tonydee

While I personally am happy to tentatively accept that your tai chi's as real as it gets, it's still true that any explained examples of what might have been chi won't stop other people from saying their techniques are the ones using "real" chi in some distinct way that's not similarly explained. It's just one of those things that's can inherently never be disproved, though if real - and capable of clearly super-human results - then it could perhaps be proved. Sorry to hear about that. Are you at least able to keep practicing by yourself? If so, do you think it's actively helping your condition? It must be natural to turn to the health aspects of something you've clearly loved for so many years.... That's sort of good, and sort of bad - hard to say without being there. I don't like people leading students astray, but I'm also aware that some skills and knowledge that are highly specialised and should be valued may happen to be present in someone who's not currently a well-rounded, able-bodied martial artist. Unless they have a bad attitude, it's nice to be a bit easy going and look for the positives while establishing the balance you speak of in a non-aggressive fashion. Maybe the same would go for you now - if you walked into a tai chi school and started gently offering some technical advice on posture during push hands, or breathing, it would be a savage overreaction for them to put you in some kind of a challenge situation (given your car accident). Not a win for either side. Establishing reality is essential, but with an open mind and generous spirit. Cheers, Tony

At one stage in my mother's public service career, part of her job was responding to members of the public who wrote in announcing their new perpetual motion machines :-/. As a hard-core rationalist with a chemistry degree and more scientific training than the backyard tinkerers who wrote in, I'm not sure it was her favourite task. I think it would save you a lot of time You see, the funny thing about all these hocus pocus things is that there are people out there who believe in them and who will cite various scientific experiments and objective evidence in support of their beliefs. I've read literature from tai chi schools explaining how scientific measurements have detected electro-magnetic fields around the human body that can be influenced in accordance with a practitioners perception and conscious manipulation of chi. Well, I think we all know the body uses electricity for some muscle triggering etc., so it must be able to generate some electromagnetic field. But is that scientific evidence of chi? When does "just being alive" differ from "chi"? How much stronger or more directed must that energy be before we consider there to be something important happening. If some scientist proved a tai chi grandmaster showed twice the normal electromagnetic field strength around his big toe, is that proof of the utility of chi? If said grandmaster can break 5 bricks with a flying nose strike, and on average kickboxers twice the side can only break 2, is that proof of chi, or a nose too often broken is less useful against a brick? All up, it's not only about whether science can detect any truth to all of this, it's also about significance and where to draw the line, which is why both sides already believe science supports them. The same is true for many people chasing supernatural phenomena, and certainly both atheists and religions are constantly claiming scientific validation of their claims while working out ways to dismiss the other side's claims.

I highly recommend the combination. A good instructor is even more important for tai chi than it is for karate - indeed, one distinction I've heard used between internal and external arts is that you can't learn internal arts just by watching them performed. There are a huge majority of tai chi instructors who couldn't use their art in any kind of conflict - the peaceful / health side of tai chi is so common that in many cases several generations of instructors won't have had any practical applications in mind and the movements will have drifted so far from martial that they're totally compromised. With your karate experience, if you keep it up for a few months I'm sure you'll get a feel for the potentials in the tai chi school you're with, and if the school has drifted a little but not too far from true, then you may very well intuit more of the martial application that the instructor has. In particular, I highly recommend the sensitivity exercises - they develop your ability to accept and deflect an attack without untoward resistance, as well as to explode into an attack before the opponent can react. A very simple intro to my favourite movement is at http://il.youtube.com/watch?v=8jajIgfGaaQ&feature=related, though this doesn't show the more martial application of developing explosive power. Two experienced artists practicing together will try to use any excess rigidity in defense as an opportunity to pass a shock through the defender's body and destabilise them, and any weakness in defense as a chance to hit them before they can tense sufficiently. Learning to turn a block/deflection into a grasp or attack at any point along it's route is very important for any striking arts, and certainly the combination of hapkido and tai chi helped me refine the raw power- and speed-oriented striking technique I had in my early years, which tended to overcommitment at times (though few in my old school understood how to exploit that). The parallels with wing chun are noteworthy too... at their best, both arts refine sensitivity to a very high level through such drills. Interestingly, Kanazawa-sensei has achieved a high level in tai chi and - while of course he's careful not to praise it too highly - clearly values it.

Thank you indeed Patrick for your generosity and effort in making this community not just possible but a reality, and crucially - it's not a word used much these days - a wholesome one at that. It's always a relief to find the time to get back here.

