Bodywork wrote: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.
D_Glenn wrote: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.
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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.
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nianfong wrote: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
Bodywork wrote: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.
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?
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