dedicated to the discussion of the chinese internal martial arts of xingyiquan, baguazhang, taijiquan, related arts, and anything else best discussed over a bottle of rum
cdobe wrote: But when a large number of studies consistently show that neither the proposed underlying mechanism exists, nor that there is any objective sensation to feel for the practitioners, nor that there are any significant results in healing for the patients, then it is safe to say that the method doesn't hold up to scrutiny. CD
I agree completely; and as far as I am concerned a large number of studies is one of the criteria of scientific evidence. I just think it is too easy to say it is all down to psychology. There may be an underlying mechanism in the receiver that the therapist acts as a catalyst to; but that is a little more than psychology as it actually has a physiological effect. Myofacial release, cranial osteopathy and a range of other light touch therapies have had and continue to have real health giving, and curative effects to a large number of people.
But anyway back on track, has anyone tried to generate massive force and then transfer it to another body with light touch?
Last edited by klonk on Wed May 06, 2009 8:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.
I define internal martial art as unusual muscle recruitment and leave it at that. If my definition is incomplete, at least it is correct so far as it goes.
Iskendar wrote:"....if you enter softly, even gently, he will not instinctively recognize the touch as a threat and will not resist until it is too late."
This is one of the subtle soft style fighting skills acquired through high level tui-shou and san-shou training.
Iskendar wrote:"....if you enter softly, even gently, he will not instinctively recognize the touch as a threat and will not resist until it is too late."
Is there such thing as entering "hardly"? Most of the "entering strategy" that I know are moving along with your opponent and enter through his "leak". If you over commit then it will be difficult to change. If you want to set up then you should not over commit. If you don't over commit then it's always "entering softly".
Last edited by johnwang on Wed May 06, 2009 11:38 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Crow weep in the dark. Tide bellow in the north wind. How lonesome the world.
is it possible to enter 'hardly' without overcommiting? through good structure and line? Rather than waiting for the gap/leak, you create the gap with intelligent use of force.
Interested in your thoughts JW.
Best regards
Chris
"I am not servant to the method, the method is servant to me" Me
middleway wrote:is it possible to enter 'hardly' without overcommiting? through good structure and line?
The faster that you drive your car forward, the harder (take longer time) it will take you to change it back into the reverse direction. It's more about the "momentum" and may not have much to do with body structure or body alignment IMO.
Since all you need is to force your opponent to make a certain "commitment" so he can open himself up and create some "leak", you may only need to make your opponent's to "believe" that your initial move is serious, but you may not need to put 100% commitment in it.
One PM master once gave a demo on TV. He swing his "back right fist" from 20 feet away and made his opponent to believe that he was going to use his "back right fist" to give his opponent a deadly strike. When he moved into the punching range, he just used his "front left hand" lightly tapped on his opponent's face and finished that demo. Fake move doesn't have to be real as long as your opponent believes it's real.
Last edited by johnwang on Thu May 07, 2009 2:32 am, edited 5 times in total.
Crow weep in the dark. Tide bellow in the north wind. How lonesome the world.
For sure, i understand this very well and have found this sort of work is very useful. The issue i think is that if your opponent is very good they will wait for the true threat no matter how good the intent in the 'fake threat' is. One thing i have found useful then is to strike with one hand but change its 'arc' slightly during its path once the opponent is beginning to react to the strike. This can have a large effect on the opponents ability to check it or their reaction.
I was more referring to for instance, setting a 'frame' and moving the entire frame through the opponents guard, on a line not in opposition to that guard. So in essence your using a hard force in a clever way to adjust the opponents structure.
What are your thoughts on this?
respects
Chris
"I am not servant to the method, the method is servant to me" Me
middleway wrote:For sure, i understand this very well and have found this sort of work is very useful. The issue i think is that if your opponent is very good they will wait for the true threat no matter how good the intent in the 'fake threat' is. One thing i have found useful then is to strike with one hand but change its 'arc' slightly during its path once the opponent is beginning to react to the strike. This can have a large effect on the opponents ability to check it or their reaction.
If you can make your opponent to react to your strike then you have already make your opponent to believe that your fake move is real.
- A fake move can be a real move if your opponent doesn't believe in it. - A real move can be a fake move if your opponent believes in it.
middleway wrote:I was more referring to for instance, setting a 'frame' and moving the entire frame through the opponents guard, on a line not in opposition to that guard. So in essence your using a hard force in a clever way to adjust the opponents structure.
What are your thoughts on this?
If you think you can run your opponent down then there will be no need to do any "set up". The "set up" is only used after you have tried to run your opponent down 3 times in a row and all 3 times failed. If you can
- over power your opponent then you don't need to borrow his force. - enter his front door then you don't need to enter his side door.
When you see 2 persons circle around each other, they may have just realized that their opponent is very good and both give up the hope of successful "front door entering".
