EoE Benq Quan

[Trick]

For something so simple I find it hard to believe how many people just don't get it

I had practiced karate for many years before I started Xingyiquan. I threw pretty beautiful strong punches whether in kata or kumite(free fighting) or bag/makiwara work. However it took me a while to get the XYQ Beng, and an even longer while to get the Paoquan practice.

[greytowhite]

Beng took me about 9 months before my teacher stopped correcting me and let me move forward. For Pao, the interaction of the rising, folding fist, and the hollow expanding body shooting the lower fist out didn't really make sense until I started working on Zha Shi Chui.

[AJG]

The guy is trying to express bung a little more dynamically (something a tad closer to what it may look like in sparring ) and everyone is stuck on what comparing what he is doing to the relatively simplistic form to teach coordination.

i also cant believe we are debating (or appear to) the need for repetition. The more you repeat something the greater the chance you are going to figure things out yourself. Repetition is where its at.

Next someone will say "yeah but if you are not shown the right way you will be practicing wrong" to which i say "you wont get it right at first even if you are shown the right way, but youve got to start rather than wasting all your time of thinking about how you should be doing it and never start"

No worries carry on and continue to apply bung in sparring in exactly the same way you do the form.

One would think we were still in the 80s here.

[Bao]

everyone is stuck on what comparing what he is doing to the relatively simplistic form to teach coordination.

i also cant believe we are debating (or appear to) the need for repetition. The more you repeat something the greater the chance you are going to figure things out yourself. Repetition is where its at.

No worries carry on and continue to apply bung in sparring in exactly the same way you do the form.

Good points I see value in what you are saying, but I don't really agree. XY and many Chinese arts coordinate the body in a way that you can't really figure out by yourself. Repetition won't do if you are doing it wrong. Doing something wrong 1000 times doesn't mean that you will do it right the 1001 time. You need a good teacher that can teach you the right way and also a teacher you can return to and make sure you din't screw things up.

Also, at one point, repetition does not necessarily mean that you will become better at what you do. But you need to keep repeating the body mechanics, because if you don't, it's all too easy to slip back into old habits. When you stand there and someone is aggressive, can you really relax your chest, sink your weight an keep your physical and mental balance? It's really not easy. Most people have too little confidence in their traditional practice and when they do sparring or get into a fight, they lose everything they have been taught. They don't have a method to get into that trained body mechanics and use them when they really need it. It's not simple, but if you are used to move in a certain way and to use your body in a certain way, it might help. Experimenting with movements and other mechanics won't help. You need to train in a very specific manner and keep your body always remembering how you do things when you do them right. If not, when you stand against someone else, you will wish that you had spent all that time practicing on MMA or Thai-boxing instead.

[wayne hansen]

Sparring is right not fighting
I think his teacher did a lot of no contact stuff in Japan
I think a lot of people who teach seminars all over the place get into a certain mode of instruction as opposed to those who teach long term students continually
I gave up the seminar thing early on because as enjoyable as it was I thought it was a bit of a con

[dspyrido]

Good points I see value in what you are saying, but I don't really agree. XY and many Chinese arts coordinate the body in a way that you can't really figure out by yourself. Repetition won't do if you are doing it wrong. Doing something wrong 1000 times doesn't mean that you will do it right the 1001 time. You need a good teacher that can teach you the right way and also a teacher you can return to and make sure you din't screw things up.

In the beginning a teacher is required to kick it off & yes along the way can tune up but at some point the student must make it their own. They must become self aware of the 100s of little refinement points some of which are hard to see. In solo practise they must take a point and drill it consciously to hopefully get it to a habit. Then move to the next and so on.

No teacher can do this for them. A robot with a good teacher will always be a robot until they make it their own. Conscious repetition focusing in on tweaking and improving is the only method here. The mind must be applied to the movement & is far more important than the quality of the instructor.

When you stand there and someone is aggressive, can you really relax your chest, sink your weight an keep your physical and mental balance? It's really not easy. Most people have too little confidence in their traditional practice and when they do sparring or get into a fight, they lose everything they have been taught.

