Thank you Wuyizidi ! Excellent !

[Aged Tiger]

That's the sad part. Only if you have CMA as profession - a full time job, you can have the time that is necessary. How many can manage to earn a living on his hobby? - on the things he/she loves? And the question is - do you really want to have CMA as your job?

Well, I luckily get to live that dream, but I can tell you that it doesn't bring home nearly enough bacon..... My wife earns WAY more than I do.

Answer to 2nd question is "sometimes yes, sometimes no", it can be very trying at times.

C

[Ian]

If you train 16 hours per day, you have no time for teh womens (and other worthwhile things).

[klonk]

One man has perhaps one or two fights for his life, in his whole sixty to one hundred years. If you fight more, you are living wrong, or else you signed up for the duty. The typical person needs fitness and body awareness more than he needs chopsockey.

I used to rave enraged that CMA was being whored out as fitness and relaxation exercise, but now I'm not so sure. If you train 16 hours a day for an opponent who never arrives, you are out the 16 hours a day you wasted on him.

But if you went to class whenever, and practiced at home sometimes, lowered your blood pressure and improved your balance, you got something worth going to class for. You will hand an unwelcome surprise to the non-expert who gets beligerent, then go back to planting tulips or whatever it is you primarily do.

[gretel]

I used to rave enraged that CMA was being whored out as fitness and relaxation exercise, but now I'm not so sure. If you train 16 hours a day for an opponent who never arrives, you are out the 16 hours a day you wasted on him.

But if you went to class whenever, and practiced at home sometimes, lowered your blood pressure and improved your balance, you got something worth going to class for. You will hand an unwelcome surprise to the non-expert who gets beligerent, then go back to planting tulips or whatever it is you primarily do.

i am so happy about seeing this on emptyflower that i could -- i was going to say cry but then i told myself htfu.

you've described me, except for my dash of agressiveness. this thread made me first question my practice and then it affirmed it. what more could i ask, except for the opportunity to hit people once in a while?

gretel

[klonk]

For those who, by choice or necessity, do not train 16 hours a day, I have a bit of free advice. It is warranted to be worth at least as much as you paid.

Select two or three favorite techniques and drill the heck out of them. These are what you go to if you need to defend yourself. There are, give or take, about forty moves in taijiquan. In 16 hours are 960 minutes, so if you gave equal emphasis to each move, you would give 24 minutes to each, in a day, if you did nothing the whole time but taiji forms.

If you have specialized in three moves, you get the same training density in one hour twelve minutes, so you can be a 16 hour a day expert, in just three moves, for a time investment that is more supportable in the day to day realities of most people.

Round it off to an hour, or whatever your schedule will support. If you do half an hour three times a week, you end up light years ahead of the untrained person. The important point is that a small repertoire can be brought to a higher level of competence, if you can't devote your life to gongfu.

Oh, and Gretel? You're right, htfu!

[64Palms]

Master Wang dismissed the request: "you youngsters today, you do this for 3, 4 hours a day, that's not practicing, that's playing. Anything that is deep and complex requires full time professional effort to achieve high level mastery. I already taught you guys more things than you can practice at your current level of commitment. What's the point of having shallow understanding of one more thing?! Besides, Hou Tian Fa may contain interesting applications/techniques, but its essence is the same as that of 13 Postures. There are no meaningful differences. It's still Taiji."

An exceptional saying from an exceptional man. Interestingly though many of you have discussed martial arts as a hobby - a bit of fun on the side while your other time is spent living your life, working etc. One element of the above - the "professional" possibly has a double meaning. Yes to earn money from your art, however, it could also be interpreted as "full time [living] effort". That is that regardless of the work that one applies themself to day in and day out they can still apply their prinmciples of their martial practice. This, i beleive, reflects the long term goal of martial art training and in-particular Internal Martial Arts.

I can only speak of my experience and need for training - for me i use martial arts and my full time profession (Chinese medicine), and my interaction with family and all that are around me as an expression of the way for greater realisation of my own being and the world i live in. I "express" this way (some call it Dao) through movement, through medicine - i try, though i am still a beginner, to ensure that every breath, movement, conversation etc is in accordance with the principles of the ways that i have learned. If i do not strive for this understanding and "live" my art then why waste my time with the internal mechanisms of it? Of course this is deductive of the martial components - which i love - it assists that interaction and teaches one to connect to the possibilities and control of their own body.

This comes back to the underlying developments of the Internal the Nei in our Quan, Gong etc. With deep seeded roots into the ideologies of Daoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism (and the many off-shhots of these) where the goals were, respectively, understanding of the body through understanding its interactions and ability to harmonise with the enviroment around it, understanding the being and its interactions on the socio-political level, and comprehension and detachment of self - and so on, our internal martial arts should reflect one and the same. They should lend themselves to our daily interactions, stresses, our entire life - they should be our life. Otherwise, i agree, you are just "playing".

[TaoBoxer]

When I first started practicing Taiji my teacher used to say all the time "I'm no professional..." I never got what he meant. Earler this year when I was climbing Wudang, I came across some kids practicing Xingyi outside at like 8am. It was below zero, they had been up training since 530 and would be training for atleast 12 hours that day.

When I was practicing TKD back in the day, our classes were about an hour. I can't even imagine getting in my car for a 1 hour class now. My classes are usually like 4 hours now, and I try to get in an hour a day on my own... and it's still not nearly enough.

Lewitt

[Wuyizidi]

Wuyizidi - I have been reading about GM Wang, great life story, its interesting that at old age he defeated an expert Shorinji Kenpo fighter, I heard those guys are amongst the best fighters in Japan.

