How do you integrate martial material from multiple arts?

[DeusTrismegistus]

This is for Chris, no bait and switch here

So far I have experience with taiji, shuai jiao, and some xingyi and our shaolin tiger system.

My teacher has always sparred with throws and clinch work allowed so I don't really know how to say the shuai jiao gets integrated into the striking system which is the main focus. Its just a skill set that is available at a particular range to me.

The taiji gets integrated into both systems at a very basic level. You take the taiji principles of body movement and alignment, moving with the center, flowing, sensitivity, and yielding and apply it in all aspects of fighting. I really see no difference between shuai jiao and taiji, good shuai jiao should use all the taiji principles already.

The xingyi is a different story. I have only been practicing this about a year but I have noticed that I am using a santi stance (40/60) much more often in sparring now without thinking about it. I am also follow stepping a lot without consicously trying to do so. As I practice the xingyi more the more it comes out spontaneously. I have noticed that as the pressure increases the more I use old skills though, it makes it less likely for new material to happen spontaneously.

So how do you guys integrate the martial material from different styles and what is your experience with it?

[Chris McKinley]

Deus,

Thank you for righting that particular social injustice. I agree with you both about the fact that your shuai jiao skills are and should be just another set of skills that work well at a particular range (I would also add, "if the opportunity arises - whatever the range") and that good shuai jiao ought to manifest Taiji principles.

I especially like that you mentioned that different levels of pressure bring out different skill sets. This is a fairly universal human trait that favors: 1) material that has been familiar the longest, 2) material which has been learned during developmentally/emotionally important stages, and/or 3) material which has been contextualized and used successfully under actual duress.

This can be a very big problem (and usually is) for people who think they have learned a given set of material to a high degree of refinement, even over many hours and years of practice, but have never yet completed the process of contextualizing that material. This is the classic situation of a martial arts guru who gets in a real assault and all his well-honed skill just evaporates. Another classic example of this is that infamous black-and-white clip of the two Chinese "masters" engaging in lei tai-style sparring for the first time. Both looked like pussified chumps. There's more martial skill to be witnessed at your average Saturday night Tough Man contest at any local honkey-tonk.

However, the phenomenon doesn't have to be a tragic joke that only shows itself when you most need the training. If you already have well-ingrained skills that are functionally adequate to protect yourself and you simply want to pursue training for more skillfully refined movement, less crudeness to your movement, etc., that can be fine. So long as....you understand that your new material, at least until it, too, has been completely contextualized, will only be functional for you when you are a) not surprised, b) well under the psycho-emotional threshold where the amygdala begins to control your responses, and c) not being pressured to the point where those newer skills begin to show failure. All three factors have to be in place simultaneously for those newer, uncontextualized skills to be useful in any functional way.

Sometimes, though, they are all there at the same time. Lower intensity situations where you are just trying to defuse a situation that has started to become physical but isn't yet irretrievably violent. Moving through crowds of people in a hurry. Situations in which, for whatever reason, you are the one initiating physical contact, such as a doorman controlling an unruly patron. If you are aware that these newer skills aren't yet as trusted, ingrained and tested, and don't place undue pressure on them to function in worst-case situations, they can still prove useful to a limited degree until such time as you can actually complete their contextualization.

[strawdog]

You find the common ground, their essence, and discard the rest.

[johnwang]

You find the common ground,

Find common ground such as move like butterfly and sting like a bee.

and discard the rest.

Discard things like double weight, don't lean, always wait, ...

[dragontigerpalm]

It's probably a combined or alternating process where at times one makes the conscious and willful decision to incorporate previous or additional training and at other times a more organic outcome where such training insinuates and manifests itself in one's current practice/performance. Maybe this is what Chris was referring to in the last paragraph of his post.

[Chowfarn]

At what point do you consider something usless & throw it away from your training sessions ?

I think you need a reasonable amount of time studying on a style to understand the thought behind the various conepts - before intergating it with your own ideas.

Could be a chance you miss something really important .............................

For example:
Most people on this forum think ZZ is a good training tool - yet to someone else,a complete wastes of time.

[Chris McKinley]

dragontigerpalm,

RE: "It's probably a combined or alternating process where at times one makes the conscious and willful decision to incorporate previous or additional training...". Partly, yes. Though in order to have the conscious and willful choice to incorporate something that hasn't been contextualized, you need all three of the factors I mentioned to be present simultaneously, i.e., "a) not surprised, b) well under the psycho-emotional threshold where the amygdala begins to control your responses, and c) not being pressured to the point where those newer skills begin to show failure."

