the rum soaked fist: internal martial arts forum

The knees beyond the toes thing is a combat requirement not a exercise guideline

great, quotable statement.

my dad, brother, kid can/could do one pistol to varying degrees of good form. guess i'm the unathletic one in the family.

x

is all you need

i think the difference for me is if you do the "entire chain" exercise, your strong parts might compensate for weak parts, and exacerbate any imbalances. when you get hurt and you're forced to fix the "weak link", it makes so much more sense to remediate/strengthen from there.

if you ask most kids, especially girls, to do various mobility tests, they pass them with flying colors. theoretically back in time, you start with those kids with no weak links, you can just "strengthen the entire chain". no need for a rehab++. it would be cool to time travel and see what they (TMA or TCM 100s of years ago) did for rehab.

Some traditional training back in the day


http://wulinmingshi.com/2018/01/04/yang ... -yongnian/


My teachers first grand son, was said to have had to practiced under a table...
He could do some things that where quite "unusual" to say the least,
one would think not really possible...

Having had many yrs of CMA training before joining my teacher's taiji, group...
Managed to hurt my legs copying some exercises they did, that superficially looked very easy to do.
Not understanding that for some things it takes a while.
If rushed trying to attain an outcome,
one can end up damaging themselves as I found out..

Asked the grand son how to get better...

"the more pain, you can endure
the deeper, skill you can develop"

kinda depends on focus, and level of skill that one is looking for...

One major difference in approach in maybe what might be called old school CMA practice

It was designed to weed people out, not train everybody who wanted to train.
Kinda of a safe guard ensuring only the most able people were able to reach the depths of the art.

Not really about commercial viability nor being healthy,,,
all about what they felt was good for fighting.......

I didn’t start training CMA until my 20’s
I had a rugby league players body
When I met my teacher who was a master of pistol squats my body was fully formed so I learnt to do the squats but never like him
Tai chi dosent require any special physical boundaries it is about flexibility of tactics and a body that can apply those tactics
A lightweight boxer is most likely more flexible than a heavyweight but that does not mean he will win in a fight

I think the clips here are great don’t get me wrong

Don’t think they are necessary to do ICMA

wayne hansen wrote:I didn’t start training CMA until my 20’s
I had a rugby league players body
When I met my teacher who was a master of pistol squats my body was fully formed so I learnt to do the squats but never like him
Tai chi dosent require any special physical boundaries it is about flexibility of tactics and a body that can apply those tactics
A lightweight boxer is most likely more flexible than a heavyweight but that does not mean he will win in a fight

I think the clips here are great don’t get me wrong

Don’t think they are necessary to do ICMA

Totally agree

you mentioned age, prior conditioning / training

I would add cultural norms, customs.

ie mothers carrying their babies on the backs...
squat toilets ect...and genetics...

All play into how, and what some can achieve or not...

The most important part ,, is it "necessary".

IME no,,,

some of which you've outlined, other parts maybe not really conducive
to a rational conversation here

Good points regarding Old School teaching and training curriculums. Such methods worked very well to weed out those who were unwilling or unable to withstand the rigors of 'eating bitter'. In my generation of students in our Shen Men Tao System, my teacher's son and me were the only ones who never quit, although he didn't really have the option of doing that, so we were regular training partners for all two person practices, and I couldn't have hoped for a better training partner.

One Old School teaching method, however, has unfortunately backfired to some degree. This was the teaching of more simplified versions of standard style forms for beginning and intermediate level students, which were easier for them to learn and perform until their overall strength, flexibility, balance, and body control developed sufficiently to enable them to perform the more advanced versions through ongoing corrections and refinements of the practice material.

Since there were no colored belt ranks to denote one's level of training experience, this could be easily identified by observing which variation of a form someone knew and how well they could perform it. Their bodies will tell more truth in 30 seconds than their mouths will in 30 minutes.

The unintended backfire often occurs because most students don't remain active long enough to learn the more advanced ways of practicing any of the form sets or drills, or long enough to learn all of the material included in a full transmission of the system. Nonetheless, many such individuals independently go out on their own and teach whatever they did learn to those who know less than they do.

This was and still is frequently typical in most CMA styles and systems. As a result, the vast majority of both live and video performances of the major IMA styles seen today reflect more elementary versions of what is being demonstrated, rather than the 'full meal deal' of the original forms and drills.

At the end of the day, it's virtually impossible to know or even realize what is missing from these simplified forms and drills if you have never been taught the more advanced, full fledged versions. Although I have seen many imaginatively creative attempts at reverse engineering various popular forms, none have even remotely succeeded due to the reasons mentioned earlier.

Thus, sadly, the Old School curriculums are gradually dying out as the very few who mastered them in any style grow old and die, oftentimes without finding any student who is willing and able to replicate the master's training regimen in order to achieve the same skill level.

.