Welcome Wanaka. Nothing like a good workout to lift the spirits. Look forwards to seeing your posts. Cheers, Tony

Nice work! Image quality looks pretty good as uploaded at 720p despite the often low light and consistently deep depth-of-field. Re the action sequences: very "film" martial arts . Opening with an air-borne spinning crescent kick? Finishing with a jumping outward one? Big swinging motions, low-percentage technique selection, so many wasted opportunities on both sides, but I appreciate non-MAists like to see something easily understandable and this pretty much hits the nail on the head. All up, it looks as good as any MA demo tapes I've seen, and better than the ones my friends have made :-/. Now you just need a good story. Hope you'll post more. Cheers, Tony

I agree with earlier advice - you need to use the opportunity of having a less challenging opponent to practice other things. But also be patient - I'm guessing you're fairly young yourself - a little frustration now, and a little generous patience with her, will be something you'll be able to look back on with good humour in a few years time when you'll doubtless have moved on to a higher rank, and it's nice if she has good memories of your sparring together too. A great goal during such training is that after every movement you make - step, attack or block - you're in position to hit your partner somewhere they're not defending adequately. You shouldn't always carry out the attack (discussed below), just check it off mentally when you achieve the potential. When you do this in sparring with your peers you won't achieve 100%, but here you can start more consciously and deliberately refining the habits that will get you closer to 100% against people closer to your own level. Challenge them gently by showing them you could hit them - not every time (that's too overwhelming), but just so they're blocking a couple to earn the right to attack themselves, so you outclass opponents rather than rely on strength or speed. Be good natured about it, allowing them a little offensive run if they can keep some pressure on you then coming back at them once it peters out or becomes too misdirected. Go as slow as you can while still putting them under enough pressure to control things - the better you get the slower you can go. This is important because one day you'll be older and slower, and you want to have become efficient before that day comes. Breaking that down: footwork (particularly - work on stepping closer to your opponent as you block - perhaps diagonally, or making a step preparatory to a particular counter), hand coordination: use both arms - sometimes alternately, sometimes deliberately breaking your habits and exploring how you could block or attack with the hand you don't instinctively, habitually use. Use any difficulty as feedback to improve your stance to enable good use of both hands, while maintaining a defensible position overlapping techniques (so you're preparing your strike even as you block, but to avoid overwhelming your partner you should simply go very slow) concurrent techniques - complete a block and an attack, or two attacks, simultaneously; do this very slowly as juniors have to get used to watching for both and working out how to cope: perhaps abandoning their own attack in order to block yours, or choosing to block one attack while dodging away from the other when you block, mentally prepare a grasping or unbalancing block... you don't have to follow through with a tug or snap to actually make it any different from a simple deflection, but get in the habit of being able to synchronise your blocks to the incoming attacks such that you could tug the opponent's limb slightly, or knock them off balance a little practice being a realistic distance for hand counters (kicks aren't as easy to control), such that you can stop the hand gently before or just touching their chest / forehead etc.. - this helps you improve your distancing and makes sure you really are getting into the advantageous position you imagine put some artificial restriction on your movements: don't let yourself step backwards (good practice if there's a wall, road, drop etc. to avoid); only use one hand (this may teach you to block more creatively, particularly in using the area around the elbow - very useful when defending against multiple attackers); focus on using peripheral vision to pick up their attacks (but be extremely careful attacking yourself - best to turn and look first - as you can easily misjudge distances seen out the corner of your eye, and kids aren't the right training partners to be taking risks with) Also, practice any things you're not good at: it you're uncomfortable with your left foot forward, stick it out there; if you have a lousy right leg side kick, use it slowly with careful attention to technique and safety. Get comfortable relying on the things you haven't been able to trust against the little ones who can't punish you too badly if it all goes awry.

Volleyball's an interesting contrast to basketball, in that the extra jumping height's important to be able to spike whereas in basketball the game's not ruined by an absence of slam dunks (is it? ) - shots can be upward so absolute height and jumping ability is less important. In volleyball, they do have different net heights for men and women (7' 11 5/8" vs 7' 4 1/8"). I can't really see that there's much choice. I'm not sure about martial sports. I don't really approve of them in the first place, so it's hard for me to mix in an extra dynamic and consider it independently. My first thought it that when in doubt let people decide for themselves, but of course many people find themselves pushed towards abusive or destructive behaviours through other pressures, so that's not really a sound approach. Arbitrary interference with peoples' freedoms is a very serious step though. Different martial arts/sports have different kinds, extents and probability profiles for injury too, so maybe the approach most organisations/governments presumably end up taking is as good as it gets: let people do stuff, if there are injuries then require corresponding rule changes and/or protective gear, until the number of actual injuries is minimal (or better, start conservatively and slacken the safety requirements if it's proven sufficiently safe to do so). Many factors come into play then... change any one of the myriad factors - rules and gear, weight classes, genders, mixing of ranks, #/length of rounds, compulsory rest between fights, etc. - and you need a new period for that evolutionary process to pan out based on empirical evidence. But, that's the way we really do everything in life, from setting speed limits, letting people hang glide or rock climb (or smoke for that matter), to approving medical treatments.

