How do you structure a class?

[everything]

follow the 80/20 rules and just reduce to yiquan. then reduce that to a lot of "standing".

[Taste of Death]

Going by this thread, realistically, we should all just do I Chuan and boxing and call it a day.

In Han Shi Yi Quan, that's pretty much what we do. The standing creates the body condition, which is expressed through the fists. The rest, the forms and whatnot, is for those who don't know what to do with their time. Train what's essential and stop trying to do everything. I doubt anyone younger than 50 would be interested, though. They would rather keep chasing ghosts when the essence of the arts is right there in their hands, fingertips included. I chased the mystery of the arts for decades when I should have worked on refining the zhan zhuang.

[origami_itto]

Going by this thread, realistically, we should all just do I Chuan and boxing and call it a day.

In Han Shi Yi Quan, that's pretty much what we do. The standing creates the body condition, which is expressed through the fists. The rest, the forms and whatnot, is for those who don't know what to do with their time. Train what's essential and stop trying to do everything. I doubt anyone younger than 50 would be interested, though. They would rather keep chasing ghosts when the essence of the arts is right there in their hands, fingertips included. I chased the mystery of the arts for decades when I should have worked on refining the zhan zhuang.

ZZ and qigong is definitely the overwhelming majority of my training time, but forms are important.

The criticism you often see is that YCF took this and that out of Yang taijiquan, what I'm saying here is that you find that stuff in the weapons and supplementary forms.

True, you can do a lot of it with one form, but there is just movement that exists in some places that doesn't exist in others, and movement and freedom of movement is what it's all about.

Forms and standing, any of the exercises are just there to convey something, conditioning, theory, whatever. They give us experience moving and using the energy in various ways. They are taught to be performed in different ways to encode specific implicit information.

Like other arts of human expression, yes, Cezanne, the true test of artistic skill is the perfection of the circle the artist can draw freehand, but how boring if all you ever draw is circles?

Sure, a musician can devote their life to mastering a single song, but what other melodies are they missing out on?

People today want to devote themselves to mastering a single chord and call themselves a composer.

If what you're doing is keeping your attention and producing progress, then keep doing it. I find muscle and mind confusion pays off.

[everything]

Going by this thread, realistically, we should all just do I Chuan and boxing and call it a day.

In Han Shi Yi Quan, that's pretty much what we do. The standing creates the body condition, which is expressed through the fists. The rest, the forms and whatnot, is for those who don't know what to do with their time. Train what's essential and stop trying to do everything. I doubt anyone younger than 50 would be interested, though. They would rather keep chasing ghosts when the essence of the arts is right there in their hands, fingertips included. I chased the mystery of the arts for decades when I should have worked on refining the zhan zhuang.

relate to this a lot.

[Taste of Death]

It's true what people say about learning everything and then forgetting it. The temptation is to keep learning, expanding, and growing but I would rather be progessing. The same goes for resistance training. Learn all the lifts when you're young and then just work on the good stuff for the rest of your life. Can it be boring? Sure. So attend some seminars. Find a comparable art that compliments what you already do. But be mindful that if we ever put our training into practice in the real world, not sparring, but an actual confrontation, spontaneous movement is your friend, arising from the body condition, not beng quan or wave hands like clouds. When it all happens in an instant, you won't know what you did, but the other guy will be on the ground and you'll still be standing there.

[origami_itto]

In the moment action should be spontaneous, but the response is rarely something your body has never done before.

[GrahamB]

Well, somebody has swallowed the Yi Quan marketing material whole... Impressive!

[Taste of Death]

In the moment action should be spontaneous, but the response is rarely something your body has never done before.

Recently on here someone, perhaps you, related a story about falling down, rolling, and getting right back on their feet and continuing on their way as if nothing had happened. It's the same thing. How did that happen? Where did the response come from? The training will show itself in a myriad of ways but not always the way one expects.

[Trick]

i dont think humans had to rediscover the motions of the limbs throu the use of tools.

Who said they had?

Martial arts have at least partially developed through military training and weapons practice. Theory from weaponry has been translated into empty hand combat. Completely obvious if you look at an art as XY, all of the postures and names of the five fists are derived directly and literally from Chinese spear play. So it's not about re-learning anything.

oh, i forgot the bridging and sticking, im sure that originally is from wrestling/grappling rather that spear work.

Totalt disagree.

Chinese spear/staff play is far older than the wrestling you can see today in China.

