everything wrote:
If we take the stories of Dong at face value, that he learned circle walking from Daoists who did qigong only (and why would this story even be unusual), is there actually anything interesting or practical there? Literally, part of baguazhang comes from qigong work. Well we can just speculate that these guys got old and interested in "health" so whatever. Interesting but irrelevant except that taijiquan and qigong have proven health benefits, and that's good, but not really relevant. But that isn't what they said. Yes sure, Sun did mention health, but he also said once his dantian was full (of energy) it was easy to do throws. Maybe this is a BIG LIE? Well it's not that hard to look into. It isn't very hard to learn a little MA. It isn't very hard to learn a little qigong. If the latter only helps with health, that helps your "self protection" in both a direct and indirect way, so why not. The bare minimum is already useful. If it helps merge into your actual MA, great. If not, great. Maybe you get some glimpse into what they're actually talking about. If it could help throws, we'd all like that. Of course, did Fedor or Tyson need this? No. But at middle age, can we really become Fedor? Can Fedor even become a better Fedor? No, of course not! OTOH, is this internal thing only "old person martial arts"? Maybe... it definitely seems like better "old person martial arts" than any other old person martial arts, at the very least. Hahaha
As for example Dalto ryu Aikijutsu that have been talked about on the forum before is supposed to have(for inner students only?) “unusual”exercises for developing (unusual)strengt, exercises that have no martial application per se, but the strengt gained can of course be applied in martial practice and thus combat...While in the CIMA’s some teachers of the past did a fuse together of such conditioning exercises with techniques of defence and attack, maybe to make it easier to apply it in eventual combat?........About Tyson while in Japan for his Buster Douglas fight, he just days before made a visit to Gozo Shioda’s school(Aikido), he supposedly had gotten curious about that MA?....Anyway whatever he got out from that visit it didn’t help him in his fight.