Soft beats hard

Discussion on the three big Chinese internals, Yiquan, Bajiquan, Piguazhang and other similar styles.

Re: Soft beats hard

Postby dspyrido on Mon Apr 26, 2021 3:27 pm

DeusTrismegistus wrote:I have been working on being "soft" lately. No muscle force, no using my size. As my teacher says, I can fall back to my strength and size when I want or need to. The issue is that young people naturally use their strength and size. There is no need to learn soft when hard works. When you get a little older and hard gets too hard, then you start to appreciate soft.

Now in regards to tactics, if your opponent is limp, weak, contracted, or withdrawing, then no need to be soft, you can use your power.

The challenge is changing from soft to hard instantly and also being one and the other at the same time. I can't do it yet, but maybe eventually.


I've been been working on strength & cardio ("hard?") lately. Weights & applying my size where I can to put as much mass on the leverage point as possible. I fall back to my soft skills of angles, flow, calmness, awarness and structure to help get that opening to apply the impact or compression. The issue is I am aging and if strength is not trained it degrades. When you get too old it means working twice as hard for 1/4 of the results & then you appreciate the hard training done leading up to it.

The challenge of going soft to hard or hard and hard to soft is something I train consciously. Doing many repetitions of moves or sparring for extended periods against younger fitter people requires an acute awareness of using soft to avoid burnout to get leverage/openings. Training to learn to switch and training in either end is a conscious decision.

I'm not being contrarian to what you are saying. I'm just highlighting that the training is in cycles & the decision to focus on one end should be a point in time decision on what is the right thing to do. Assuming one is better than the other because someone wrote it down years ago is a mistake.
User avatar
dspyrido
Wuji
 
Posts: 2474
Joined: Sun Jan 11, 2009 5:03 am

Previous

Return to Xingyiquan - Baguazhang - Taijiquan

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 34 guests