Who said that
I have twice said how good the info is
I cant really see anything I haven’t encountered before except the kneeling one with the fore leg against the wall
It is not the exercises that are unique but the way it’s explained
Once more I think all the clips are good and I posted them on our private site

Formosa Neijia wrote:I'm really happy with how this thread turned out. Yes, yes all of you were already doing all of this, none of the ATG stuff is useful in anyway, if you were taught the "real secrets" then you wouldn't need any of this, etc., etc., etc.
Please carry on with more of the same.

My thinking is about how to package it so it fits in. Comparing traditional training versus this modern stuff, is that the amount of time required to do the traditional stuff plus the modern stuff. It may be there is simply no time to do it all. For those serious about traditional training and doing 3+ hours a day the conundrum would be either what to cut to make the modern stuff fit in or that they aren't worth including because of that. It's a very difficult choice to make and by the time you figure out the truth of the matter it can be too late and you can get sandbagged by time. For me if I am going to add another hour or two it would have to be repetitions of what I cover in the first three hours. I don't want to do all this new stuff. it feels too much like I don't know what I am really doing. Like it's not nailed down. Not a cohesive system.

So as I mentioned to Formosa in PM I am working on a short set of vital exercises. Something like simple and sinister plus ATG, split, squat, and brigdge progression, and a few daoyin exercises. Someone mentioned hindu squats but the videos I saw on youtube don't look like it is in line with my ideas (ex. if were doing swings, why also do hindu squats or hindu pushups?) Based on how the 20 postures and 20 methods (Wang Ziping stuff) was put together, I would want to include major and unqiue techniques. Something like KB swings, ATG lunges, splits, the bridge, squats, etc. and progression exercises associated with each. So "the bridge" would be bridge progression, but the end goal is to do the bridge for a minute or whatever. The whole thing should take less than 10 minutes. So like 20 or 30 KB swings, and like that.

If anyone has any ideas on what should go into this, please let me know and your name shall be passed down for generations

My thinking is what is the point? For most of us what we get out of a traditional curriculum meets the needs just fine. What additional benefit does this provide that we aren't already getting? How does it help if you're not trying to be an elite performance athelete?

I'm all about incorporating work from western systems and thinking, but the juice should be worth the squeeze, time is a limited resource.

everything wrote:in an MA forum, many people might have already hit this level of ROM (I'm a million miles away). are there similar "standards" in your art, or personal art or practice? They all make me think of some movie with Shaolin monks doing feats of strength and mobility, or Jean-Claude Van Damme doing the splits across two big rigs in TV ads or something. I don't think I'll get to any of these "standards", but I like the idea of making specific measurable progress toward them. I haven't taken any MA or anything else where the instructors expected/guided us to get to certain mobility levels. probably is in lots of TMA, but I'm not particularly aware that the info out there is as systematic (X% of bodyweight in Y position, joint by joint). I've seen various martial arts and yoga people with this level or better of flexibility, but I need "for dummies" step by step guidance.

I don't know if I like the idea of "standards" per se. It doesn't account for physical limitations, or abilities beyond the baseline, so people can aim for that target and stay there.

Me, personally, it's just about slowly increasing what I can do. Deeper squats, kicks slower and higher and keeping the leg up longer, setting it down softer on the bar when i'm stretching. Smoother and more accurate in my movement. Stronger.

I guess the standard I use is how I am moving through the world.

I have been considering filming my leg workout for posterity.

.

.

Appledog, I'm not a trainer or teacher so not designing a program, other than for myself. So take these comments only as theoretical ramblings/one data point.

- you need the bulk of your time for your art or sport. for football/soccer that includes a lot of technical stuff. for IMA, it's "qi" stuff for me.
- jibengong "should" already have happened (preferably from a very early age. little kids can all do "asian squat". much easier to maintain that than to recover child-like movement as an adult). and has to be auxiliary in less time than your sport/art training.
- personally I like "Easy Strength", but "Zero" (rehab of the above thing) could be a sort of "warm up". very limited time required.

Formosa Neijia wrote:This

My thinking is what is the point?

has everything to do with this

Don’t think they are necessary to do ICMA

What's the point? There isn't one. Don't do it, It will ruin the "power of cheese." "Alex Dong's qigong set is all you need" blah, blah, blah.

I don't know what DOING IMA even means and I never did. IMA is the best at what it does or I will change/replace it. The various IMAs used to be about getting verifiable, quantifiable, replicable results in health, fitness, and fighting. Now it's all about doing some crappy circle walking with no point to it, doing some crappy taiji form, or making aging boomer hippies take a step. Since those are now the goals, nothing in modern training is needed so please leave it alone. Some people are still trying to perfect the buggy whip in 2023 so you're in good company.

Please go back to quoting sacred texts that no one understands like "Wong Zong Yue said taiji isn't long fist.....so there!" and posting endless forms no one cares about.

It seems like you're more interested in slinging zingers than actually reading what I wrote or responding to my actual questions, so... thanks I guess.

I don't know why so many people here are so bitter and vitriolic all the time. I thought learning how to be dangerous made you more peaceful and less insecure.