is ones own.

Don't want to feel force, don't use it and don't allow it to be used on oneself.

How this is done is really what much of the training is about, which the idea of 4oz
helps to convey and use.

Understanding moving with awareness is about subordinating the body to the dictates of the mind.
The mind is ruler, the body follows. This means that ones body has to be in pretty good shape to be able to follow
the perceptions of the mind in real time, and use this as a way of engaging with others.

It does not mean someone who is weak to start off with can use this idea and expect to survive an encounter,
or that slow practice automatically conveys some type of understanding that enables a person to
deal with an encounter if thats what ones practice is based on.

"dealing with encounters"

History shows the yang family members starting with the founder and his sons were quite nimble, fast,
and had an unusual skill set for their time. The practices very physically demanding.
Their boxing style known as touch or soft boxing before being called taiji.

All of which means that one has to go through some very demanding training insuring that things like axis,
6 harmonis, and the many other points of practice have to be well defined through ability
and usage.


The aspect of "leaving anything out" only pertains to ones
own line, school or training that others would acknowledge
coming from those lines, or schools..
a good thread, echoeing some of my own findings
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=26252

that speaks to this.

It might be interesting to understand what line, teacher or school
started to use the idea of 4oz...Its not something I've read about
in other styles of taiji chen, wu, sun ect.
Last edited by windwalker on Tue Aug 01, 2017 4:57 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: What if we disregard the 4oz ideal?

Postby johnwang on Tue Aug 01, 2017 5:36 pm

Bao wrote:Who ever said anything about using 4 oz against a bag or use it to punch someone? 4 oz principle is one way you can deal with incoming force, like handling a body's weight or a fist.

There are 2 approaches that you can take.

1. Let your opponent to punch you with 1000 lb force, you then use 4 oz force to deal with it.
2. Prevent your opponent from generate 1000 lb force in the beginning.

IMO, 2 > 1.

If you can jam your opponent's space so he can't generate his fast and powerful punch, you don't have to worry about his 1000 lb force, and you don't have to train your 4 oz force also.

Bao wrote:4 oz principle dealing with incoming force and good punching power to demolish someone's face, do you see them as mutually exclusive? Why not have both? :-\

When US attacked Iraq, US did not wait for Iraq's missile to fly over and then shot it down. US attacked Iraq in such a way that Iraq could not send his missile out (if they had missile that can shot to US mainland). Apparently US did not apply Taiji principle, Why?

When your opponent punch you with 1000 lb, you also have 2 ways to deal with it.

1. Use 4 oz force to redirect it.
2. us 50 lb force to hurt his arm so he can't punch you any more.

Again, 2 > 1

I prefer to train my CMA and be strong as US. I don't want to train my CMA and be weak as Iraq.
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Re: What if we disregard the 4oz ideal?

Postby everything on Tue Aug 01, 2017 6:31 pm

Yeah I'm saying use 50lb (or 20lb) instead of 4 oz. I'm not saying this ideal of steel in cotton and some kind of sublime skill should go away. I'm just saying: you show some people some basics and just drop the usual hoo-hah speeches (I still like the hoo-hah). Then when you show these basics, they're not really any different from a bunch of various MA basics and that's fine because who cares really (on RSF we can still talk about all that). You just want to show your daughter and her friends some stuff and give them basic skills. They don't care what you call it.

Yeah agree with Maarten, too. Don't use force on force. That's enough of the idea.

Anything more advanced is for hobbyists, enthusiasts, teachers, pros.
amateur practices til gets right pro til can't get wrong
/ better approx answer to right q than exact answer to wrong q which can be made precise /
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Re: What if we disregard the 4oz ideal?

Postby Niall Keane on Tue Aug 01, 2017 6:31 pm

Fcuk your "4 ounces", I leverage with 0.000004 ounces and still move planets!!! The quote form the classics is "use four ounces to displace 1000 pounds", it is not "be a blouse and only ever use 4 ounces of force"!!!

But when I hit I hit with twice my body weight at least and combined with well timed exploitation if his weight too.. falling onto my strike!

Obvious sh1t... when ya ain't trying to stick the square peg of boxercise-understanding into the round hole of combat!
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Re: What if we disregard the 4oz ideal?