The fighter Master Wang beat was Yamazaki sensei. He and Arai sensei were the co-headmasters at the headquarters. I studied Shorinji Kempo before. I met Yamazaki sensei in 1998. In addition to being a great fighter, he's a very thoughtful educator. We trained with him for two weeks at the headquarter. He's the tall fighter on the left, starting at 4:30.



The interesting thing is how that encounter seemed to have changed him. Both he and Arai sensei are so perfect in their joint lock techniques already. But these days, there's a big stylistic difference between the two. In Arai sensei's case, if he starts to do a technique on you, and you struggle, he can adjust so that he can still do the same technique on you. Whereas for Yamazaki sensei, he doesn't try to force anything, he will follow your movement and do something else to get you. That is more in line with internal martial art idea.

I don't know if they are the best fighter in Japan. But amongst empty hand styles, they are the most traditional. They have great fighting reputation. K1 has been trying to get them to compete for a long time, but they always refused. If you make martial art a sport, then you have to have rules. This gives rise to at least 2 problems: you cannot use some of the best, most deadly techniques against the best, most vulnerable targets, and people will try to win by cheating/bending the rules. It's a different mentality. We practiced all the grappling skills over hardwood floor, with no mats. I can tell you falling on those, especially when you land on a bony part, is a completely different feeling.

And check out this master - Bondo sensei. This is what real pressure point fighting looks like. He's a traditional medicine practitioner by profession (in Shorinji Kempo, except the teachers at the headquarter, and headmasters in some major cities, students are not allowed to be professional martial artists). So he's extremely knowledgeable about that. Within Shorinji Kempo, you have to reach 5th level blackbelt before they teach you this.



Wuyizidi

[Wuyizidi]

Watching film of him , it seems his main style is Yin Bagua , and second Wu Taijiquan. Did he explain which was his main personal practice ?

He studied Yin Style Bagua with Ma Gui first when he was 13. Yang Yuting, Wang Maozhai's disciple, also studied Bagua with very famous masters and was active in that circle. So Ma Gui introduced Master Wang to Yang Yuting when he was 15, and that's when he became Yang Yuting's disciple also.

Master Wang's main practice is Taiji. He likes to joke with his students "after you understand Taiji, you become very lazy - everything else is too much effort!" This does meant you can be more lazy in your practice if you do Taiji, it means in fighting, compared to all other styles, Taiji skills use the least amount of physical effort in neutralizing what the opponent is trying to do to you.

That said, Master Wang always maintained, in terms of physical movement, Yin 64 is his most favorite empty hand form of all. My teacher once asked him "what special benefit did you get out of practicing that, training-wise what does it do better than other styles?" Master Wang's reply was basically it's especially good at training footwork (since the footwork in the form is more complex and challenging when compared to other styles).

Sometimes it looks like Master Wang is doing Bagua, but that's more of a habit: the younger you are when you start doing something, the more natural (as if you are born with it) it is. Bagua was the first style he learned, at a very younger age. So it's very deeply ingrained. So when he fights with someone, many times this one very useful Bagua bridge hand technique just come out naturally. When you master a bunch of different things, it all become one inside you. In a fight, where things happen so quickly, the only thing that comes out is what is already ingrained/natural in you, sometimes you don't even have full control of what comes out.

He spent a lot of times practicing Bagua and Xingyi when he was younger. In fact Han Muxia wanted to make him the next lineage holder in his own group. But his main focus has always been Wu Style, and that is what he is mostly known for to the general public.

Wuyizidi

[TaoJoannes]

Well said. We are bound by our lifestyle...unless we pull a Thoreau.

Even then we won't reach the same level, Michael Jordan is who he is because he's constantly competing against a very large pool of motivated, talented people. He wouldn't be as good if he shut himself in some isolated mountain/lake and train just by himself.

But he could develop one hell of a free throw.

[I am...]

Training 16 hours a day? I guess it comes down to what you consider training. I have trained my art for 4-5 hours a day, 5-6 days a week for the last 10 years, and another one that way for 4 years previous to that. I can say that there is a point where the art begins to wear down your body. Learning how to train smarter, not harder is the stuff of the really good practitioners. If you make your bagua walk, your walk, then you are training all day. If you are talking about doing 16 hours of circle walking middle or lower basin, then have fun trying to do that. I will bring you some new wheels for your wheelchair in 10 years. Pro boxers are a good example I tend to follow. They do their demanding training, on average, 3 hours a day or so, that would include running, bag work, pad work, sparring and shadowboxing. If you are counting meditation and the like, I can see that taking up more time, but training your fundamentals at a good intensity more than that daily is a good way to get an over excited, burned out nervous system, and tons of joint problems, just for starters. If you guys are curious, you can always just take like a 2 day vacation, tell everyone you are leaving town, and then go train that way and see what it is like. You don't have to take my word for it.

[MasterKiller]

Sorry, but you guys are full of sh1t if you think anyone trains 10 hours a day. Professional athletes generally train about 3 hours a day. You might spend 10 hours at the school or whatever, but I SERIOUSLY doubt most of that is anywhere near the level of activity you need to train to develop fighting skills that work against other fighters.

For most Joes, training correctly for 1.5 hours three times a week will build enough skill that you don't have worry about most people f@cking with you.

I've had kids fight and win in the cage and on the mat with 6 months of training, which is about 108 hours total training time. You guys should be supermen.

[zenshiite]

When I was in high school I trained for 1m springboard diving 3-5 hours a day 5 days a week, before and after school. I wish I could have that kind of time and dedication now to my ba gua. As it stands I'm lucky to do even an hour a day.... it's rough to devote any time to something you love and want to do when you've got a physically demanding job.

As for the training professionals do... well, I know that Michael Phelps trains 5 hours a day. We've seen what that guy's level of swimming is.

Let's face it, no matter how much we might have fantasized about it at one time... we're never going to be legendary kung fu heroes.