Drilling does not remove the need for partner training. In order to know how to use it then technique practise, impact conditioning (peda), pressure drills, strengthening & sparring are vital. Two people can learn/create these methods if they have the right background & foundation. Bigger groups working together will be even more useful.

To learn to handle pressure, context training is vital but the drills (basic forms) are the foundation to this.

[Bao]

Drilling does not remove the need for partner training. In order to know how to use it then technique practise, impact conditioning (peda), pressure drills, strengthening & sparring are vital.

Partner training is essential, yes. Still most people when they spar they just practice "general sparring" and very few have a system to integrate their own style into fighting practice. They usually have a sport mind-set when they practice and traditional methods are mostly forgotten.

[Ian C. Kuzushi]

Sparring is right not fighting
I think his teacher did a lot of no contact stuff in Japan
I think a lot of people who teach seminars all over the place get into a certain mode of instruction as opposed to those who teach long term students continually
I gave up the seminar thing early on because as enjoyable as it was I thought it was a bit of a con

Su Dong Chen was one of Hong Yi Xiang's best tournament fighters.

[wayne hansen]

I know who master Su is
I am talking about what is presented here
comeing from a TST background and forget in Taiwan in 75
The training back then was very different to what he presents today
The reason I said what I did was due to the part where he is skipping in and out and his punches seem to loose timing with his stepping
It reminded me of when I trained with Ernesto Preases in Arjuken and his guys trained for a lot of semi contact tournament fighting
It looked almost identical

[Trick]

Nothing wrong with semicontact(I say since that was the format I trained and fought in the way Shotokan karate )
Most practitioners learn and develop a good to extremely good sense of timing, foot and body work by doing semicontact, maybe because one do not risk to fall in the trap of “power striking” that may feel great but may not be of much worth if faced by an slick fighter.
Many look down on it because it’s not fullcontact which at first thought sounds more an “realistic way of sparring”..however there are suprisingly many knock downs happening within the semicontact way, which one can then speculate on happen because the exquisite sense of timing and footwork developed rather than from any practice of power hitting on objects such as bags......

And here’s the secret of Beng too, the correct practice (should)lead to the development of a great sense of timing then applied in combat.

[dspyrido]

Partner training is essential, yes. Still most people when they spar they just practice "general sparring" and very few have a system to integrate their own style into fighting practice. They usually have a sport mind-set when they practice and traditional methods are mostly forgotten.

Most people have not bothered drilling the basics to the point where the move is ingrained. Putting on gloves or doing point sparring exposes this gap.

It is more common to move to linking forms, animal linked moves and ritual 2 person forms. This way they feel they have progressed but the fact is that they have not ingrained the change discussed in the classics gained from drilling the same basic moves.

Very few people will just go back to the basics and drill to the point where 1-2 hits can really hurt. With this foundation in place can tactics really be applied.

[C.J.W.]

Su is half-Japanese and has lived and taught in Japan for decades. His materials are also influenced by the Japanese arts he's come into contact with. I've seen training footage posted by his Taiwanese students, and it seems he is quite fond of Kendo's footwork for fast forward attacks -- which is also seen in the video here -- and has incorporated it into his Xingyi.

[Trick]

Su is half-Japanese and has lived and taught in Japan for decades. His materials are also influenced by the Japanese arts he's come into contact with. I've seen training footage posted by his Taiwanese students, and it seems he is quite fond of Kendo's footwork for fast forward attacks -- which is also seen in the video here -- and has incorporated it into his Xingyi.

When karate began establish on mainland japan to thrive the early masters adapted ideas from Kendo (and judo),Karate had to become an dueling”sport” to reach any success in Japan...it much lost important methods found in kata, but the gain was anyway on the + side...footwork practice in karate became more lively ...much like XYQ footwork(but a little lesser formal)

[Bhassler]

Nice blog post that provides a little bit of context for what he was doing in the OP.

https://eoeamericablog.wordpress.com/20 ... qo9yBWqPbQ

[shawnsegler]

The responses in this thread make me want to vomit.