Postby windwalker on Tue Aug 01, 2017 6:44 pm

everything wrote: You just want to show your daughter and her friends some stuff and give them basic skills.
They don't care what you call it.


by her a gun, less then 4oz of trigger pull.
send her to classes to teach her how to use it.
get a CCW lic.

Or find a knife fighting school, and teach her or them how to use a knife.
less the 4oz needed to stab someone....its high percentage no matter what skill level
the one who has the knife is going to cut someone, someone having to deal with it is going to get cut.

Basic skills should include awareness training.
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Re: What if we disregard the 4oz ideal?

Postby everything on Tue Aug 01, 2017 6:51 pm

yeah very true, agree with you guys.

actually the "self defense" skill I use every week that I want my kids to learn is defensive driving / emergency manuever / awareness type skill. there are some good courses out there that teach recovery from skids, etc.

driving around many crazy or unaware or on-their-phones people (everyone else hahaha) is a daily occurrence here in the southeast USA.
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Re: What if we disregard the 4oz ideal?

Postby windwalker on Tue Aug 01, 2017 7:07 pm

everything wrote:yeah very true, agree with you guys.

actually the "self defense" skill I use every week that I want my kids to learn is defensive driving / emergency manuever / awareness type skill. there are some good courses out there that teach recovery from skids, etc.



driving around many crazy or unaware or on-their-phones people (everyone else hahaha) is a daily occurrence here in the southeast USA.


awareness training sometimes not something that one thinks of until
.viewtopic.php?f=7&t=26203

Robp2, might be the best one to address this.
Any skill set, real skill set out side of what some call "boxersize"

Is going to take some time investment
for it to be effective and also to sustain it.

Any thing that one does should be

reliable, repeatable and effective, should not depend on ones
own developed skill or lack of skill.

a gun is always a gun, knife is always a knife.
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Re: What if we disregard the 4oz ideal?

Postby johnwang on Tue Aug 01, 2017 7:18 pm

everything wrote:awareness type skill...

2 weeks ago I took my wife to Renaissance festival in San Luis Obispo, CA. She bought a necklace that has a 3 inch blade in it. I then realized that she had a

- spikes ring on her finger.
- spikes bracelet on her wrist.
- spikes knuckle on her key chain.
- pepper spray and electric stun gun in her purse.

My wife is fully armed. Anybody tries to mess with her will be sorry. This is why she and I are married. We both don't belong to the main stream.
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Re: What if we disregard the 4oz ideal?

Postby everything on Tue Aug 01, 2017 7:22 pm

Definitely sorry for your loss and that is a good and serious reminder to us all.
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Re: What if we disregard the 4oz ideal?

Postby Bao on Tue Aug 01, 2017 11:27 pm

johnwang wrote:When US attacked Iraq, US did not wait for Iraq's missile to fly over and then shot it down. US attacked Iraq in such a way that Iraq could not send his missile out (if they had missile that can shot to US mainland). Apparently US did not apply Taiji principle, Why?

When your opponent punch you with 1000 lb, you also have 2 ways to deal with it.

1. Use 4 oz force to redirect it.
2. us 50 lb force to hurt his arm so he can't punch you any more.

Again, 2 > 1

I prefer to train my CMA and be strong as US. I don't want to train my CMA and be weak as Iraq.


Why don't the US just bomb the whole Iraq and Afghanistan? Then US don't need to have intelligence to take care of terrorists in the US. In your view, US should not have intelligence, because that's a soft defensive skill. The US should just nuke every country that could be a potential threat, Afghanistan, the Arab Emirates, North Korea. Just nuke them all. You want the US to be strong, not show itself week. :-\ But somehow, the US don't agree with your philosophy and tend to focus more on defensive military strategy than attack. :P

Again, why do you need to chose this or that? Why not, just like the strong US military, have different strategies for different situations, instead of just relying on one? Tai Chi usually consider both of the side of the coins. There's attack first, and then there's something else you can use. If you don't like the word defense, you can see it as secondary method. Maybe just in case your timing is off and you screw up. No one is perfect, everyone make mistakes. And IME, reality tend to screw with us in the most unpredictable ways. :-\
Last edited by Bao on Wed Aug 02, 2017 12:43 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: What if we disregard the 4oz ideal?

