Yiquan: Han Xingyuan

[qiphlow]

sweet! thanks for that.

[ashe]

i like the waving.

[jpaton]

my teacher's teacher, seen it before but thanks for posting

[xingyijuan]

Looks like a solid old fella! Thank you for the clip!

[jjy5016]

Been a while since I saw that one.

I believe that Han was showing how to redirect force in the first part of the clip.

He's demonstrating power and sticking when he's manhandling the guy in the white shirt. Every time he touches the guy's arm he destroys his root. This was one of the things he emphasized as a necessary skill in hsingyi / yiquan, control the opponent immediately at the point of contact.

Never seems to look as mean on film and in pictures as I'm told he was in real life.

[redmund2905]

Been a while since I saw that one.

I believe that Han was showing how to redirect force in the first part of the clip.

He's demonstrating power and sticking when he's manhandling the guy in the white shirt. Every time he touches the guy's arm he destroys his root. This was one of the things he emphasized as a necessary skill in hsingyi / yiquan, control the opponent immediately at the point of contact.

Never seems to look as mean on film and in pictures as I'm told he was in real life.

Thanks for the commentary, John.

[Strange]

this is what i'm talking about... one-touch, simple, solid, no-nonsense... gongli!!

[jjy5016]

this is what i'm talking about... one-touch, simple, solid, no-nonsense... gongli!!

Makes me wonder why the modern yiquan masters don't seem to be emphasizing this skill or its development.

[dacheng]

What is presented on the clip is exactly what you can regularly see from "modern yiquan masters" - that''s why some time before I already posted link to this clip - after tons of empty force stuff from those who claimed to be from Han Xingyuan's line, finally we could see Han Xingyuan himself doing just the normal, Beijing type of solid, down to earth yiquan

[dacheng]

You can see there methods which we call: gangga (leverage), cemian (side), luoxuan (spiral), fu'an or xia ya (pressing down), gougua (hooking-pulling), which are something which our students are introduced to at most basic level. As for use in contact with partner - pushing hands, at beginning it is just to give students idea, because they need more time spend on solid basic training (zhan zhuang, shi li) in order to fully appreciate it and use it, but anyway, our students at the very beginning are already aware of things demonstrated on this clip.

[dacheng]

One more thing - problem with this one-touch skill - your training partners also work on the same skill and also work on developing ability of neutralizing it, and suddenly it doesn't look that great, if the other person also can do this and also can neutralize this

Some supplementing information: actually it is those less advanced students, who do it like Han on this clip - contact in static situation and issuing power, because it's easier to learn this way and easier to demonstrate. Then there is time for moving to more difficult stages, when you both keep the right controlling-neutralizing forces, making changes during which both of you are trying to take opponent's center, and both of you are redirecting and neutralizing opponent's action - this teaches you something much closer to reality, taking your skill to higher level - this is what Yao Zongxun was explaining to those who didn't understand, why he made some changes. Simple explanation and demonstration (trial) was enough to make them understand difference of levels.

According to Yao Zongxun, those fabulous one-touch skill demonstrations were possible just because opponents were not prepared for something like this, not having solid basis or not being trained to deal with this, and only in such situations the results were so spectacular. But it didn't work so well against someone prepared to deal with this - like when using more developed pushing hands training which he introduced. Then it turned out that you cannot rely to much on it, and you need more ways, like in other martial arts/sports.

This is quite like at some point of time those bjj guys came and started shooting to legs for take down, and winning against everybody else, because people didn't know this, didn't train this and didn't train how to defend against it. Then everybody else started learning it and learning defenses against it, and it stopped to work so miraculously anymore.

[Strange]

jjy5016: i get real REAL peeved when i see ppl who say they do ima or yq bobbing and skipping around like boxers. not that i hv anything against boxers; but i'm going "what wrong with your legs or gravity in the place you're standing; you mean it keeps changing everytime you fight???"

dacheng: yeah thats what i like solid, down-to-earth...cant take much "new, improved, "research" stuf" hee.
re: shooting - reminds me of when JB (Dai Zhi Qiang) showed me xylh elbow Pi to the head at his friends home- its gonna hurt!
ke ke ke

what i really ought to be doing is post a clip of meself doing some zz and/or friction step, then you guys can tell me how to improve myself. Cheers, S.