Also, sticking is not grasping. Sticking is something done without the use of the hands/fingers. Weaponry is very different from common wrestling strategies. Quite the opposite.

the five fists was a creation of Li Luoneng i guess ?
and by so the 5 fists came around at a time when the spear was beginning falling out of fashion for combat use, however Li Luoneng was probably not unfamiliar working with stick based tools as it seem he was a farmer（rakes,shovels, pitchforks）when he came to study xinyiquan.
To my eye Dai-family xinyiquan bare not to much resemblance to spear practise. And the much older（although todays version is a recreation）xinyiba seem to not carry any spear in mind.

the five fists are crystalisations of the core essence of the 10-12 animal shapes, but also as i believe, the five santi-based fists holds their shape due to the tongbeiquan Li Luoneng also knew.

”wrestling” - in history seem definitely as the core base from where other hand to hand combat methods evolved from.
eventually for soldier wresling was a good way to maintain ones body and mind combat ready......also the vikings had it that way with their Glima.
wrestling, sure a lot of grabbing, but as so a very much direct hands on way to learn ”listening” so to properly do what at right time.
taiji-push hands is a variation of this, as we know.

[Bao]

the five fists was a creation of Li Luoneng i guess ?
and by so the 5 fists came around at a time when the spear was beginning falling out of fashion for combat use, however Li Luoneng was probably not unfamiliar working with stick based tools as it seem he was a farmer（rakes,shovels, pitchforks）when he came to study xinyiquan.
To my eye Dai-family xinyiquan bare not to much resemblance to spear practise. And the much older（although todays version is a recreation）xinyiba seem to not carry any spear in mind.

the five fists are crystalisations of the core essence of the 10-12 animal shapes, but also as i believe, the five santi-based fists holds their shape due to the tongbeiquan Li Luoneng also knew.

Li was born in the early 1800s. Traditional weapons didn't run out of popularity until the boxer rebellion. The boxer rebellion proves that the people didn't have firearms, right?

All Xingyi and Xinyi developed from the Dai family 3 fists. They preceded the 10 and 12 animals. The five fists developed from these three fists together with spear methods. However you try to turn around the facts, the postures of the five fists and their names are still almost identical to the five most basic spear techniques and names used for these techniques. These Chinese spear methods have been well documented since at least the 11th century.

”wrestling” - in history seem definitely as the core base from where other hand to hand combat methods evolved from.
eventually for soldier wresling was a good way to maintain ones body and mind combat ready......also the vikings had it that way with their Glima.
wrestling, sure a lot of grabbing, but as so a very much direct hands on way to learn ”listening” so to properly do what at right time.

You assume that all hand to combat methods evolved from wrestling, in linear way evolution. I just don't believe this is true.

First, what is wrestling? Old types of wrestling could involve biting, scratching, head-butting, elbows, knees and fists. The versions today called wrestling developed as sport or a way to settle disputes man to man.

Second, martial arts have just a long history as wrestling, because people have always had to rely on themselves to protect themselves, their families and houses. Martial arts and self-defence is different than wrestling. They involve protecting yourself and others in any type of context. Chinese martial arts also involve traditional weapons because weapons were the main things to defend yourself with. Empty hand combat was always something secondary or a way to practice principles involving weapons without actually using weapons. So that weapons theory and military strategies blended together with empty hand methods and even wrestling is not far-fetched. And then you have to consider the people who developed martial arts. The Chinese internal martial arts have since at least the 17th century developed mostly by bodyguards and security personnel, people who always wore weapons and studied weaponry. This is just a fact. You can just read the classic IMA literature and it will be quite clear that this is the case, as they are packed with bodyguards and stories about bodyguards, as well as written by bodyguards.

taiji-push hands is a variation of this, as we know.

Push hands is sensitivity training. Before the 1980s Chen "masters" started to promote push hands competitions Push hands had never been synonymous with wrestling or practiced as wrestling.

[origami_itto]

In the moment action should be spontaneous, but the response is rarely something your body has never done before.

Recently on here someone, perhaps you, related a story about falling down, rolling, and getting right back on their feet and continuing on their way as if nothing had happened. It's the same thing. How did that happen? Where did the response come from? The training will show itself in a myriad of ways but not always the way one expects.

Awful bold of you to assume that was the first time I ever fell backwards into a complete head over heels somersault.

