How to use internal power in throwing?

[jjy5016]

I'm not a shuai jiao practitioner but my grandteacher was supposed to be pretty good at it.

He said that shuai jiao's specialty is in the use of "cold jing" when executing technique. It's the same cold jing that is described in old taiji books. Hsing yi has a different name for the same thing as I believe does baguazhang. The word jing or jin has a specific meaning that is not different in shaolin derived or nei jia systems.

No difference. Just how good the person doing the technique is in his development.

[nianfong]

D glenn, there really is no difference man. you should check the shuai-jiao king tourney video and see wang hai ping's shenfa. it's insanely fluid and powerful.

in SC if your shenfa is wrong, your throw will not work right--you might not be able to pick up the guy, you might not be able to throw him powerfully, you might not be able slide into the position at the right time. in bagua, your shenfa can be wrong, and your palm may still hit someone. in xingyi your beng quan can suck, yet you'd still be able to punch someone into oblivion like a boxer or streetfighter might. I once met a baji fellow in a park, at the behest of my friend who I convinced to leave shaolindo. when he heard I did shuaijiao he would not cross hands with me, and was the first to tell me a common MA saying in china/taiwan about shuaijiao. 三年拳,當年跤. it means 3 years of fist = 1 year of shuaijiao. in this case he was referring to the fact that shuaijiao always spars, and always trains throwing each other (lifting someone else forces your shenfa to be right), and also trains a lot of explosive power and forms.

SC is too old to be labeled either external or internal. it was around before there was any sort of split in philosophy. you can be more brute force about it like the mongolians or sumo guys, but you can also be more finesseful about it, like the baoding, tianjing, beijing styles.

-Fong

[Dai Zhi Qiang]

That's because SC is a subset of taiji. Taiji does everything that SC does, and adds in striking, kicking, finish moves, and better joint locks. Taiji also has more effective throws, as often times we will break a limb first, or apply chin na to throw an opponent from a position in which they cannot fall safely.

I just wish more SC people would take off their silly jackets and practice fighting in a more realistic manner. That's why I say this-- I don't want to offend anyone, I just want to help...[/quote]

This is one of the most stupidest posts I have read on EF, where did you all of the sudden come from?

You obviously know nothing about Shuai Chiao or Chin Na for that matter. Your comment on Shuai Chiao people practising in a more realistic manner and you are using Taiji Quan as a example? The majority of Taij now is not suitable for fighting and I think that is one of the often brought up points that Mr Wang makes, you see all too often compliant demo's where people are just pushing and pulling each other off balance and don't get my started about the "lin kong jin".

Shuai Chiao is known as the oldest CMA in existence, documents go back as far as Huang Di (2500BC) detailing grappling movements. Shuai Chiao also has as you mentioned many techniques where you are unable to break fall and throw and lock at the same time (this is what Mr Wang sometimes refers to as "Black Hand techniques".

JN.

[CHANEY]

This reminds me of the "Good Golfing is iternal" "Tennis is internal." comments expressed here and elsewhere.
Now Judo and jujutsu is internal? Oh well then. So is pro wrestling and all sports.
I've completelty changed my mind about the practioners of the ICMA over the few years I have been reading these boards. It has also helped to explain allot of what I have felt. Thankfully there are people still training internal power even though they may be increasingly hard to find in the internal arts.
Gotta go, I tee off at 4

Maybe the comments have some validity. When you think about core muscularity/activation, the winding and unwinding of tendon and fascia coordinated with the breath and the contraction or expansion of the joints and spine to create a relaxed stretch and rebound action through superior control of the nervous system... all in a continuos motion of expression or explosion, why not?

Tennis players, good ones, have to adjust there bodies in the blink of an eye, they have to set their feet and send power through there entire body, in a coordinated fashion to say, return a 150 mph serve. There's not a lot of segmented power at the higher levels of tennis. Wether or not

In hockey, when you watch in slow motion, say Al MaCInnis (from the past) and he's routinely shooting the puck at over 100 mph, you'll see him set the puck and then in a relaxed fashion, twist his whole body over the legs and snap it around in one fluid , connected motion...

Wether or not many of these athletes study or train in the "Internal Aspects" of their given arts. I do think it may be possible that they arrive there on an intuitive level.

