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
windwalker wrote:Everyone has an opinion, mine does not include emotion...
Cheeky fucker. "I said "Emotional content" not anger!"
People play by rulesets in sports to train harder more safely - except powerslap... but we don't talk about powerslap. Judo and wrestling could easily train to spike people on their heads like a football but then we wouldn't have much of a talent pool left - landing them on their back seems close enough. Could snap every joint you catch, but a tap seems like a reasonable acceptance of defeat. Could beat someone to death, but a referee-stoppage TKO seems like a decent halfway point. Push hands is a drill, there is no consequence in normal use, I've seen and experienced lively roushou through my bagua training but the number of people training at that level was very small. The rules in actual tcc PH competition seem to make it even less relevant to combative training.
But all that said - I'll mirror you, I have lots of respect for traditional teachers I've trained under - they had beautiful and relevant skills for their art and I value what I learned from them. None punched me as hard as the ex pro-boxer, kicked me as hard as my Kru in Thailand, ripped me off my feet like the wrestler from Belarus, or made me feel as helpless on the mat as a BJJ world champion...
For me it's about fighting well in any context. If it's not about fighting for you, say it's not about fighting. No dispute, just honesty about what it's for.
wayne hansen wrote:If u have good tai chi basics you can learn off everyone I got a great deal from wrestlers I remember throwing a punch at George Barnes he neutralisée it like a Ba Kua master Next thing my feet were above his head and my head facing the floor He said do you know what the hard part is now Making your feet hit the floor before your head does We don’t have a tradition of wrestling here in Aus like you do in the states However I was lucky enough to have two cousins who were Australian Champions and an uncle who was a wrestling and boxing coach So plenty of painful free lessons
Sea.Wolf.Forge wrote: Cheeky fucker. "I said "Emotional content" not anger!"
Missed it...feel free to point out where you said this
For me it's about fighting well in any context. If it's not about fighting for you, say it's not about fighting. No dispute, just honesty about what it's for.
You should say "competing" not fighting, your a competitor
No I'm not a competitor.
Both you and Wayne use examples of things you either don't train or practice..confusing it with experience...
Experience is a good teacher. Do agree for anyone stepping into a ring, or any type of competition they should have the relevant experience to do so..at the expected level of engagement..
But all that said - I'll mirror you, I have lots of respect for traditional teachers I've trained under - they had beautiful and relevant skills for their art and I value what I learned from them. None punched me as hard as the ex pro-boxer, kicked me as hard as my Kru in Thailand, ripped me off my feet like the wrestler from Belarus, or made me feel as helpless on the mat as a BJJ world champion...
Did or could any of the Boxers, or others do what ever those traditional teachers did ? Could a boxer do what the wrestler did, the wrestler do what a boxer did ?
Would not agree that "taiji" is basic wrestling. Although do see how others not having developed taiji skill sets might feel so..
What is shown has very little to do with "taiji" methods outside of naming conventions, superficial movements. Does it matter,,,not really the teacher in the clip is not known for taiji.... why would one look or use him as an example of it.
Kinda like Wayne, mentioned throwing a punch not being a boxer....feeling it was a punch as someone who knows how to punch would throw one...
Was it, is it ?
donno....Wayne says he practices taiji, you mentioned outside of boxers most can not hit as hard as a boxer...
Is Wayne a boxer or taiji exponent
a better clip showing those who practice taiji testing their practice with those who do not..within a format that both agree with.
This compilation shows the efficacy of certain taijiquan (aka "tai chi") techniques in a live-resistance setting. Some of these clips come from full-contact matches between taijiquan practitioners, a practice known as tuishou ("push hands").
Others show friendly sparring between representatives of taijiquan and representatives of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, MMA, wrestling, and Muay Thai. See if you can spot the legendary Marcelo Garcia!
The point of this video is not to prove that taijiquan is somehow "superior" to all other martial arts. Rather, it shows that (1) when properly trained against resisting opponents, taijiquan has legitimate martial application, and
(2) that certain proprietary taijiquan techniques could augment the arsenal of a modern mixed martial artist.
Last edited by windwalker on Tue Oct 17, 2023 1:49 pm, edited 6 times in total.
A world champion Thai-style kickboxer was shot to death in the middle of a busy San Francisco street Friday after he chased down a hit-and-run driver who had slammed into his parked car minutes earlier.
Stopped by his gym a couple of weeks earlier, chatted with him nice guy, very strong views...
Unfortunately, not able to make distinction between "fighting" and competition.. feeling both are the same....maybe not understanding or unable to, that it's best not to fight if possible..
windwalker wrote: it's best not to fight if possible..
