the rum soaked fist: internal martial arts forum

I think that Middleway raised a good point.

Two things that you see a LOT in tcc people are front foot going light when they brace/pull and back foot going light when they push/throw.

What happens if someone attacks your legs when your front foot is light? (for example with single or doble leg takedowns) What happens if someone drags you into a sacrifice throw when your back foot is light? (tomoe nage or soto makikomi)

If have tested these situations a huge amounts of times and usually this happens:

1- The tcc guy ends thrown or dragged all over the place.
2- The tcc guy recovers towards a 60/40 or 50/50 stance.

So if you are going to get thrown or forced to use a more balanced position, why letting any of your foot go light?

Hi Bao.

As Mike shows, when you absorb strength down to the ground with the hands/arms, there is a feeling that you use a direct connection from hand to feet. He uses the body mostly passively as a stationary, unmovable frame. If you use a walking stick, then you separate the frame from the ground, but what he shows is how to let the incoming pressure fall naturally into the frame. The frame takes the pressure from the gravity straight down. So, using Mike's terminology, the use of stick might use the jin path to take the gravity instead of the frame?

Again, The issue here is that it is not the hand to the 'Feet' ... it is the point of contact to the 'foot' - A singular path. He shows that as force applied his frame is creating a path through to the back foot. He 'receives' force onto the back foot. He says so himself at numerous points in the video i posted. The front is light and inactive. I have seen this directly with an individual who trained his method. Is is highly susceptible.

I guess this is drifting off topic however. Apologies to the board.

Also, generating jin is different from being able to handle pressure from the outside. I don't think they should be confused together. But that's maybe another topic...

Completely agree. This is largely a different topic.

thanks.

jaime_g wrote:I think that Middleway raised a good point.

Two things that you see a LOT in tcc people are front foot going light when they brace/pull and back foot going light when they push/throw.

What happens if someone attacks your legs when your front foot is light? (for example with single or doble leg takedowns) What happens if someone drags you into a sacrifice throw when your back foot is light? (tomoe nage or soto makikomi)

If have tested these situations a huge amounts of times and usually this happens:

1- The tcc guy ends thrown or dragged all over the place.
2- The tcc guy recovers towards a 60/40 or 50/50 stance.

So if you are going to get thrown or forced to use a more balanced position, why letting any of your foot go light?

Hmmm.... I don't know if I'm getting your whole meaning, and we're going off into the weeds here regarding the original post, but if we're now talking about fighting then my thoughts would be:

The relationship between Mobility and Base are in a constantly shifting yin/yang of balance in a fighter. You can have a strong, wider, base or a mobile, narrower, base. These things shift and vary through infinite variations in relationship to the other person. And that's the key thing - your relationship to the other person: doing what's appropriate. "There's no such thing as good technique, just appropriate technique"

If you never let any of your foot go light at any time (which is what you say) then you're always 50/50 weighted. That doesn't sound very mobile to me.

Muhammed Ali footwork:



And my favourite MMA footwork guy: Dominick Cruz

Hmmm.... I don't know if I'm getting your whole meaning, and we're going off into the weeds here regarding the original post, but if we're now talking about fighting then my thoughts would be:

The relationship between Mobility and Base are in a constantly shifting yin/yang of balance in a fighter. You can have a strong, wider, base or a mobile, narrower, base. These things shift and vary through infinite variations in relationship to the other person. And that's the key thing - your relationship to the other person: doing what's appropriate. "There's no such thing as good technique, just appropriate technique"

If you never let any of your foot go light at any time (which is what you say) then you're always 50/50 weighted. That doesn't sound very mobile to me.

I understand your point. However, an extreme yin/yang shifting makes you really vulnerable. Being mobile is great but the extreme stances where one foot is completely empty always struck me as super weird.

The first (or maybe second, after trying to to collapse your head) thing every judoka or wrestler tries is to make one of your foot go light. Freely giving that to them doesnt sounds logical for me, despite all the internal vocabulary used to justify it

For example, in the CMC video

He has a light back foot at the end of every push. What would happen if the student kept a grip on the pushing arm? He would be dragged.

It's martially terrible despite all the vocabulary Any judoka would happily be pushed ten times if they can makikomi you ten times

I'm completely convinced that the internal work is awesome and it works in almost any kind of martial situation, with and without weapons, standing or on the ground, striking or throwing. But I would never understand why making yourself vulnerable can be ever considered

I'm no fan of Cheng man ching, so don't really care what he does But yes, a badly done push could be easily turned into a pull. I think in that video his students are over reacting and he's putting everything he can into it to save face and make them fly back.

I think that video has got more to do with "saving face" than realistic martial art. But to give him his dues I think he at least 'gets' power up from the ground. Same as Adam Mizner.

I think this is all too theoretical. In practice you'd just do what you needed to do.

But think about this - receiving a double leg is one thing, but how do you do a double leg on somebody and keep both feet heavy? Why would you want to? In a lot of Judo throws you need to stand on one leg - O soto gari for instance.

(personally, to receive a double leg I'd sprawl- so make both my feet super light. In fact, the less weight on them the better. Heavy hips, not heavy feet).

b.t.w none of this has anything to do with walking sticks.

But think about this - receiving a double leg is one thing, but how do you do a double leg on somebody and keep both feet heavy? Why would you want to?

I usually use three variations of doble leg. One is very similar to xingyi dragon, the other uses a split kneel stance like iai goshi and the last is quite similar to old school judo morote gari. In all of them both feet should be as heavy as possible. I agree that it's not the normal wrestling shoot

Why would you want to? In a lot of Judo throws you need to stand on one leg - O soto gari for instance.