[twocircles13]

”wrestling” - in history seem definitely as the core base from where other hand to hand combat methods evolved from.
eventually for soldier wresling was a good way to maintain ones body and mind combat ready......also the vikings had it that way with their Glima.
wrestling, sure a lot of grabbing, but as so a very much direct hands on way to learn ”listening” so to properly do what at right time.

You assume that all hand to combat methods evolved from wrestling, in linear way evolution. I just don't believe this is true.

First, what is wrestling? Old types of wrestling could involve biting, scratching, head-butting, elbows, knees and fists. The versions today called wrestling developed as sport or a way to settle disputes man to man.

Second, martial arts have just a long history as wrestling, because people have always had to rely on themselves to protect themselves, their families and houses. Martial arts and self-defence is different than wrestling. They involve protecting yourself and others in any type of context. Chinese martial arts also involve traditional weapons because weapons were the main things to defend yourself with. Empty hand combat was always something secondary or a way to practice principles involving weapons without actually using weapons. So that weapons theory and military strategies blended together with empty hand methods and even wrestling is not far-fetched. And then you have to consider the people who developed martial arts. The Chinese internal martial arts have since at least the 17th century developed mostly by bodyguards and security personnel, people who always wore weapons and studied weaponry. This is just a fact. You can just read the classic IMA literature and it will be quite clear that this is the case, as they are packed with bodyguards and stories about bodyguards, as well as written by bodyguards.

taiji-push hands is a variation of this, as we know.

Push hands is sensitivity training. Before the 1980s Chen "masters" started to promote push hands competitions Push hands had never been synonymous with wrestling or practiced as wrestling.

Yes, the opening push hands position, wrist-to-wrist and hands on elbows, is a very good imitation of the sword fighting bind. Push hands then teaches what to do to cut or incapacitate your opponent and protect yourself as you leave the bind. This, then, has two-hand application with a staff or spear.

...

It depends on how you define push hands and sensitivity training, but I don’t think of push hands as “sensitivity training.” I think of stance and position testing, where the teacher or partner pushes on your arm or climbs up on your legs as the beginning or push hands training. This asks the question what do you do or how do your structure yourself when you encounter an incoming force? There is a sensitivity element to push hands, but mostly it is learning to use the skills of taijiquan.

[Steve James]

It depends on how you define push hands and sensitivity training, but I don’t think of push hands as “sensitivity training.” I think of stance and position testing, where the teacher or partner pushes on your arm or climbs up on your legs as the beginning or push hands training. This asks the question what do you do or how do your structure yourself when you encounter an incoming force? There is a sensitivity element to push hands, but mostly it is learning to use the skills of taijiquan.

It seems you've just described what the sensitivity training is for, whether it's testing one's own structure or testing the other's. How does A know that B is pushing, or how fast, or how hard? The way to tell is to listen, which will determine the optimal position (disposition).

It's not the only "skill." But, in phs, we expect tcc (i.e., peng, lu, ji, an, cai, lie, jou, kao, through zhong ding). We can't expect any opponent to be so cooperative as to allow us to act as if he's a phs partner. Then again, phs/dalu is just the first two-person practice; it's not fighting. What one learns through phs can then be applied to everything that comes later.

[twocircles13]

It depends on how you define push hands and sensitivity training, but I don’t think of push hands as “sensitivity training.” I think of stance and position testing, where the teacher or partner pushes on your arm or climbs up on your legs as the beginning or push hands training. This asks the question what do you do or how do your structure yourself when you encounter an incoming force? There is a sensitivity element to push hands, but mostly it is learning to use the skills of taijiquan.

It seems you've just described what the sensitivity training is for, whether it's testing one's own structure or testing the other's. How does A know that B is pushing, or how fast, or how hard? The way to tell is to listen, which will determine the optimal position (disposition).

It's not the only "skill." But, in phs, we expect tcc (i.e., peng, lu, ji, an, cai, lie, jou, kao, through zhong ding). We can't expect any opponent to be so cooperative as to allow us to act as if he's a phs partner. Then again, phs/dalu is just the first two-person practice; it's not fighting. What one learns through phs can then be applied to everything that comes later.

As I said, there is an element of sensitivity, but that word can be misleading. The skills of taiji push hands are not only sensitivity, unless you also want to include skills like learning to throw to hit a target as sensitivity. This is not a push hands skil, but push hands skills can be similar in that they require precision, timing, and judgment.

[Doc Stier]

I find muscle and mind confusion pays off.

Thank you. I am so advised. Damn! I never realized that?