thanks for the discussion guys.
This is a bit of a bug bare of mine tbh:
What it suggests is that many spend too much time intellectualizing, or do so for its own sake.
In my course we do 4 - 5 hour sessions. This session is split down to about an hour of theory (spread over 15 minute blocks) and 3 or 4 of physical training. But why do we need the theory?
I think if you walked into any high level sports academy in the world you would also see a lot of people intellectualizing technique, method, performance etc. Finding, through study, the best possible way to achieve the results and some of that will be telling the athletes how and why they need to do something a certain way. I coached national level volleyball and county level badminton aside from MA's so maybe that is why i have the technical outlook.
But honestly I believe this is my role as a coach, Its my job to research why things work the way they work and then use that information to give the best possible advice to people i coach. I actually pass on a fraction of what i am studying myself on the intellectual side as a lot of it would not help with coaching the physical method. But i need that knowledge to back up the coaching and explain to people what they feel me actually doing.
Talking frankly for a second ...
In my experience it is DEFINITELY not enough to just say "wave your hands like this and you will get it" or to throw your students around saying Chinese words in their face as they look on blankly, This is
not good coaching. IMA is viewed differently to all other physical/mental endeavors when it shouldn't be in my opinion.
People look blankly and wave their hands about for YEARS and never really get what they are doing. I have 2 students of Chen and yang Tai chi who have trained with well known masters for 35 years and 30 years respectively. FAR longer than i have trained and yet they came to me and stayed with me because when we crossed hands they didn't have anything at all. How is this possible when i have trained a fraction of the time they have! With coaching in an easy to understand, non magical way that actually explained the method in clear terms they got hugely increased grasp of the training they had done for 30 years. The caveat is always that they still have to train it ... and train it hard.
I feel that the real knowledge of what your doing, exactly what your doing and why, is even more vital in IMA's than it is in other physical endeavors. This field is a minefield of frauds, mystical term, incorrect interpretations of Chinese and more importantly bad Coaching, often in the name of tradition. Certainly that is not a rule and there are really good teachers out there, many far better than me in both the methods and the coaching, but in my personal experience they are the exception and not the rule.
I was going to quote Charles' post where he talks about 'chi' here to illustrate my point but its been removed. Not to single you out Charles i respect your understanding as probably higher than mine. But it opens the door as to "whats Chi? how do you move it? " I have tried to answer these questions with a model that explains them but removes the need to use them.
All the best all.
Happy training.