High level vs. low level

[johnwang]

CMA people like to tall about "high level" this and high level that. Karate guys, boxers, wrestlers, Judo guys, MMA guys don't talk about it. What is high level vs. low level in your definition? Your thought?

[everything]

One aspect that is easier to talk about is the sport aspect. Participating and doing well at the highest level of competition in sports with many competitors. E.g., USA D1 wrestling. Olympic judo or other combat sports. Obviously the more popular the event, the harder it is (mathematically) to be high level. By this definition, a push hands competition is low level.

[BruceP]

Maximum effect with the least amount of effort

[Dmitri]

Try brushing your teeth with one hand, and then with the other. Your "usual" hand would be high-level, the other one low-level.

[Steve James]

Try brushing your teeth with one hand, and then with the other. Your "usual" hand would be high-level, the other one low-level.

[Appledog]

CMA people like to tall about "high level" this and high level that. Karate guys, boxers, wrestlers, Judo guys, MMA guys don't talk about it. What is high level vs. low level in your definition? Your thought?

In Japanese arts the term used to describe a high level skill is (generally) referring to it as gokui i.e. secret techniques. All public techniques are presented to you visually or otherwise so you can learn them, and gokui are generally shortcuts that you don't figure out until many many years of practice, or handed down by 'genius' players. An example is the gokui surrounding the game of Go (Wei-Qi). In Go, you are taught to memorize many josekis, but the realization of how to use this knowledge efficiently does not really come to you until just after the shodan level. Nevertheless, if you weren't taught these josekis, you would not reach that level so quickly; and if you were told how to use them it wouldn't have helped you anyways. So lets say that studying joseki, more or less, as a technique is a gokui, a knowledge or a practice, that acts effectively as a shortcut to your progress in the art.

Thus we can eliminate the notion of dedication, time practicing, quality of teacher, and general content from the equation assuming all these are present what we are looking at is the nature of what makes something high level or not is the acceptance of a type of theoretical knowledge that one may or may not understand when it is explained or shown to them.

This kind of knowledge and teaching requires a trusting student and a trustworthy teacher, and will present itself most often when both the student and the teacher have something to lose in the relationship, i.e. in a discipleship or familial sort of arrangement. In any case in this type of relationship with this type of knowledge being passed around you could say that the teaching of the art is not a spray-n-pray approach or a "lets hop they pick it up" approach but instead by the very nature of what a gokui is, i.e. a method designed to shortcut progress, the gokui (or "high level teachings") themselves are designed to ensure the student makes progress one way or another. Sometimes this takes the form of a keystone practice where you "have to do this" to progress and "this" is not taught to outsiders. In any case this kind of teaching and knowledge is generally reserved for those people who have dedicated themselves to the art, because in any other case there is no point in teaching or passing it down because there would be no point to it, or for other reasons like it wouldn't be understood or it would get watered down, or stolen and changed (to the embarrassment of the teacher, i.e. the teacher's name would be on something that was false). Or even that the students wouldn't have time or level to reach there, for example there is only so much you can do in 1 or 2 hours a week and even after 10 years if the students dont practice at home, the best thing for them is to do the form 3 times in an hour and then go home with minor corrections. So some people 'do it to themselves' so to speak.

Yet from what I have seen, no one really expected the development and mass communication and dissemination of information which is the internet and there are almost no true secrets left in CMA, and the only thing you would need to do is be able to discern the wheat from the chaff when reading stories and rumors about CMA. Which is actually not that hard but would still take a couple of years of honest practice at minimum. And there is always more to learn it seems.

So I'd say 'high level' means you are on this type of road, which is zeroed-in on the correct sort of gokui training, for your particular purpose and goals, and low level means you are just some random practitioner who might not even have any real goals when studying the art. There is also I would say a great middle ground of people who got involved in CMA not really understanding what it is, and as they learned more about it and what it is they approached it with an open mind and decided to accept it for what it is. Including the internet researcher mentioned above. But these kinds of people, paradoxically, since they chose to accept the art 'for what it is' or for what it appeared to be at the time, got stuck because the art wasn't given to them in the sense of a child learning from his father, but more in the sense of a university student choosing an elective course. I.E. they only ask questions about what they know, not about what they don't know. So I would define that as a sort of middle level where people have some knowledge, perhaps interesting knowledge, but at the same time find themselves stuck and unable to make continuous progress throughout their career. Or maybe they count themselves out at the start because they don't treat it like a career. Or perhaps they feel like they are professionals or that they know a lot because they figured a lot of it out on their own or found some lucky knowledge from a good teacher, and practiced hard, but this isn't really enough to be high level. If I found myself in that situation the best thing would be to hope that in my next life I would find a better relationship with a better teacher. There are gokui surrounding this too, about being middle level and stuck, etc. but I really think beyond what I said the problem is not so much the teacher but the student, at this point. The goals of the student can't be ignored, in this type of relationship, because you cant teach and old dog new tricks (that it doesn't want, or need, to learn). So basically in high level there is a gokui for everything, and you can do whatever you want, the question is what you want to do and not how to 'get better' which is really an undefinable question. Then presumably since a couple of years of dedicated practice have gone by in such a situation you are 'high level' because you can demonstrate the art with a precision and crispness that the low and middle level people cannot emulate.