Very interesting indeed! I have a lot of trouble imagining those applications really working (and more reservations re whether say the tai chi ward off movement might not do a similar thing in a much stronger, defensible and refined way), but sounds like an opportunity for me to try something new... always very welcome. I'll grab someone next training session and smack them up and down... see where it gets me... possibly not in their good books . Many thanks for your keen insight.

Just for the sake of presenting the obvious flip side (after which we're back to the old arguments and intangibles and the discussion won't go anywhere new in a hurry)... Fighting's too complex for certainties. You might well know that from a certain position you have it in the bag and can predict and control the fight. Sounds like in your experience people have let you attain that controlling position and you've come to take it for granted. It's like saying "I can always win at chess (but before we play the opponent has to move their king four rows forwards of normal). Even if say a striker had only a 70% chance of ending the fight with _their_ favoured technique, if they can get a 70% chance of striking you with it as you come in for your show-stopper, then the odds are almost exactly back to 50/50. Having a 100% winning technique that you've got to get past a 70%/70% to apply doesn't mean you're not gambling... that's a fallacy of perception. Everybody gambles in a fight. You just have to shore up the odds at each stage of engagement to make it diminishingly unlikely that a whole chain of things can go wrong and culminate in a fight-stopping technique being used effectively against you. The individual gambles can have a multiplicative effect just as the more small bets you make in a casino, the surer you are to loose. The weight of small-risk, small-commitment, uncertain outcome attacks can overwhelm an all-in commitment-required coffin-filler (though you obviously want to seize on bigger mistakes with more commitment). And that goes on both sides... grappling and striking. Don't get too smug or you'll loose touch with the very real dangers of other styles. A logical fallacy. If people train 4 times more hours _they can be expected to be better fighters_, all other things being equal. It proves absolutely nothing about which style or school is better if the students have put in the same amount of hours (in this case, it just reflects on what a black belt means to each school). And even that's too simplistic because some styles focus on ambitious long-term results (e.g. tai chi), where others focus on short-term results (e.g. a lot of kickboxing schools), so you can't work out which school or style is better by just drawing a line and saying "we'll compare after 500 hours", nor "2000 hours", nor "black belt", unless you actively define that as the end-goal of the students training: "I want to be as good as possible after 500 hours (but don't care if I've a solid foundation to keep getting better quickly after that)". Not much point. Sadly, nothing's easy to measure, and it all goes round in little circles... (at least for Wally Jay) :-/.

(Sorry for the slow response... new job, house move etc..) Not sure if you've seen the applications? In both illustrations, the defender has applied an upward palm under a punch, such that the punching arm ends up very close to the attackers' shoulder height. Now, given the extended punching arm is a fixed length, its reach described a circle around our shoulders, and it reaches furthest forwards when extended at shoulder height. So, if that upward palm has lifted a punch from some lower height up to shoulder height, it's actually ensuring the fist is free and angled with maximum chance of reaching the defender. There's absolutely nothing in the illustrations to suggest any way in which the punch has obstructed or deflected the attack from it's target (around the defender's sternum): rather it's encouraged the punch in its reach. It doesn't even leave the upward-blocking arm well positioned for follow up defense or attack, nor for a grasp or unbalancing technique. That's why it's ostensibly a remarkably useless application. By way of contrast, a vertical deflection that pulls the fist well below or above the attacker's shoulder height prevents it reaching so far forwards, and can at least have some claim to defensive utility, though a sideways deflection of 10cm is pretty much always enough to make an attack miss, whereas sine(45deg) ~= 0.7, so even a 45 degree deflection in height only degrades reach by 30 percent. Consequently, I train more for sideways deflection (particularly preferring high-side- to rising-block as a defense against head-level punches). I'm not saying that movement doesn't have any application - just that the ones shown for that upward hand are either beyond my abilities to appreciate, or without merit - take your pick . I was always taught to consider this movement to have the upward hand securing one joint while the downward hand thrusts through the next - breaking an elbow or affecting a takedown from capturing a front kick (delivered in from the side) with the upward hand under the heel as the downward hand shoves the knee. In practice, this may or may not work anyway - depending on relative strength, but it's more in line with my hapkido training too. So - ironically - I end up mirroring Anslow (yes, 'twas him of whom I spoke else-forum) by choosing when to throw away the "official" application in favour of my own, but here I think it's justified because I'm not arbitrarily choosing a second and third application when the primary application is clear and effective, but seeking any workable interpretation to begin with. And since we've gone there, on pg 221 of his book he illustrates just such an elbow break for the similar move in 4th grade pattern. Yes... same kind of feel for me.