Last edited by johnwang on Thu May 07, 2009 3:23 am, edited 1 time in total.
Crow weep in the dark. Tide bellow in the north wind. How lonesome the world.
Walk the Torque wrote: But anyway back on track, has anyone tried to generate massive force and then transfer it to another body with light touch?
As far as I know you shouldn't add any speed to your opponent's movement if you intend to move him with a light touch. Provided that you already made him/her fell into a 'void trap' and so forced him to do a counterforce in opposite direction to regain balance, then by F=MA all the extra force you could deliver is by means of a mix of mass and gravity - not precisely loading weight on the opponent as someone said before - through elastic tissue/muscles/frame.
If it were true that some masters can induce some weird kind of micro-tremblings by a light touch, then the opponent would stiffen and so absorb fully the force delivered.
Does this make sense?
.
Last edited by ppscat on Thu May 07, 2009 8:05 am, edited 2 times in total.
With this theoretical light touch strike, what speed are we talking about at delivery? Do we mean simply lightly touching while barely moving or moving quickly but striking lightly?
I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a
bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle. -- Winston Churchill
DeusTrismegistus wrote:With this theoretical light touch strike, what speed are we talking about at delivery? Do we mean simply lightly touching while barely moving or moving quickly but striking lightly?
I'll be interested to see what others think about this, for I am sort of a physics bigot in this matter. Power is mass in motion, at least on this plane of existence; I won't speak of other planes.
If you already have all body parts working together (a key aim in IMA), the mass you have in motion is 100% of what you have available. The only possible way to increase the power is to increase the speed.
You can change the efficiency of the blow with a relaxed body frame. If we believe the hammer manufacturer I cited above, the potential increase in impact is 40%. That's not magic power but we will take it. It is all we can get, for the power will never exceed what is provided by the mass and speed we bring to the problem. . . .
Last edited by klonk on Thu May 07, 2009 8:35 am, edited 1 time in total.
I define internal martial art as unusual muscle recruitment and leave it at that. If my definition is incomplete, at least it is correct so far as it goes.
Your whole frame should move at your opponent's speed. If fully connected at same speed & aceleration, both bodies becomes one single cohesive unit (the idea of Taiji), and so any changed induced on it has the double the mass to produce force F= a (m1 + m2).
ppscat wrote:Your whole frame should move at your opponent's speed. If fully connected at same speed & aceleration, both bodies becomes one single cohesive unit (the idea of Taiji), and so any changed induced on it has the double the mass to produce force F= a (m1 + m2).
Easy to say, many decades to master it...
.
Good! I have long thought, though, that the simplest way to borrow force is to strike into your opponent's advance, would you agree? So that the vectors butt head-on.
I define internal martial art as unusual muscle recruitment and leave it at that. If my definition is incomplete, at least it is correct so far as it goes.
DeusTrismegistus wrote:With this theoretical light touch strike, what speed are we talking about at delivery? Do we mean simply lightly touching while barely moving or moving quickly but striking lightly?
I'll be interested to say what others think about this, for I am sort of a physics bigot in this matter. Power is mass in motion, at least on this plane of existence; I won't speak of other planes.
If you already have all body parts working together (a key aim in IMA), the mass you have in motion is 100% of what you have available. The only possible way to increase the power is to increase the speed.
You can change the efficiency of the blow with a relaxed body frame. If we believe the hammer manufacturer I cited above, the potential increase in impact is 40%. That's not magic power but we will take it. It is all we can get, for the power will never exceed what is provided by the mass and speed we bring to the problem. . . .
What about the power of the newton swing? The middle balls do not move, they have no speed, no momentum, yet energy is able to transfer through them and into the last ball.
Power is work/time; work is displacement * force * cos of theta (the angle of the work). Given those equations power can be thought of as the amount of displacement of mass over time. The more mass displaced in the shorter time the more power is used/produced. So pushing someone away with a short movement that throws them far is the obvious production and use of power.
In this video Ma Jiangbao pushes this guy around a lot, causing large displacements, with little motion. His mass is not moving much, yet he is producing a lot of power.
Since Ma Jiangbai is himself moving little his body has little kenetic energy from motion. The amount fo power displayed cannot be explained by purely analyzing Ma's mass and velocity in relation to his opponent, his center may move an inch or two while he projects the other guy 3 ft.
In regards to physics there is a lot more going on than simply transfer of momentum through the speed that the body mass is moving. I don't know enough to really understand it from that perspective but I am not sure anyone does in totality. However I believe that thinking in terms of moving the body mass as quickly as possible will hinder internal striking. I tend to think of it more like transferring energy within the body like the newtons swing shown before, and the opponent is the final ball while my body is the balls before, only the initial energy isn't supplied from kenetic energy but from utilizing the bodies own energy (chemical energy most likely).
I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a
bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle. -- Winston Churchill
