playing humble and not playing humble

[Bodywork]

Honest is a good word here. If you have the ability to disrupt and change and enter or go around and you don't, then you are not being humble, you are being dishonest and or merciful. I think people need to spend all their time winning and learing to control in order to win. You wil lose plenty enough times along the way to learn to be humble, but you'll also learn to win against odds stacked against you.
FWIW, yeilding is never;
yield / yield.
its yield / enter
You never just give in all your structure and simply yield. That's a disaster. Yield is power, for the simple reason that the incoming or outgoing force supports your other parts in opposition.
Dan

[johnwang]

You can play the humble game by letting your opponent to feel that you are a tiger and trying to eat him alive. When you force your opponent to play 100% defense, you know that he is truly "humble".

When a tiger fights against a rabbit, the tiger won't feel humble but the rabbit will.

[C.J.Wang]

FWIW, yeilding is never;
yield / yield.
its yield / enter
You never just give in all your structure and simply yield. That's a disaster. Yield is power, for the simple reason that the incoming or outgoing force supports your other parts in opposition.
Dan

Completely agreed.

One of the main gripes I have about certain Taiji schools that overemphasize (and misinterpret) softness in training is that students would be told to stay as limp as noodles with no structure and just keep on yielding and yielding -- sometimes to the point where they start perfomring the "Matrix" bullet-doging lean-backs.

[johnwang]

When your opponent's force coming at you, you don't need to yield, you can always 'bounce" him away.

http://johnswang.com/sc18.wmv (at 0.59)

[neijia_boxer]

everyone has said some cool things, maybe i just been being to yielding, limp, and soft chilling with the CMC crowd. time to get YANG on the tui shou.....thats for CJ, bodywork, John Wang and others. thanks

As for sparring, i dont mind the people trying to talk in the middle of training for a pointer, however they usually arent the instructor i am there to take guidance from. If i go to someone class or school its because i really want to learn from that skilled person, not another classmate.

[Bodywork]

The big mistake is thinking of yang side or yin side...there is no such thing. It is always moving in balance. Fighting in balance, I don't fight as more yang energy. It's in balance. My yin creates the yang, as knockout power. But you can practice to retain both without sending too much energy around you. That's your choice in playing nice, but make no mistake anyone touching usually will know and sense you.
In the real world, bouncing or sending is yiedling. Yielding is also hitting, yielding is in beating on someone; in the way you hit, which also makes it very hard to block your energy, while greatly reducing your own need to chamber or wind up for a strike. Yielding can be in every throw...all of them. It's the way you manage the energy and state of balance in yourself; in your legs, the kua, your dantian , your back, arms, even in your ribs. Why? Because yielding isn't "going away" yielding can be be a balanced part of entering.
If you want to try and understand it- think of grabbing an 1 1/2" steel rod bent in a spiraling arc. Imagine it is attached to a 2 horsepower motor turning it. At any point you contact it- it is arcing "away" from your hand and drawing you, with the other side of the arc feeding your hand and going around it. In the end, you're owned.
The harder you squeeze the faster it will take your body with your hand by locking your bones; so you have to let it break your grip. And the arc never did a thing to you, it just sat their turining in-itself. The arc can be your trunk, your leg, your arm or everything at the same time.
So Yin and yang can be a mother of power held in stasis or balance. sending out and taking in or it can be gentle and slow. Velocity and the amount or force you use is your choice, but the "presense" of that choice should be constant and recognizable on contact, IMO.
Learning to do it solo, then in slow paired form, then in judo or grappling then in MMA is a gradual build up that takes time.
Or you can just go learn to fight. It's faster and no will care. Make no mistake though, they are not the same thing...and never will be.

Dan

[neijia_boxer]

The big mistake is thinking of yang side or yin side...there is no such thing. It is always moving in balance. Fighting in balance, I don't fight as more yang energy. It's in balance. My yin creates the yang, as knockout power. But you can practice to retain both without sending too much energy around you. That's your choice in playing nice, but make no mistake anyone touching usually will know and sense you.
In the real world, bouncing or sending is yiedling. Yielding is also hitting, yielding is in beating on someone; in the way you hit, which also makes it very hard to block your energy, while greatly reducing your own need to chamber or wind up for a strike. Yielding can be in every throw...all of them. It's the way you manage the energy and state of balance in yourself; in your legs, the kua, your dantian , your back, arms, even in your ribs. Why? Because yielding isn't "going away" yielding can be be a balanced part of entering.
If you want to try and understand it- think of grabbing an 1 1/2" steel rod bent in a spiraling arc. Imagine it is attached to a 2 horsepower motor turning it. At any point you contact it- it is arcing "away" from your hand and drawing you, with the other side of the arc feeding your hand and going around it. In the end, you're owned.
The harder you squeeze the faster it will take your body with your hand by locking your bones; so you have to let it break your grip. And the arc never did a thing to you, it just sat their turining in-itself. The arc can be your trunk, your leg, your arm or everything at the same time.
So Yin and yang can be a mother of power held in stasis or balance. sending out and taking in or it can be gentle and slow. Velocity and the amount or force you use is your choice, but the "presense" of that choice should be constant and recognizable on contact, IMO.
Learning to do it solo, then in slow paired form, then in judo or grappling then in MMA is a gradual build up that takes time.
Or you can just go learn to fight. It's faster and no will care. Make no mistake though, they are not the same thing...and never will be.