Unless you have all three of those present, there is no way to assume that you will be able to manifest any skillset that hasn't been fully contextualized, even if it's a skill you've practiced religiously for years.

As to the second part of your statement there, "...and at other times a more organic outcome where such training insinuates and manifests itself in one's current practice/performance.". It doesn't happen quite as organically as that, unfortunately. Any new skill set that you add doesn't just start insinuating itself into, amongst, and between all the other skills you have and just start automatically manifesting. In fact, it's fairly predictable with combat skills as to whether and when they will manifest or not. Any new skills (or any old ones, for that matter) have to be properly contextualized into as close a reproduction of the native context as you can safely duplicate in order for those skills to manifest automatically in the actual native context, i.e., a real fight.

For example, let's say you have a guy who has boxed for years, and has used those skills to defend himself for real on more than one occasion successfully. Then let's say, for whatever reason, that he decides to take up Taijiquan at some point, and studies it diligently for several years. However, he only studies the form, push hands, the sword and the long pole. It will unfortunately not happen, should he now find himself in a real surprise assault that is potentially life-threatening, for example, that his hard-earned Taijiquan skills will automatically manifest themselves, blending in with or replacing his previous boxing skills automatically. In fact, in all likelihood, unless those newer Taiji skills have been properly contextualized, the probability is that they will not manifest at all, and that the guy will automatically revert back to his boxing skills instead.

Or worse, let's say you have another guy and he has never practiced anything but Baguazhang, but he's been practicing for 20 years. He only practices circle walking, the palms, the houtien, the animals, the two-man drills, roushou, the Judges' Pens, and the Dao, but he's never contextualized any of it. The tragic but majority probability is that, in a real surprise assault like the one mentioned in the other example, this guy won't manifest anything at all except some wild flailing, some turtling, and some instinctive grabbing. That's it.

That's how important contextualizing your material is to your actually being able to use it to save yourself or loved ones in a real assault. The neurophysiology involved is no respector of rank, title, lineage, gong fu, or how old, revered and proven the system studied.

[dragontigerpalm]

Thanks for the explanantion Chris.

[Ralteria]

With everything you've said Chris, I'm curious if contextualizing these skills can be done on a smaller scale in bits and pieces.

Like when any adrenal response kicks in (not in a fight scenario) you make the concious decision to relax and incorporate which ever arts shen fa/body mechanics you are studying. Every time something like this happens you start to make this the body's natural response (relax, sink, start incorporate peng jin, whatever). While it's not contextualized necessarily into the "fight" mode, I would think that it would make incoporating past that point easier since it's associated with an adrenal response.

[johnwang]

At what point do you consider something usless & throw it away from your training sessions ?

In SC, your right hand hold on your opponent's right lapel while your left hand hold on your opponent sleeve, and stay in a horse stance (double weight) is a very good defense in wrestling match but it won't work in the striking environment. because if your opponent don't have SC jacket, you have nothing to hold. He can also kick your nuts when you expose your groin to him..

[Chris McKinley]

dragontigerpalm, you're welcome....I'm happy to provide the information.

Ralteria,

RE: "With everything you've said Chris, I'm curious if contextualizing these skills can be done on a smaller scale in bits and pieces.". It can be done on as small a scale as you like, down to individual specific combatives. That's why if the training is structured correctly, it's possible to learn, practice and contextualize a single movement or a very small handful of movements over the course of even one or two training sessions. Not with any traditional Chinese approach, of course, but it can be done.

RE: "Like when any adrenal response kicks in (not in a fight scenario) you make the concious decision to relax and incorporate which ever arts shen fa/body mechanics you are studying.". It doesn't work quite that simply. The adrenal response isn't simply a set of behaviors that you habitually go into like biting your nails that you can simply consciously choose an alternative to. It's a hard-wired physiological response governed by the oldest portion of the brain. You don't just choose to incorporate some given art's shen fa instead and voila, it's done and everything's fine.

Once the adrenal response has occurred, you will be dealing with it, one way or another, and it will still have its deleterious effect on fine motor control that makes things like proper shen fa difficult if not impossible to manifest correctly. This is one of the reasons why I state that if you can't fight without proper shen fa, proper form, zhong ding, and all the various jins, then you can't fight.