Does Tiger Woods look like he's straining to drive a golf ball 300 yards? It's one fluid relaxed motion that looks abut right to my criteria for "internal." From the relaxed winding of the spine and hips to the weight shift on through contact, it's Fa-Jin as far as I'm consired and a very polished application of it.

Are Jud and Jujitsu internal? Maybe there are some components there. You say that your JiuJitsu is internal, why can't others who are starting to recognize these facets in there art, dur to the widespread dissemination of "Internal Information and descriptons", be any less valid than your claims or anyone else's?

[CHANEY]

I completely agree with this. There seems to be an idea around here that the more "internal" or "internal-like" something is the better, yet ultimately shouldn't it be the effectiveness of the technique that is the most important thing to the martial artist rather than a technique that looks like it would best identify with their own martial art?


That should be the case, but hairs are getting split left and right.
Everything that I've ever seen of SC training, easily rivals internal exercises in
developing the correct unified body, spinal and relaxed expansions and contractions used to control or offset an opponents power.

I don't really know John, but it occurs to me that he lived in a time of IMA giants and while not being a large man, he threw most IMA, EMA and whomever cared to try, on their collective asses. He was that good, maybe the last of the very best living CMA men. Depends who you ask.

The point is, maybe his training was internal or not, maybe he arrived some place there or not, but in his mind and practice, did it matter? The proof was in the pudding I think.

[DeusTrismegistus]

The "face changing" is the key for throwing. SC requires to have all your body parts to function together (Is that what people called body connection?) When you use leg blocking, you use your left leg to block your opponent's legs. You need to twist your body to the right, sink your neck, turn your face to the right and downward. Let face changing, neck twisting to lead your upper body's spinning. Without "face changing", there is no spinning. You need to integrate step, waist, and face as one unit. If you train this daily, you will be able to execute "face changing" in your throw.
Last edited by johnwang on Tue Jun 10, 2008 3:03 pm, edited 4 times in total.

The way you just described "Face changing" is a perfect step in showing external body movement and potentially getting thrown yourself. Your description of movement is also yet another example of you not knowing what you’re talking about regarding internals in throwing, John.
You would do better to keep your spine aligned and your weight over both feet while your body developed a torque and used its mass to cut with one leg while using down weight with the other. Your movements in all your videos I have seen as simply externsal mechanics. Good external throwing mechanics, but thats about it.

Can you please show me an example or explain how you can do a proper hip throw, leg blocking throw, leg lifting throw, vertical lifting throw (uchi mata), cracking throw, or chopping throw, without "face changing". You can't do it. As far as using one leg to cut and using down weight with the other, that is necessary already for many SC throws to work. The only basic throws I know that keeps the weight over both feet (assuming you mean 50/50 and exclude 70/30 etc.) are hip throw and shoulder throw (overturning the sack I believe it is called in Tong Zongyi's book). Only overturning the sack can be done without face changing and still be effective, but face changing makes it more so. You can do some throws without face changing, like a basic hip throw, but the face changing is the key to driving power. In a seminar by Daniel Weng last fall a lot of people had trouble with the leg lifting throw, people were often able to keep their balance one leg and keep from being thrown. The reason they could do this was the person doing the throwing wasn't face changing.

If you maintain face changing is external, then none of the throws I mentioned and many many more can not be practiced by someone who does only "internal" practice. They can never do a leg lifting throw with "internal power" because they will have to change face to get the maximum power, which is external. So if you are right the people who claim that you can use internal power in everything you do are wrong, because a leg lifting throw cannot be internal since it requires face changing.

[DeusTrismegistus]

This is sort of paraphrased from something I was told: This art (bagua) and other similar styles (taiji, xingyi) are shenfa (body-method) based styles. The shenfa is the key, and the reason for the training - standing, drilling, form is to change the body and ingrain a very specific shenfa. There is a saying "the new student is locked inside the school for 2 years." This is so that they don't try to use anything that they haven't yet learned. The results of the changes come gradually and over time. "you won't feel the results of today's practice until tomorrow, and so on." Also the student shouldn't watch or study other arts during that time, "If you want to study 'my art' you can't study something else, as they have and use a different shenfa, if you want to study that style, fine, just don't come back here". Since the body method comes first, techniques are adapted to suit the body. The techniques become body-method and style specific. There are a lot of great styles and practitioners out there with their own body-methods, generation of force, and techniques. This method is ours.