[dacheng]

As I see it, people pay too much attention to the principles of the basic training, trying to stick to beginners understanding of the principles, while fighting. No chance. It doesn't work. It's like karate people learning kata and trying to fight with exactly the same movements.

The root, the structure etc. it's important, but just as basis for something more advanced. Training zhan zhuang, shi li, you start from root, structure, balance, unifying body, making the movement smooth, making the force stable - homogenous. Then there is time for making changes, but sticking to basic principles. But then the highest stage is "the force is there but as if wasn't, is appearing and disappearing". You look disconected, but at the right moment (contact) it turns out that you are connected, the right structure is there.

When you know about this, then you don't stick to the idea, that you should all the time stay at beginners' level.

If you don't like "new, improved, "research" stuff", then why bothering about learning yiquan, while you could learn something more traditional. Of course it is said that Wang Xiangzhai just moved to the roots - to xingyi/xinyi as it was at beginning (simple). But I don't think anyone could take seriously idea that Wang was actually teaching the same way as first proponents of xinyi/xingyi. Wang's yiquan from the very beginning was "new, improved, "reasearch" stuff", and constantly changing. You get Wang's first book, and you see that it is not just moving to some older variant of xingyi, or revealing something which was kept secret, but it is already criticizing a lot of traditional ideas. So you have the new "research" stuff already at the very beginning of Wang's yiquan, and when you observe next works, when you get to know what his student's were learning, you see that it was all the time reserearching, modyfying and developing, putting students in boxing competitions already at the early period in 1920s, in 1930 concentrating on preparing figthing team for world chalenge tournee, in 1940s passing the task ot teaching most students to the one who was especially keen about boxing, creative and innovative. This innovating, reasearching attitude was such strong in yiquan from the very beginning. It's quite strange then, when people who don't like it this way, still want to learn yiquan, when the choice of traditional, not modyfied arts is such big.

[dacheng]

Of course some people can be happy with basic stuff, and keeping to the ways from early days of yiquan development, and not fighting (not sparring) but just dreaming about how they defeat opponent with one-touch skill (yi chu ji fa). But it's dozens years already from the time, when Yao Zongxun demonstrated that it's daydreaming, because others can get it, and can move further - work a lot on neutralizing it, work on more alive footwork, and you cannot demonstrate your wonderful one-touch skill on them. It was understood years ago, proving that you need to work on normal fighting training, because you cannot count on your opponent being an not moving dummy, so you could enjoy your dream of one-touch skill being the only skill you need.

[dacheng]

what i really ought to be doing is post a clip of meself doing some zz and/or friction step, then you guys can tell me how to improve myself. Cheers, S.

Well, we never evaluate just zhan zhuang or friction steps. You can do them in various ways, and they can serve to develop various skills, principles or aspects of those skills or principles. Once you can do it one way, and next time different way, because you focus on different aspect.

I noticed that people very often evaluate what is on some clips, but they don't really know what is demonstrated. Some were taught something, and they think that it's the only way, not realizing that person on the clip might work on something else.

Yiquan is not just the set of exercises, but it's more about the principles inside. While using quite similiar exercises, some teacher prefers focusing on some principle/aspect using this exercises, but another will do this while introducing different exercise. You need to know the methodology of the school and know what is actually practiced at the moment - because as I said, it could be seemingly the same exercise, but the focus at the moment could be different.

What is really to evaluate is skill, progress in developing skill, or progress in developing ability of using some principle. Student learns to see relation between various exercises and this skill/principle, relation between various exercises (how they are related to the same skill, to aspects of the same skill, to stages of developing this skill). Then correction in one exercise is immediately related to correcting other exercises, checking it in practice with partner. This ways student starts really understanding.