the rum soaked fist: internal martial arts forum

I have just put a second door knob on each door on the other side
I am in the process of moving the steering wheel to the centre of my car
I now only drive down the centre line of the road
Each alternative turn in my car is the opposite to the last
It is so hard in a fight getting my opponent to punch right left
The yang style is perfectly balanced if done correctly
It does have different skills in each hand but this does not destroy its balance

HotSoup wrote:Doing it on both sides is more harm than good, ...

This form was created by a left hand person. You can see that the left side forward moves are more than the right side forward moves.

According to your assumption, this form was created "more harm than good".

I do not want to laugh but per my experience switching from right to left in conditioning is to prepare the individual for the execution of a movement, technique, etc meaning the ability to use left brain/right brain per Pavlovian orientation and the ability to switch sides if one side fails to "fall" then counterattack to execute the opposite side. If one trains only one side, then ability become limited.

I wring the wet towel in both directions

wayne hansen wrote:I have just put a second door knob on each door on the other side
I am in the process of moving the steering wheel to the centre of my car
I now only drive down the centre line of the road
Each alternative turn in my car is the opposite to the last
It is so hard in a fight getting my opponent to punch right left
The yang style is perfectly balanced if done correctly
It does have different skills in each hand but this does not destroy its balance

I agree that Yang style has everything you need for self defense, no question.

But in every sport you have people who have a dominant side and those that are ambidextrous. It adds another dimension to the skillset. In head to head competitions the adjustment a right dominant competitor has to make to work with a left dominant competitor can be enough to throw them off their game and induce a loss. Some players will switch in and out of a left dominant stance for exactly that reason. In fighting specifically, the opponent's dominant side and stance have a direct impact on which techniques are available.

Getting to your comment specifically, it's more like installing an adapter for your car so you can switch the wheel to the opposite side in an instant if you happen to be driving on a road with UK traffic semantics. Or a window that slides up and down to open, but will also fold in.

The data isn't conclusive. My personal opinion is that each person's capacity for ambidextrousness is different. Some people may not get much out of trying to learn a mirrored form or drilling on both sides, some may get a lot out of it. Some rare exceptions may even be harmed by it, but I think in general it's just cultivating more degrees of freedom in movement which can only ever be a good thing.

What you pick up on the left may be lost on the right
I have yet to meet any people who are truly ambidextioures
My son when young was like this if he picked up a ball with his left hand he would get another for his right
Your analogy with sides of the road only works if you move between the states and Australia daily

I fly kite with my right hand and switch to my left hand! Ain't I ambidextrous?

marvin8 wrote:

johnwang wrote:

B will not freeze their arm, as in your blocking and throwing clips. B will retract their probing jab (asking hand)... Also, most strikers will throw a left jab, not right.

... and start from fighting distance. Only about 13% of people are left handed. Therefore, most strikers will stand with left leg forward and right leg in the rear (further away), making the right front cut/osoto gari more difficult. So, one may want to train the left front cut, as well.

Your student (black shirt) competes (edited?). Opponent starts at fighting distance with left leg forward:



Same match, different poster:

Wang Hu
Apr 30, 2019

World Star Chinese Martial Arts Continuous Sparring Part 1 Finals, 2019
Advanced Championships
Houston Texas
Sahab Nabard vs Shuai Chiao

wayne hansen wrote:What you pick up on the left may be lost on the right
I have yet to meet any people who are truly ambidextioures
My son when young was like this if he picked up a ball with his left hand he would get another for his right
Your analogy with sides of the road only works if you move between the states and Australia daily

Not to belabor the metaphor, but even moving one time such a feature might be useful if you'd rather keep your car than get a new one.

I guess my point is that your mileage may vary, and that's okay. I don't study this stuff to become a carbon copy of anyone else. I do it to expand and explore the limits of my own potential. I don't believe that there is one superior method that is suitable for every person to do such a thing. It's an individual journey to cultivate an individual. Making mistakes, learning, experimenting, changing your mind, failing and looking foolish are all critical parts of the path. We don't all have the same potential in every aspect, that's just life. I've met some amazing people. I've been known at times to amaze. Everybody's got their shop.

If I do or do not find value in a practice then that's a matter for my own experience and judgment, and I consider other's practices the same way. It's just a matter of preference and what you want to cultivate.

What is the purpose of form?

一動無有不動 (Yīdòng wú yǒu bùdòng) "When one part moves, every part moves."

It may very well be, that this is the important point, and that this quality of movement is easiest to train on one side at at time. And once you have it you might not necessarily need to train everything exactly on the other side too.

Arts which don't have this principle will have a different idea about the form.

So then why do we have repulse money, gather and kick, wave hands like clouds, and so forth, all on both sides -- but single whip and white crane spreads wings is only ever on one side?

I suspect the answer to this will explain everything.

I did 4-5 years of Yang style in the past, we practiced 108, 24, sabre, sword, fan, ruler, ball, Tung's fast form, White Crane Qi Gong, some stuff from Dr. Yang Jwing-Ming. Everything was done equally on both sides. How do you forget single whip in a mirror version?

I'm not particularly attached to any specific forms. In fact, after some time I disliked it because of insufficient progress and lack of noticable Tai Chi skills. IMO as long as the proper method is conveyed (as whoever or whatever intended) the chosen vehicle doesn't matter as much. You could put a whole style in a single line of moving back and forth.

I try to brush my teeth with my weak side, for example

These days I use a similar method for fajin training method with spear- doing sets of each movement in the Wu spear form like 10x per side for example

Thinking about this I have to remember the photo of GM Chang's feet sifu Wang posted here a few years ago.

As far as opinions go:
Train for fight, train one side.
Train for health, train both sides.

The biggest advantage to training both sides is to avoid unilateral development of the body. This really screws people up over time. I've seen this happen with weapons training that was conducted one sided as well.

Look at the body of a baseball pitcher, or archer, and ask yourself, "does this look like a great idea?"

Unilateral movement over time creates a lot of problems in the body. Most of which won't show up until you are much older at which point you just get to live with the pain.

I was big into archery in my mid-teens. Forty years later one side of my back is notably larger than my right.

If you are doing something professionally, maybe the light is worth the candle. If this is a hobby, then it is a very bad idea.

Interesting reading the postings

Never heard of playing the form as training the form

The concept seems kinda strange...

Like an instrument if it's not played well, it means one has to go back to the fundamentals of practice ie notes, scales and so forth.

The basic practice of something like taiji is the "movement" which traditionally were linked to other movements once a certain proficiency was a archived.
By watching someone play a form, one can discern a lot of their understanding of movement, does not necessarily confer their understanding of usage of the movements
played....