In the past

[roger hao]

Unless we go back to living in caves I doubt we will see
physical prowess or conditioning at the level of even recent past.
The Voyagers traveled north in North America with 700 lb boats
that had to be forded by just a few guys wading thru chest deep water
at the beginning of winter.
Or as I have said before check the legend of Ben Tilly.
Or take your heavy wagon across the Sierra Nevada.
How about being in Hannibal's army and managing elephants
across mountain ranges.

[dspyrido]

Unless we go back to living in caves I doubt we will see
physical prowess or conditioning at the level of even recent past.

Not trying to compare us and them but Olympic records probably show that people still train a lot. Maybe it's more specialised but the prowess is there.

[johnwang]

Just compare the horse stance, we can find a big difference between current generation and previous generation.

- My teacher's teacher could finish his dinner while staying in horse stance.
- My teacher could watching Beijing opera while staying in horse stance.
- I can still finish a beer while staying in horse stance.

[Trick]

The four Yorkshiremen ??

[dspyrido]

Just compare the horse stance, we can find a big difference between current generation and previous generation.

- My teacher's teacher could finish his dinner while staying in horse stance.
- My teacher could watching Beijing opera while staying in horse stance.
- I can still finish a beer while staying in horse stance.

Slow drinker? Fast eater? I've never sat through the Beijing opera so I can't tell which is better...

That said was it that 100 years ago people would do an hour of horse stance? Lot's of forms? Use heavy weight? Loads of sparring?

Just wondering why I can find many old CMA books on forms but nothing that shows the other stuff I've heard anecdotally. As a parallel it is pretty easy to find a description of old school European strength guys daily training program.

[johnwang]

I can find many old CMA books on forms but nothing that shows the other stuff I've heard anecdotally. As a parallel it is pretty easy to find a description of old school European strength guys daily training program.

IMO, after your death, if you don't leave anything on earth, your life can be a big waste.

S: In your Taiji book, there is only form training but there is no application training.
T: Why should I release my secret to the public?
S: 1000 years from today, people can only judge you from your book. Do you want people to judge you as a "Taiji for health" person?
T: Why should I care about how other people may think about me?
S: It's your name and your reputation. Nobody will care about it but yourself.

[windwalker]

If one really is interested the material is there
Unless one can read Chinese or classical Chinese I would think it might be hard to find some of the material that others have translated.

To write clearly is to think clearly. So even if no one reads any of our writings, it would still benefit us to clarify, summarize our thinking on the subject. Also, when we try to transmit knowledge to others, we’re often discover the inexactness and lack of detailed understanding in even the basic things. A classic example is translation: when I read a sentence written in classical Chinese, I don’t have to have precise understanding of every word to know what the whole sentence means. But when I do a literal translation, I’m force to look up the word and find the most appropriate translation.

For complex subjects, any body of of knowledge, in order to be truly useful, needs to be as complete, accurate, and systematic as possible. This blog represent my attempt to achieve just that in my own martial art development.

Wuyizidi

https://internalmartialart.wordpress.com/about/

The Manchurians are an ethnic minority at the northeastern border of Ming Empire. They were an autonomous vassal state that had to pay annual tribute to Ming. With Ming government overthrown and country still in chaos as the peasant rebels still trying figuring out what to do, an opportunity arose for them to raid the country. But clear-sighted and ambitious Prince Dorgon rightly saw this as not just another big score, but an rare opportunity to take over the entire country.

There was great opposition as the native Han ethnic group opposed rule by foreigners. Those opposition died down fairly soon as Qing Dynasty was blessed with many brilliant, enlightened rulers, in sharp contrast to Ming Dynasty.

The Manchurian did not repeat the key mistake the rulers of short-lived Mongol empire made – trying to make a much larger, more advanced civilization conform to the social, economic, and agricultural systems of a less advanced nomadic culture. Instead, they eagerly adopted Han ways, so the native population did not feel a constant cultural clash that reminded their differences and fueled dissent.

One tradition the Manchurians did not abandon is the way its male members lived in constant readiness for war. Made up of 8 tribes/clans, the male of each of the tribes were not to have full-time occupations that would prevent them from being called up for war/raid at a moment’s notice by their clan leaders. For most of its 261 year history, Qing Dynasty enjoyed uninterrupted peace and prosperity.