edit/ps: Arguments over things like qi or the position of the hook hand or the angle of the back foot, or release out to the elbow vs. hand all fall into this category. It is easy for low/mid level to argue about these things but at a higher level they are assumed (out of necessity) to allow for higher level things to take place. For low/mid level players it is something to argue over, and may even tell a higher level player what they are doing is wrong, because of the level they are working on is not the same as the higher level.

[Subitai]

One aspect that is easier to talk about is the sport aspect. Participating and doing well at the highest level of competition in sports with many competitors. E.g., USA D1 wrestling. Olympic judo or other combat sports. Obviously the more popular the event, the harder it is (mathematically) to be high level. By this definition, a push hands competition is low level.

In reference to the last Sentence above...I disagree.

I'm not just saying this because I recently did one (i.e. a PH competition) but i'm talking for ANY competition in general.

To me, I don't care what kind of competition it is, what matters is the quality or "SKILL LEVEL" of the participants. For example, If you have other teachers and champions as part of your opponent line up, I can't see how you can say a competition is low level.

They could show up at a High School Gym, a venue with in a big stadium or even a park...you never know.
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Also this,

"...the more popular the event... " ?

= Why couldn't this also draw or "attract" Higher skilled players as well? It stands to reason if something is popular then why wouldn't the best show up?

That doesn't make sense

[Subitai]

As to the High level question...

I think allot of smart answers have been given. It's pretty much covered...a few of those answers are definitely on point IMO.

I also highly agree with another thing Appledog said about the possibility of stuff being:

"... handed down by 'genius' players"

You could have been doing something for decades...that works and is efficient and some guy shows up and shows you how to do it better. Boom, mind blown!

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Not only that, if you are real teacher who can fight or someone who has allot of a experience in actual application and a guy can do something to you even when you know it's coming...in my book, he/she is high level.

[everything]

sure you could go to the local ymca push hands and a jon jones or fedor level guy will just happen to be there, but that is highly unlikely to put it mildly.

[Subitai]

sure you could go to the local ymca push hands and a jon jones or fedor level guy will just happen to be there, but that is highly unlikely to put it mildly.

So the answer to what you just said is; it still doesn't disprove what I said. = Which was "IF" the quality of the competition is good, then it IS high level.

It also doesn't prove that a popular (publicized) PH event would mathematically ONLY attract Low Level players. It still doesn't make sense.


While I'm at it...I'll stick my neck out and say that Jon Jones wouldn't necessarily do good at all in a push hands competition where he had to play by all the same rules. I.e. NOT MMA. For example, throw him in a Fixed step PH game without any preparation prior to and I guarantee he won't stand out any better then his fellow competitors.

[MaartenSFS]

To me high level is all of those things, but in my usage it meant that you had to progress through the basic and intermediate levels of training so that your body and mind would be ready for the high level material. Nothing esoteric or mysterious about it at all...

[Bao]

Chinese arts always return to the basic and simple, progress moves in a circle always returning to the beginning. Beginner is to have no foundation. Intermediate is to have developed a foundation but not developed it so strong so moving and acting from the basics has become second nature. Advanced is to have a strong foundation and always act spontaneously from this foundation. The “secrets” are always in the jibengong and in the most basic principles.

Understand the basics.
Learn to use the basics.
Become the basics.
Forget the basics.
Become simple and act spontaneously.

[Trick]

Even in the basics(in the internal arts) there is an general way and an to the trusted student way.

[Bao]

Even in the basics(in the internal arts) there is an general way and an to the trusted student way.

Yeah, that’s right. Why else just let people practice forms without any other kind of foundations practice?

[Steve James]

What is high or low level? Maybe it's better to ask what is beautiful or what is useful.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and always subjective. In terms of fighting, functionality is objective.