Dan

brilliant writing bodywork! I try to understand the spiraling arc being turned by engines. i get the point, i just cant visualize the twisting metal, but i understand where your going. i've learned more than i thought i would from the humble or not humble thread so far.

[Bodywork]

To make it even simpler imagine pushing on a ball with the flat of your hand. If the holder of the ball maintains a perfect zero point and starts to turn the ball; one half of the hand is pulled and led away from the pushers body the other half is driven "into" the pushers wrist and body by the arc of the ball. An arc can become a pivot ppint at any part it makes contact with, a fluidly moving arc and accent any portion of that power by will.
In actual movement the body is two opposing helical spirals built around a central axis wcich holds power up and down, over and in and in turning in the horozintal plane. On top of that the arms, legs, and trunk can turn with contradicting spirals in themselves that are joined with the whole. Trained well its not something you turn on, its someting you are. The potentials are out the window.
The fun part is one grapplers come in contact with the sprials that keep neutralzing their throws and out of them they then feel the power of the fists, elbow, knees and feet the spirals produce.
Play time.
Dan

[cdobe]

To make it even simpler imagine pushing on a ball with the flat of your hand. If the holder of the ball maintains a perfect zero point and starts to turn the ball; one half of the hand is pulled and led away from the pushers body the other half is driven "into" the pushers wrist and body by the arc of the ball. An arc can become a pivot ppint at any part it makes contact with, a fluidly moving arc and accent any portion of that power by will.
In actual movement the body is two opposing helical spirals built around a central axis wcich holds power up and down, over and in and in turning in the horozintal plane. On top of that the arms, legs, and trunk can turn with contradicting spirals in themselves that are joined with the whole. Trained well its not something you turn on, its someting you are. The potentials are out the window.
The fun part is one grapplers come in contact with the sprials that keep neutralzing their throws and out of them they then feel the power of the fists, elbow, knees and feet the spirals produce.
Play time.
Dan

What do you mean by zero point? I'm not familiar with this term.

TIA

[bruce]

For the most part, Shifu doesn't allow me to "fa" people in push hands.

At first I thought he just wanted me to watch and learn and not get caught up in "winning". Over time though I have realized he was aiming at something higher. When you only play "defense" and do not allow yourself to attempt any applications for a long enough time, eventually your hand gets forced. Applications "happen" but in a very different way then if you went looking for them. It kind of forced some light on how to apply things right at the moment when the other guy thinks he is taking the initiative.

Actually, in the little Muay Thai I did my coach had a similar idea, just didn't take it as far. Defense first. Once you had learned to comfortably stay "in the pocket" you could then start to pick your shots and not waste much energy.

i think that is a great concept. to sort of reverse engineer applications.

[grzegorz]

There are a few different things you can do.

The first thing is not to let your ego get the best of you.

I run into this a lot in judo and bjj. It used to annoy me but now I just tell myself that this guy is very competitive, focus defense and go along with it.

In fact the other day we were doing pummeling exercises and we started from a neutral position and once we got the underhook we were supposed to stop. But with one guy, there's always one, he wouldn't stop. I'd get the underhook and he'd repummel. I suppose I could have tried to prove something and played along but what's the point? He's the competitive one it's his problem.

As Omar mentioned when someone goes overboard just use it as an opportunity to focus on defense and wait for the counter.

Although in push hands it's pretty annoying and a lot tougher be to nice. I can see why some people only push with certain people because strangers in parks are usually out to best you. I'm impressed when people can keep their cool in those situations. Nice one Omar.

[Bhassler]

One strategery is to just change the rules of the game. So if you're better than someone and don't want to just crush them, make up some constraints for yourself that make it harder for you to achieve your goals-- so you're doing your own drill within a drill. Similarly, if someone is too competitive and wants to go beyond the assigned drill, then for you that drill becomes about dealing with that competitive guy without compromising yourself and without escalating (or whatever). There's really no need to become frustrated or upset, just change your perspective.