My o soto gari (however, I'm much more of an o soto otoshi guy) is more similar to a brush the knee movement than the usual leg pendulum movement. Standing in one leg is unavoidable in many cases (kicking), but I would avoid it as much as I can if I'm able to modify the throw mechanics.

b.t.w none of this has anything to do with walking sticks.

True

"Feet as heavy as possible" - logically you have to be thinking in terms of % of weight on each foot. Either it's 50% each, or 100% - 0% at the extremes. You can't have 100% on both feet. Take the XY dragon posture, you have to pick a side - you can't have equal weight on both feet. Some styles do it forward weighted, some styles do it back weighted.



XingYi I was taught was typical 70-30 distribution for beginners, then for advanced, you could do up to 100 - 0 (just the weight of the empty leg) if you got good. This was the principle of "chicken leg". Of course XY is predominantly a striking art and prefers high mobility over stability. It's all a trade-off.

middleway wrote:The front is light and inactive. I have seen this directly with an individual who trained his method. Is is highly susceptible.

With some practice it's easy to take down pressure into one single point/one foot. And yes it is highly susceptible. It's useful for practice/demonstration purposes only. You need a steady continuous pressure.

jaime_g wrote:I think that Middleway raised a good point.

Two things that you see a LOT in tcc people are front foot going light when they brace/pull and back foot going light when they push/throw.

What happens if someone attacks your legs when your front foot is light? (for example with single or doble leg takedowns) What happens if someone drags you into a sacrifice throw when your back foot is light? (tomoe nage or soto makikomi)

Agree. Many don't know how to keep their root or how to keep their balance while in transition. One thing is to keep stationary. Another thing is to push or strike while in transitioning, like XY or Hao/Sun TJQ follow step. You should choose one or another, regardless stationary or dynamic posture, balance the ability to change must be there.

For a classic Yang style "brush knee" for example, the pressure through the rear leg must be there and coordinated throughout the whole movement.



IMO, what MS shows is a bit one-dimensional, but works (in demonstrating and practice) for dealing with handling an incoming push. What he shows might be all correct for Chen style, but in Yang and Wu styles, (1) there is a cross connection between upper and lower halves of the body. And 2) the two different sides of the body ave different qualities of jin, different functions. They are always storing and releasing at the same time. If not all of the times well then at least most of the times. If one side of the body releases jin, the other side of the body stores jin. Don't know how Mike's Chen mechanics does this, but in Yang and wu styles, this is about separating Yin and Yang, Full and Empty, something that is done all of the time.

If you look at the crappy drawing above, the right side stores jin as the left side releases. Blue line shows stretching, red line shows compressing.

For Graham's walking stick, the side of stick might represent storing jin, the right side of the body, but not the side that releases. Illustrated in the second crappy drawing, below. How the walking stick could help learn how to deal with incoming Jin as shown in the videos, I really have no idea about.

Hope this makes sense...

4. Differentiate full and empty. This is the first principle in tai-chi. If the weight of the body is resting on one leg then that leg is full and the other is empty. When we can distinguish between full and empty our movements will be light and nimble without effort. Without this distinction our stepping will be heavy and slow. Our stance will be unstable and we will easily be unbalanced.

- from Yang Cheng Fu 10 essential points on Tai Chi Chuan.

Bao wrote:For Graham's walking stick, the side of stick might represent storing jin, the right side of the body, but not the side that releases. Illustrated in the second crappy drawing, below. How the walking stick could help learn how to deal with incoming Jin as shown in the videos, I really have no idea about.

Hope this makes sense...

Nice picture

Yes, that's what I pretty much meant - if you drop your body weight into the stick (sink) then you feel the rebound force as you walk. You can just feel it - it's just there. If you've got a hard time working out what Jin is supposed to feel like I think it would be a help. I wasn't suggesting it would be any help with incoming force - except perhaps to hit the attacker with

Interesting, full and empty with those I work with refer to intent, not weight.

Having said this we do use 0 - 100 weighting in the postures reflecting the way the intent is routed in the body.


What' some seem to be referring to is called "ground Force reaction" GFR.

"For example, a person standing motionless on the ground exerts a contact force on it (equal to the person's weight) and at the same time an equal and opposite ground reaction force is exerted by the ground on the person."


"GRF is often observed to evaluate force production in various groups within the community. One of these groups studied often are athletes to help evaluate a subject's ability to exert force and power.

This can help create baseline parameters when creating strength and conditioning regimens from a rehabilitation and coaching standpoint. "

Some seem to be confusing this with the terminology
"Jin" a word taken from another language and culture that is typically used in context that helps to define it.

Interesting, full and empty with those I work with refer to intent, not weight

I am sure it can be. Though I am not convinced that this was what YCF meant as he sold his name to what was a basic introduction of the art.

So I guess you don't care about how you transfer weight when you do the form?

Bao wrote:

Interesting, full and empty with those I work with refer to intent, not weight

I am sure it can be. Though I am not convinced that this was what YCF meant as he sold his name to what was a basic introduction of the art.

So I guess you don't care about how you transfer weight when you do the form?

We refer to it as translation as used in physics.



Any and all points can express yin/yang it has nothing to do with the starting or ending point of a movement.

What ycf, expressed depends on largly on one's understanding and level. In this sense a beginning level understanding and someone who has a deeper level can be quite different but both correct.