For all this time, the entire male population of the ruling ethnic groups lived off rich government stipends, and had nothing but free time on his hands. These man are known as Sons of Baqi (Baqi Zidi 八旗子第). Baqi – eight flags representing the eight tribes of Manchuria.

Since they can’t have full-time professions, they had full-time hobbies. During this time, every conceivable leisure-time activity: arts, crafts, falconry, gardening, cuisine, … cricket-fighting, everything got pushed to absurdly high, refined levels.

This included, for a people whose entire way of life (and very idea of manhood) centered around horseback riding, wrestling, and hunting, a natural and abiding interest in martial art.



It is during this time Shuaijiao reached its zenith, as Manchurian, Mongolian, and Han styles merged into a much larger, more detailed skill.

The Manchu emperor has his own wrestling team of around 438 people, divided into two camps. Throughout the year the camps competed with each other, had frequent exhibitions, traveled with emperor during hunts, and most importantly, faced off against the Mongolian king’s wrestlers in annual contest. Membership and promotion in the team depended entirely on one’s performance in all these events.

The 438 of professional wrestlers at Shan Pu Ying (善扑营) belong to but one of the three capitol city garrisons. The one where Yang Luchan, Liu Zhijun, and Song Mailun taught at – Shen Ji Ying, had over 2,000 instructors/weapons experts who led the training of 30,000 strong palace guards.

https://internalmartialart.wordpress.com/?wref=bif

[Bill]

Just wondering why I can find many old CMA books on forms but nothing that shows the other stuff I've heard anecdotally. As a parallel it is pretty easy to find a description of old school European strength guys daily training program.

In pre-industrial societies knowledge was power. When you knew how to do something no one else could do, you could make a living at it so you would only share with those close to you.
This was the way in Europe until the rise of the University system. Once Universities came to be then knowledge was shared openly.
Asia never really developed anything like Universities so they kept to the old ways of keeping secrets.

[johnwang]

Once Universities came to be then knowledge was shared openly.

Many years ago, my teacher said that he would pay anybody $10,000 if that person knew how to do "捆 (Kun) - tie". Today, you can find it online. Since my teacher had never published his "捆 (Kun) - tie" to the publish domain, he had no proof that he knew how to do it.

IMO, to keep secret to yourself can only hurt yourself. Soon or later others will release that secret to the publish domain.

The 1st person who shares his information to the public domain, people will remember that person. I'm glad that today everybody use my "The right mouth clip to show a pop-up" invention on PC.

[Taste of Death]

John, these arts are passed down from hand to hand. It is not about secrets. You can't learn sports over the internet, why do you think you can learn cima that way?

[johnwang]

John, these arts are passed down from hand to hand. It is not about secrets. You can't learn sports over the internet, why do you think you can learn cima that way?

That's the old way of thinking. By using the modern way of thinking, one should be able to learn from just

1. words,
2. picture.
3. video.

IMO 3 > 2 > 1.

[windwalker]

John, these arts are passed down from hand to hand. It is not about secrets. You can't learn sports over the internet, why do you think you can learn cima that way?

That's the old way of thinking. By using the modern way of thinking, one should be able to learn from just

1. words,
2. picture.
3. video.

IMO 3 > 2 > 1.

actually it was the old way which is why they kept things secret
in a time when what one knew was thought to matter more then what
some might call natural abilities.

One night, he was awakened by the sounds of "Hen" (哼) and "Ha" (哈) in the distance. He got up and traced the sound to an old building. Peeking through the broken wall, he saw his master Chen, Chang-xing teaching the techniques of grasp, control, and emitting jin in coordination with the sounds "Hen" and "Ha."

He was amazed by the techniques and from that time on, unknown to master Chen, he continued to watch this secret practice session every night.

He would then return to his room to ponder and study. Because of this, his martial ability advanced rapidly. One day, Chen ordered him to spar with the other disciples. To his surprise, none of the other students could defeat him.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yang_Luchan


In todays time often what was once very secret is now very open.


a long while back training tibetan white crane.

We had some "visitors" Mike, the shifu feeling they where from
one of the local chinese gangs. Had us remain in our horse stance,
usually done for 20 min prior to our normal training.


This time we remained in it until they left, almost an hour...guess they got board.

[johnwang]

We had some "visitors" Mike, the shifu feeling they where from
one of the local chinese gangs. Had us remain in our horse stance,
usually done for 20 min prior to our normal training.

