rojcewiczj wrote:Lately I have been struck by the sense that, while the body is certainly capable of producing forces, the larger part of the bodies power is not in producing active forces, but rather in producing counter-forces.
Which is to say that, while the body has the power to move, in a larger sense it has the power to NOT move. In relation to an opponent it means that, while one can make movements which effect the opponent directly, the larger
portion of ones ability lies in being able to keep your opponent from effecting yourself, and so effecting your opponent indirectly. Meaning, the less he can move me, the more I can move him. Our muscular force is not the basis of what makes us hard to effect. The counter-force comes out of an innate passivity, a tendency towards stillness which is inseparable from having mass. It seems to me that all muscular/active forces must be increasingly geared around the maintenance of this passive resting state. Do I think this means you should not move your feet, or not move your own body? No, that is largely the practice, to be able to move your own body in every way, without taking your mass out of a resting, sunken, settling state. It seems to me that manifesting the innate counter-force draws many connections through out martial arts, particularly the so called internal styles.
oragami_itto wrote:I think you're talking about inertia. In order to move something you apply an amount of energy to it along a vector that is greater than the combined inertia of the object and friction acting in opposition to your vector.
Movement then exists on a spectrum where effective speed is inversely proportionate to the distance it needs to travel to be fully realized, and bound by the amount of energy that can be put into the movement.
This is all pretty obvious stuff.
And I definitely agree that, at least in Taijiquan, we don't want to disturb our mass. We don't throw it around horizontally like a rock like other arts, we rotate and sink and lift
rojcewiczj wrote: while the body has the power to move, in a larger sense it has the power to NOT move.
rojcewiczj wrote: in producing counter-forces.
rojcewiczj wrote:If my mass it at rest, then it will take a force greater than its 180lbs to get me moving. The question is how capable am I of moving without losing this 180lb pounds of not-moving counter-force. It is omni-directonal when the body remains adjustable.
rojcewiczj wrote:Lately I have been struck by the sense that, while the body is certainly capable of producing forces, the larger part of the bodies power is not in producing active forces, but rather in producing counter-forces.
Which is to say that, while the body has the power to move, in a larger sense it has the power to NOT move. In relation to an opponent it means that, while one can make movements which effect the opponent directly, the larger
portion of ones ability lies in being able to keep your opponent from effecting yourself, and so effecting your opponent indirectly. Meaning, the less he can move me, the more I can move him. Our muscular force is not the basis of what makes us hard to effect. The counter-force comes out of an innate passivity, a tendency towards stillness which is inseparable from having mass. It seems to me that all muscular/active forces must be increasingly geared around the maintenance of this passive resting state. Do I think this means you should not move your feet, or not move your own body? No, that is largely the practice, to be able to move your own body in every way, without taking your mass out of a resting, sunken, settling state. It seems to me that manifesting the innate counter-force draws many connections through out martial arts, particularly the so called internal styles.
rojcewiczj wrote:If my opponent is effected by me but I remain unaffected by my opponent, that is control and it is enough.
rojcewiczj wrote:Lately I have been struck by the sense that, while the body is certainly capable of producing forces, the larger part of the bodies power is not in producing active forces, but rather in producing counter-forces.
Which is to say that, while the body has the power to move, in a larger sense it has the power to NOT move. .
rojcewiczj wrote:If my mass it at rest, then it will take a force greater than its 180lbs to get me moving.
charles wrote:oragami_itto wrote:I think you're talking about inertia. In order to move something you apply an amount of energy to it along a vector that is greater than the combined inertia of the object and friction acting in opposition to your vector.
It's not my intention to nit-pick, but these words have meanings.
To move something, according to Newton and his laws, you need to apply an external force. Energy is not force. Force is a vector quantity: energy is not.
charles wrote:Movement then exists on a spectrum where effective speed is inversely proportionate to the distance it needs to travel to be fully realized, and bound by the amount of energy that can be put into the movement.
Speed is how quickly distance changes: the rate of change of distance. Acceleration is the rate of change of speed (velocity, actually): how quickly velocity changes. If you want an object to speed-up quickly, you need a large acceleration. Newton says, for a given mass, you need a bigger force to create a bigger acceleration. Energy doesn't enter into it.
charles wrote:This is all pretty obvious stuff.
Perhaps not.
charles wrote:And I definitely agree that, at least in Taijiquan, we don't want to disturb our mass. We don't throw it around horizontally like a rock like other arts, we rotate and sink and lift
Again, without acceleration, a mass is just a mass, not a force. How does the mass of the human body create a force if the body (and its mass) does not move? Rotation, sinking and lifting involve moving one's mass. If they don't, no force is developed. (A different discussion is impulse and momentum, but those are well beyond this discussion.)
charles wrote:
The question, then, is how does one use the human body to prevent an externally applied force from either toppling/destabilizing the body or from doing the body harm (i.e. neutralizing the applied force)? Can it be done without developing an equal and opposite force and, if so, how is that done? I suggest to you, therein lies the art, or, at least one side of the coin.
rojcewiczj wrote:If my mass it at rest, then it will take a force greater than its 180lbs to get me moving. The question is how capable am I of moving without losing this 180lb pounds of not-moving counter-force. It is omni-directonal when the body remains adjustable.
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