Nothing I do has anything to do with "fighting". It's avoiding conflict where possible and, failing that, ending it as quickly as possible with as little damage to life, limb, and property as possible.
terrible about the road rage murder. every day close calls for fender benders to near-mad-max stuff happen around here. not to stereotype the drivers, but in keeping with the demographics of my town, they are almost always mild-mannered-looking, overweight, middle aged people, not some young adult male road rage nut job with a gun.
for avoiding conflict in this kind of situation, avoiding rush hour is so far the best "self-defense technique". the dash cam is there for evidence, but not as a prevention/avoidance technique. "martial arts"? "fighting"? "competition"? shouldn't even be in the picture. unless we say it's about awareness and mindfulness and those sorts of things. but those aren't specific to martial arts or "fighting" or "competition".
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 / “most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. Source of all true art & science
No I am not a boxer nor a wrestler However I have faced both on the street and in the gym I come from a wrestling family and spent a lot of time grappling as a youth In backyards not formal competition I don’t see the relevance of your remarks in regards to what I said
Don't put power into the form let it naturally arise from the form
This guy is basically telling us that water is wet.
All of Chinese Kung Fu (internal and external) has wrestling (Shuai Jiao) inside it. It’s intrinsic to the whole of the martial art. It’s not a hidden fact. It’s celebrated. I would wager that every martial artist in China has done Shuai Jiao at some point in their life.
In my bagua school almost everyone has a SJ jacket. We have SJ matches at seminars for fun. In Bagua every movement is a strike, a throw and a lock. So it’s not hard for someone who knows Shuai Jiao, wrestling or judo to spot the throws.
Traditional Form-wise I garner that Taijiquan is even closer to Shuai Jiao, or less evolved, then Bagua or Xingyi.
All Kung Fu adds striking onto Shuai Jiao. But the uniqueness of the Internal styles is the neigong and the body qualities/ skills that come from it. But those skills can be added to other kung fu. Wing Chun has incorporated the Zhongding skill that Yang Taijiquan has become known for, and I would wager that there is more Westerners in the Wing Chun world now who have it then in the Western Taijiquan world.
So it’s not far fetched to see Zhongding being added into just a straight Greco Roman wrestling, in the future. Who knows it’s probably already happening.
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One part moves, every part moves; One part stops, every part stops.
D_Glenn wrote: So it’s not far fetched to see Zhongding being added into just a straight Greco Roman wrestling, in the future. Who knows it’s probably already happening.
The ability to not be pushed. Someone can even be standing on one leg and they can redirect every push you give. They feel like a steel pole cemented into the ground. I don’t know the history of it all but Peter Ralston is the first westerner who had it and was teaching it, that I know of. I’ve done push hands with a student of his.
My teacher gave a me a very loose analogy for Zhongding. If you spin a coin on a table and at first it moves around the table until eventually it might stop in one place and spin. That’s Zhongding. But in Bagua we want to achieve it in Circle Turning. So we would take that analogy further, where you would pick the table up with the perfectly spinning coin, and tilt the table around to get the coin to start moving in circles again, only in Zhongding.
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Last edited by D_Glenn on Wed Oct 18, 2023 9:20 am, edited 1 time in total.
One part moves, every part moves; One part stops, every part stops.
Okay I think we normally refer to that particular effect as rooting perhaps?
Someone can even be standing on one leg and they can redirect every push you give.
That seems familiar, but not necessarily the same as rooting mentioned above or what you mention below.
They feel like a steel pole cemented into the ground.
Is this description based on your own experience or someone else's description?
A teacher has described zhong ding to me as the point of neutralization. The place where yin and yang come together and are equalized. That conception sort of overlays onto what you're describing, I believe. It's the mechanism by which the ability to not be pushed is achieved in Taijiquan. Your approach might be different.
It's like, we don't put energy in to resist, and we don't run away from it to separate, we put enough into to meet and balance it perfectly, and in so doing, join with the system as a whole, pick the fulcrum we'd like to lever from, and turn with as much power as we like/need.
wayne hansen wrote:Not being pushed is good until the hand pushing holds a knife
Sorta relates to the thread debating the question of whether empty hand techniques evolved before or after armed hand techniques. I.e., what empty hand techniques would also work against weapons.
One of my teachers would emphasize that a hand should be considered sharp, hot, and treated accordingly. Otoh, in fma, the learning sequence often goes from weapon to empty hand. You'd learn stick (or sharp knife/spada, in some traditions) and then learn two person empty hand techniques.
It's always done differently in tcc, of course, but the idea is to learn how to extend the hand's (body's) energy to the end of the weapon. So, the process is from short weapon to longer ones.
"A man is rich when he has time and freewill. How he chooses to invest both will determine the return on his investment."
Origami, that is from my experience. Obviously I could just charge into the guy and he would fall. It’s just a another tool in one’s shed.
Zhongding is probably maybe 5-10% of importance in things to practice. My teacher said that he could easily just go to a park in Beijing and start demonstrating his Zhongding skills and have a couple hundred sycophants begging him to take their money. But his true skills are in fighting. That would be an utter waste of his decades of fighting and he would rather pass the fighting skills on. Zhongding demonstrations rarely attracts people who want to learn how to fight.
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Last edited by D_Glenn on Wed Oct 18, 2023 3:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.
One part moves, every part moves; One part stops, every part stops.