-----------

Some of what are labeled external styles seem to hold the techniques as the key, and let the body change and adapt to the execution of the technique, drilling technique and specific movement over and over until the body gains the abililty to execute it. Techniques are taught from the start.

In IMA, their techniques typically won't work in application until one has the proper body-method.


fwiw - response to Deus and Nianfong.


.

Thanks D Glenn.

If internal arts develop a specific shen fa, then is the secret to having internal power in your movement contained within the specific shen fa or is it simply being able to maintain a shen fa, any shen fa, in everything you do?

FWIW I agree with Fong, SC needs shen fa to work and whether you have it or you don't is what separates the decent SC players from the great ones. I also don't really think there is that much different in SC shen fa compared to taiji shen fa, at least the way I have been learning.

[CHANEY]

If you maintain face changing is external, then none of the throws I mentioned and many many more can not be practiced by someone who does only "internal" practice.

Face changing = Twisting the spine and root, twisting the "internal" axis.

[D_Glenn]

D glenn, there really is no difference man. you should check the shuai-jiao king tourney video and see wang hai ping's shenfa. it's insanely fluid and powerful.

in SC if your shenfa is wrong, your throw will not work right--you might not be able to pick up the guy, you might not be able to throw him powerfully, you might not be able slide into the position at the right time. in bagua, your shenfa can be wrong, and your palm may still hit someone. in xingyi your beng quan can suck, yet you'd still be able to punch someone into oblivion like a boxer or streetfighter might. I once met a baji fellow in a park, at the behest of my friend who I convinced to leave shaolindo. when he heard I did shuaijiao he would not cross hands with me, and was the first to tell me a common MA saying in china/taiwan about shuaijiao. 三年拳,當年跤. it means 3 years of fist = 1 year of shuaijiao. in this case he was referring to the fact that shuaijiao always spars, and always trains throwing each other (lifting someone else forces your shenfa to be right), and also trains a lot of explosive power and forms.

SC is too old to be labeled either external or internal. it was around before there was any sort of split in philosophy. you can be more brute force about it like the mongolians or sumo guys, but you can also be more finesseful about it, like the baoding, tianjing, beijing styles.

-Fong

I think there is a difference. I'm not saying that SC doesn't have and develop it's own shenfa but only that it will never be the same shenfa as bagua, xingyi, taiji, etc. Just like a bagua shenfa will never be like a taiji one etc. & vice versa.

"in bagua, your shenfa can be wrong, and your palm may still hit someone."

But it won't have the power in it that comes from ingraining bagua shenfa. It may KO someone but not technically bagua, just a strike that looks like a bagua technique, more than likely though if someone who sucks at their bagua, doesn't have it's basic shenfa, and is trying to apply it, they're probably lacking higher level things like 'lianhuan' and if that strike doesn't work they're likely in a situation they won't be able to get out of. Probably the same goes for a guy who can't do beng, I would guess.


"shuaijiao always spars, and always trains throwing each other (lifting someone else forces your shenfa to be right)"

That is probably true that it makes SC's shenfa right, but not bagua, or taiji's... etc.


I don't think anyone is saying that SC or judo and what not don't become fluid, smooth and powerful , only that it won't have the same shenfa as these other arts. Something has to be practiced in order to do it. It may look the same on the outside, but by it can't ever be the same on the inside unless you train it. As for what is better- proof is always in the pudding.


.

[DeusTrismegistus]

In counter throwing the mechanic of NOT face changing, but rather holding your spine and attention forward and letting your weight sink you can pivot from the spine while attacking. To say it differently you can receive their force on side creating a hole, while they can't seem to "get" your center, all while your other side is attacking and moving them. It's a way of holding the body I mentioned above that will not allow-or at least make it extremely difficult to let an opponent get your weight on one side and cut your weight out from below or take your shoulders over the top. Your mass can be sustained in the opposite side from that they are attacking instantly, and then used to throw them. It's a very fast way to move and feels like hard rubber to try and move.
Think of pushing on a door as it flies open
Now
Think of the door having a rod as a pivot in the middle. The harder and faster you push on the left, the harder and faster it will hit you on the right.
Now
Think of the door being suspended in the air by a big ball bearing supported from a steel rod in the ground. It can pivot in the center of its mass. Now matter where you push your force is released and you are hit from the other side, up, down, low to high, high to low. With no one ever being able to "get" your center.
Now
Think of the door having a movable and rotational ball bearing that is free ranging and can get support not only from a single positional point, but can change from left to right in an instant
Now
Imagine that wood can hit you at will without any need for incoming force.