This time we remained in it until they left, almost an hour...guess they got board.

When I was in high school during the 3 months summer vacation, we trained in an elementary school school yard. A group of local gang members came and watched us. We all stopped open hand training and started to train double edges sword, single edge knife, long staff, spear, and Guan Dao. After that day, that group local gang never came back.

[Trick]

For all this time, the entire male population of the ruling ethnic groups lived off rich government stipends, and had nothing but free time on his hands. These man are known as Sons of Baqi (Baqi Zidi 八旗子第). Baqi – eight flags representing the eight tribes of Manchuria.

Since they can’t have full-time professions, they had full-time hobbies. During this time, every conceivable leisure-time activity: arts, crafts, falconry, gardening, cuisine, … cricket-fighting, everything got pushed to absurdly high, refined levels.

This included, for a people whose entire way of life (and very idea of manhood) centered around horseback riding, wrestling, and hunting, a natural and abiding interest in martial art.



It is during this time Shuaijiao reached its zenith, as Manchurian, Mongolian, and Han styles merged into a much larger, more detailed skill.

The Manchu emperor has his own wrestling team of around 438 people, divided into two camps. Throughout the year the camps competed with each other, had frequent exhibitions, traveled with emperor during hunts, and most importantly, faced off against the Mongolian king’s wrestlers in annual contest. Membership and promotion in the team depended entirely on one’s performance in all these events.

The 438 of professional wrestlers at Shan Pu Ying (善扑营) belong to but one of the three capitol city garrisons. The one where Yang Luchan, Liu Zhijun, and Song Mailun taught at – Shen Ji Ying, had over 2,000 instructors/weapons experts who led the training of 30,000 strong palace guards.

https://internalmartialart.wordpress.com/?wref=bif[/quote]
As one can possibly read from this would be that the 438 wrestling team also had lots of spare time at hand (or where they wrestling all days long ?)
Maybe they also had time on hand to enhancing their gardening skill, or had an interest in cooking, or fine art.
And perhaps it was here where YLC came into the picture. I mean the wrestlers getting old too and can’t keep up the sportive performance(I imagine the 438 was always to be younger lads), but some of them still wanted to continue to do something martial art related but somewhat lesser vigorous and intense but still something that kept them fit in their new daily life of gardening and cuisine exploration, and fine arts.
However YLC might not always have had been their favorite choice of spare time martial arts coach, there where 2000 other instructors to draw inspiration from, and wasn’t Dong Haichuan also around ?

Are there any records of those annual imperial wrestling clashes of the Mongolian vs Chinese ?

[Trick]

We had some "visitors" Mike, the shifu feeling they where from
one of the local chinese gangs. Had us remain in our horse stance,
usually done for 20 min prior to our normal training.

This time we remained in it until they left, almost an hour...guess they got board.

When I was in high school during the 3 months summer vacation, we trained in an elementary school school yard. A group of local gang members came and watched us. We all stopped open hand training and started to train double edges sword, single edge knife, long staff, spear, and Guan Dao. After that day, that group local gang never came back.

Years back(in Sweden) our teacher where teaching in the park. A couple of us students had arrived a little early and practiced on our own.
A gang of tough guy youngsters spotted us and came forward. They had seen some of the younger guys practicing these ‘Wushu’ jumping kicks, the tough ones mockingly laughed and questioned the efficiency of it all..they where ignored.
Then they turned to me who were a little older, and asked -“and you, what can you do?”
“Well let’s see” and then I did a short most basic Wushu’ed Taolu, in proper form and fali.....when finished they stood silent for a second or so, then one of them said - “that was pretty cool” and then they left..(now this was in Sweden, where it might have been more civilized in the past )

This was in the summer, so quite many peoples in the park chilling or whatever. On one occasion our teacher pulled off an Sword form which he seldom did, and that pulled off spontaneous cheering and applauds from people around.
It was impressive, he was like an whirlwind, and he was high up in the air and next in a deep stance, just to spring up again....Yeah,you know how those Wushu guys do! Fantastic athleticism.

He never trained with weight equipments just his own body weight. As young in the Sports college in his hometown, he said the practice was grueling, a lot of “abnormal” stretching and a lot of stance practice with a big focus on handstand and then lots of techniques repeating over and over.