dtactics wrote:Ian,
Both Vlad and Mikhail have internal power. There's a magnetism to their body (hyper-relaxed state) which draws you out of your center. Couple that with their expert and subtle usage of bio-mechanics and the stuff starts to look fake to the uninitiated. You can only appreciate it when you feel them. Having said that Mikhail gets away with more absurd ukemi (encourages it too much in my view) because folks are plain scared of him. He has no problem turning up the tap up as necessary and even when not. It's his whole "I won't be to kind to you" principle. Vlad's more playful (to a point) but it's clear when he wants to get more "professional". I've not yet felt Sergei but have heard and seen very good things from him. He's built like a tank.
Interesting. It's as I thought.
Upyu wrote:
First you'd need to clarify what you mean by "Internal" power/strength etc.
1) There's a distinct usage and development of the middle/dantien area as a control point that's immediately obvious in the Chen Style, Sam Chin, Li tai liang, etc etc.
2) Then there's the usage of opening/closing of the major joints,
3) Usage of the chest dantien area in some styles (some may favor this as a control over the usage of the middle dantien)
4) Then there's six directional stretching, allowing one to constantly maintain equilibrium (the stretch obtained by pushing the top of the head while letting the spine hang is one contradiction)
5) Breath training which is used to develop 1) and 2) which lead to 6)
6) All of the above lead to a certain kind of "elastic" connection in the body, (this is probably conditioned fascia, but that's anyone's guess). This conditioning support the absorbing of forces, along with generation of power using elements from the 5 points mentioned above.
...
7) Specific usage of the body that allows you to absorb an incoming force down to the ground, and use the reflected normal force to be expressed through the upper body. (Whether you use the actual middle or chest middle is irrelevant for the purposes of this talk)
First, thanks for the detailed reply. Especially the 7 points.
Re: points 2-7, IMO those are clearly in systema. Yes, including point 7, which should be present in a systema practitioner if he does the solo stuff consistently and correctly.
Granted, I haven't seen any dantian-development drills in systema, so I'd say that point #1 is absent. We have other drills for that area, but I doubt anyone's interested.
I don't know how you guys trained systema in Japan so I can't really comment, but e.g. stuff like this, which I've seen cited on this forum as an IP test, is almost exactly the same as what we do:
Koichi Tohei's relaxed, unbendable arm trick can be found being performed by high-level systema guys.
Also, to my untrained eye this wave stuff...
...looks practically the same as some of the stuff I've seen Ark doing.
I mean clearly Ark and Vladimir move differently, but is that an IP/no-IP difference or just a stylistic difference? Is IP in the training methodology or the quality of movement? If the same quality of movement can be produced using different training methods, is it not IP?
Anyway fair point about people fixating on similarities and missing the differences. That's why I don't limit myself to one style
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