The door sides are your body axis. The pivot in the middle is your spine; the center is your dantien. All of that is just simple structure use in grappling. But there is no way of getting there by lifting, flexing or simply trying to unify the body through grappling. It is through intent, and slow progress and gradual increases in resistense on to fighting. There is a host of other skills to add to that; Joining and manipulating the upper and lower and how to use them in various ways, expanding and contracting, twisting, while maintaining a central alignment, aiding that with breath power, and the multiplicities of directed forces. Out-in, expand-release, contract-draw in and then aiding -that- with breath power. IMO these ways of moving are different in many aspects from normal movement.

What about this description is internal mechanics, or makes it internal? You didn't describe anything that my teacher doesn't do when he does SC, my teacher trained with GM Chang as well.

When you change face you rotate the body around the central axis (spine, and when you do leg lifting or vertical lifting you rotate the body around the center (dantian). The revolving door idea is a common set up for chopping throw, they push on your right side you turn your body on its axis (spine) and pull them in the direction they started to go, when they resist you reverse the twist, step through and chop their leg out from underneath them.

[CHANEY]

Bagua is also a throwing art, Throws, trips, sweeps and Shuai that comes from SC.
I would think that the Body method of Bagua is directly related to that of the Shaui Jiao methods
of shen fa building. You can't base one upon the other and then say it is something radically different and that
it needs to be trained or developed differently.

I've seen very few throws in all of CMA that were not from SC.

[D_Glenn]

Thanks D Glenn.

If internal arts develop a specific shen fa, then is the secret to having internal power in your movement contained within the specific shen fa or is it simply being able to maintain a shen fa, any shen fa, in everything you do?

Probably the former but shenfa is kind of like learning to ride a bike, once you learn it you can't 'unlearn' it. But if you stop, after sometime one's body starts to go back to normal. Just like SC shenfa, you start to lose your legs after 3 days. But you can always get back on.


"FWIW I agree with Fong, SC needs shen fa to work and whether you have it or you don't is what separates the decent SC players from the great ones. I also don't really think there is that much different in SC shen fa compared to taiji shen fa, at least the way I have been learning."

There are a lot of styles that could fall under the category of internal. The difference is in the basics. Bagua, xingyi, and taiji (and others) have similar training regimens. The most basic thing in common is zhan zhuang, xingyi has santi, bagua as 8 palms standing and moving zhanzhuang while turning in the circle, taiji is basically slow moving zhanzhuang (btw My grandteacher Xie said back inthe day taiji guys were doing the form so slow you couldn't tell they were moving.). I think these styles diverge right from the start from other styles that don't have zhanzhuang. And then there's a lot more to it after that.


.

[Fubo]

Throwing is throwing... in terms of body mechanics, it doesn't matter whether you are using so call internal force or whatever, everyone has to play by the same principles that make a hip throw, or shoulder throw, or pickup, etc... work... there may be variations on those throws, but the basic principles need to stay the same for them to work well.

[CHANEY]

There it is in a nutshell. The internal physics have to combine with the external physics to make it
happen. You can have all the Internal Power, mechanics etc. , but without the external to deliver it? Is it really
"power", power suggests usage... transfer, exhibition. It is a measurable, not talking or thinking or wondering what is really "Internal".

[nianfong]

D Glenn,

I know more zhan zhuang postures in shuaijiao than in xingyi or taichi. 13 in fact--called the 13 generals / tai bao. And the body postures all develop different things which I've never developed in the shaolin, xingyi, or taiji postures I know. for instance, the black dragon playing on water and searching the bottom of the sea postures are single leg postures where you lean forward, to the side, down, backwards, developing balance than any single leg posture I've learned in shaolin or taiji.

the shenfa is different between the arts, yes. but if you're going to throw someone, it FORCES your shenfa to be closer to ideal. that's what I'm saying. and that shenfa is a unified body, just like taiji, xingyi, and bagua. and baji, etc etc.

shuaijiao is the raw material. it is inescapably the great-great-great-great-etc grandfather of all the chinese arts you guys learn. and as such, the "internal power" is already in there. any chinese martial art will have "internal power" when it is trained, and every chinese system will have the training somewhere, known by someone.

-Fong