RE: "Every time something like this happens you start to make this the body's natural response (relax, sink, start incorporate peng jin, whatever).". Sadly, no you don't. The body's natural response never changes...ever. What you can do, though, is a) to become very familiar with and learn to function despite the adrenal response, b) gradually extinguish or at least mitigate the psycho-emotional triggers that initiate the adrenal response, and c) gradually reset the threshold above which the amygdala "kicks in", gives you a huge adrenal dump, and then takes over your motor responses.

RE: "While it's not contextualized necessarily into the "fight" mode, I would think that it would make incoporating past that point easier since it's associated with an adrenal response.". Lord, if only. Unfortunately, no. Chaining what is initially a conscious behavioral choice to remain calm and retain fine motor control to become an unconscious behavioral response to the adrenal response as a trigger is futile. The neural pathways that comprise the learned, calm, coordinated behavior are not only much, much smaller and weaker than those that serve the autonomic adrenal response, they are circumvented altogether, regardless of their size and strength, once the amygdala takes over and shunts everything through the shorter, stronger and more primitive pathways.

What can be behaviorally altered quite dramatically is your response to the psycho-emotional factors that can precede a confrontation, for those situations where you actually do get some notice before hostilities begin. Put simply, anything that occurs before the amygdala is triggered into taking over can be behaviorally modified. This is where the idea of consciously choosing to remain calm, etc. can actually be a very effective tactic if properly entrained.

[Chowfarn]

At what point do you consider something usless & throw it away from your training sessions ?

He can also kick your nuts when you expose your groin to him..

That's when you say when lying on the ground in pain, "If only didn't think 'Iron Groin' training was a waste of time".

[oldtyger]

I like what you said about "contextualizing" Chris.

I've studied too many arts but it's interesting how things do contextualize on their own even before I think I can do certain skills. One example is that I had done taijiquan for 3 years with a particular teacher and had never been able to do any power release( fajing). Even 4 years later, I was still practicing it on my own unsuccessfully. I decided to take a break from IMA and took a krav maga course( I had already done some with an instructor 4 years prior) and during the 8 weeks I suddenly developed power release while working on 2-person drills.

Consciously contextualizing probably involves a lot of effort into coming up with the skills you want and the drills to develop them.

As for throwing away stuff, that's pretty easy in some cases. For example I learned a bunch of self-defense skills in tang soo do--basically useless compared to what I have since learned in Filipino arts, aikido, and krav maga. Some of the aikido is useless until you train and adapt it to more realistic attacks. Some other techniques I like--I am big on krav maga for highly efficient self-defense methods--can be refined further using IMA skills like body structure although they work fine using only external technique.

Some skills, like rooting, bagua stepping, listening, connecting, etc can be used in any art if you practice it enough and have a deep and wide enough knowledge base.

Rich

[Chris McKinley]

Rich,

That was a great testimony, and it gets to the kind of ideas I'm trying to peddle these days on this board. IMA has some great concepts and material for real-world use. The problem is that it's usually in the custody of people who have no idea how to train someone for real combat. Learning and practicing something only gets you demonstration skill. As you learned by working your Krav Maga, contextualizing that skill is the key that unlocks it for real use against a real, dedicated attacker in a real assault.

We've referenced some of this on the Reverse Engineering thread, and I'm currently working up a curriculum, training format, etc. toward this end with Baguazhang material. There are plenty of places to learn the details and fine points of form, jibengong, shen fa, qigong, etc. from knowledgeable teachers. Unfortunately, schools which then take that skill and provide plenty of training to properly contextualize it are as rare as hen's teeth, even with good instructors. If I can find an adequate training location and enough local interest to justify offering and maintaining such a course, I'm hoping to change that in my area and maybe provide inspiration and/or a template for other IMA teachers who might wish to provide such training for their own students.

[KEND]

Interesting discussion. Over many years when learning a new MA I tried to integrate my previous experience into the new art, in some cases successfully, in others unsuccessfully. My original system-Shaolin, already had integrated other systems into it so I had the work done for me. In approaching Hsing yi however I literally had to forget my previous training to gain the benefits of 'internal' power, this tactic I have employed with several other arts-WC/Systema/ Pentjak/Filipino arts etc. My advice is is to just learn the new art as a beginner, do not try and impose previous experiences until you have a good grasp of what you are doing. On the other hand if the new system feels unnatural check out why it is done that way-my recent experience in Escrima for example led me to a more stripped down version which I found more natural and easily integrated into my previous experience.