Postby Trick on Tue Aug 01, 2017 11:56 pm

everything wrote:Still haven't thrown out the 4 oz ideal enough. Suppose you teach your 20 year old daughter and her friends "women's self defense" (not meant to be sexist but in this example, it is her and her other female friends). Perhaps you show them lots of knees and elbows maybe like this:

Image

They don't have time to contemplate 4 oz, 1 oz, 1 lb, 8 lbs or learn a bunch of philosophy. Whatever we have left of "taijiquan" if we say this shell of taijiquan is not taijiquan has some good stuff for this class (which is not an "art" class). Can the MA portion of the class be taijiquan (plus some ground work)-based?

http://v.youku.com/pad_show/id_XMTQwODQ ... %2520class
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Re: What if we disregard the 4oz ideal?

Postby Trick on Wed Aug 02, 2017 12:22 am

johnwang wrote:
everything wrote:awareness type skill...

2 weeks ago I took my wife to Renaissance festival in San Luis Obispo, CA. She bought a necklace that has a 3 inch blade in it. I then realized that she had a

- spikes ring on her finger.
- spikes bracelet on her wrist.
- spikes knuckle on her key chain.
- pepper spray and electric stun gun in her purse.

My wife is fully armed. Anybody tries to mess with her will be sorry. This is why she and I are married. We both don't belong to the main stream.

Your wife don't do Jiao Shuai 8-) I once visited One of the grand old gongfu masters home in Dalian. He spoke gongfu skill should very much be hidden as, then he showed me an old fly-whisk with a very sharp pointed top hidden in the whisk, a traditional long smoking pipe all made of copper, a fan with metal frame which had all sharp pointed tips. One of his students (my YTJQ teacher) have a couple of walking sticks which hide a long sharp pointed steel blade he say might will come to use when he gets older.
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Re: What if we disregard the 4oz ideal?

Postby Trick on Wed Aug 02, 2017 12:24 am

Bao wrote:
johnwang wrote:When US attacked Iraq, US did not wait for Iraq's missile to fly over and then shot it down. US attacked Iraq in such a way that Iraq could not send his missile out (if they had missile that can shot to US mainland). Apparently US did not apply Taiji principle, Why?

When your opponent punch you with 1000 lb, you also have 2 ways to deal with it.

1. Use 4 oz force to redirect it.
2. us 50 lb force to hurt his arm so he can't punch you any more.

Again, 2 > 1

I prefer to train my CMA and be strong as US. I don't want to train my CMA and be weak as Iraq.


Why don't the US just bomb the whole Iraq and Afghanistan? Then US don't need to have intelligence to take care of terrorists in the US. In your view, US should not have intelligence, because that's a soft defensive skill. The US should just nuke every country that could be a potential threat, Afghanistan, the Arab Emirates, South Korea. Just nuke them all. You want the US to be strong, not show itself week. :-\ But somehow, the US don't agree with your philosophy and tend to focus more on defensive military strategy than attack. :P

Again, why do you need to chose this or that? Why not, just like the strong US military, have different strategies for different situations, instead of just relying on one? Tai Chi usually consider both of the side of the coins. There's attack first, and then there's something else you can use. If you don't like the word defense, you can see it as secondary method. Maybe just in case your timing is off and you screw up. No one is perfect, everyone make mistakes. And IME, reality tend to screw with us in the most unpredictable ways. :-\

South Korea?
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Re: What if we disregard the 4oz ideal?

Postby Trick on Wed Aug 02, 2017 12:27 am

Trick wrote:
johnwang wrote:
everything wrote:awareness type skill...

2 weeks ago I took my wife to Renaissance festival in San Luis Obispo, CA. She bought a necklace that has a 3 inch blade in it. I then realized that she had a

- spikes ring on her finger.
- spikes bracelet on her wrist.
- spikes knuckle on her key chain.
- pepper spray and electric stun gun in her purse.

My wife is fully armed. Anybody tries to mess with her will be sorry. This is why she and I are married. We both don't belong to the main stream.

Your wife don't do Jiao Shuai 8-) I once visited One of the grand old gongfu masters home in Dalian. He spoke gongfu skill should very much be hidden as, then he showed me an old fly-whisk with a very sharp pointed top hidden in the whisk, a traditional long smoking pipe all made of copper, a fan with metal frame which had all sharp pointed tips. One of his students (my YTJQ teacher) have a couple of walking sticks which hide a long sharp pointed steel blade he say might will come to use when he gets older.

shuai jiao
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