It's very hard to know without seeing your current ability. One crucial aspect of power is focus, and getting good focus on a moving target is best developed through kicking moving targets at a variety of angles and heights. Partner exercises with mitts or those sports taekwondo targets with the clapper bit at the top and the long handles - quite useful. It's also important to understand that power is delivered to a target over time... it's a curve. You might increase the total area under that curve (i.e. the total energy transferred) but decrease the peak momentary rate of transfer (the maximum height of the graph). This corresponds to more of a push, where-as peak power is important for shattering strong but fragile targets, and IMO more important for self defense. Therefore, if you do heavy bag work make sure you're focused on good technique, timing, and increasing the overall amount of energy transferred into the target while decreasing the transfer time. This will produce more of a chain-rattling bang with the bag snapping taught and perhaps jumping up and down a bit, rather than swinging smoothly away from the technique. That's good. Focus on increasing that to make sure you're getting the muscles used to the proper intensity you need for fighting. In terms of muscle development, plyometrics are a great way to go. I've found "burpees" quite effective. This is a terrible demonstration of it - but just in case you don't know what they are, check the "alternative" form presented second in this video: http://www.5min.com/Video/How-to-Perform-Burpees-Exercise-121354519. When I do them, I kick back the legs and fall straight into the pushup ensuring I keep the body very straight so the arms are actually getting the full sudden shock of body weight, and try to do that smoothly as I descend from the jump. Push up explosively so you raise and tuck the legs in in one motion, preparing to jump. While not enough by itself, kicking in the air is useful to get the body used to full unopposed speed, and habituate the muscles to locking out and through a target. Consciously contrasting your technique while hitting targets with that in the air can give you insight into how much you're holding back either total power or snap - due to uncertainty about safely coping with the reaction forces from the target, or simply not trusting yourself to make clean contact with the right striking tool... sometimes useful feedback to push yourself on to harder efforts. Do be careful though... there's more potential for injury with some kicks than others... e.g. turning/roundhouse kick's pretty safe, but a spinning back kick where the ball of the foot hits the bag but not the "footsword" or heel can put a lot of stress on the ankle. (Of course the most important factor for power is still technique.)

Shizentai's post prompted me to pull said book off the shelf... it's a little different, so I quote below (a small except from a 338 page book, so fair use under copyright): Q: Why did you split from the JKA and create Shotokan Karate International? A (Kanazawa): I never wanted to create my own organisation. That was never my goal. When I was in Europe, making plans to go to Montreal University in Canada to teach for a few months, I sent a letter of resignation to the JKA - not as a JKA instructor - but as the director of a section of the JKA. I just didn't feel I could function in that capacity while I was out of the country. Three months later, when I returned to Europe, I received a letter from the JKA informing me that I was summarily dismissed. Q: How did you feel? A: I was completely shocked. But I said to myself that I wouldn't go back to Canada but would struggle on in Europe. Giving up would have been against the Budo spirit of everything I had been taught. So I decided that if the JKA was against me, I had to defend myself.

That's true of almost all techniques. The most extreme/significant exceptions I can think of are axe kick and spinning heel kick (both of which involve a lot of preparatory effort to develop a strong stretch then swing a straight leg - impossible to do absolutely full speed without investing a lot of energy which is then very, very hard to stop). At the black belt level and beyond, most of the time you can tell whether the opponent is going to be able to defend successfully before you have to decide between pulling a technique, gentle contact and full power. Once you learn to do this, you can attack really hard/fast when safe (your opponent needs to know their defense works), but pull it when the opponent's overwhelmed or outclassed. Sparring your own rank and seniors, you'll get in lots of hard and fast sparring (therefore realistic, useful, good-habit forming) without needless injuries. By attacking hard/fast, you also incorporate get a taste for issues with over-commitment and recovery times. For example: weak/slow kicks thrown vaguely towards the target can be easy to grab in ways that just don't work against solid, fast kicks thrown through the target... so by kicking realistically it cuts out a lot of useless nonsense that the defender might otherwise mistake for useful. Separately, a hard attack might necessarily require a block that affects the defender's balance and momentum, giving the attacker more recovery time, but that's not something you experience at 40%.

(note: the following constitutes fair use as quoting from a copyrighted source, as a miniscule amount is quoted) From the full Encyclopaedia, volume 9, page 268: "execute a pressing block to C with the right palm while forming a low stance toward C, slipping the left foot". No mention of slow motion. In the additional techniques for the hyung, page 206 deals with "Walking Stance Palm Pressing Block" (Gunnon So Sonbadak Noollo Makgi), and only says: 1. The pressing palm reaches the same level as the lower abdomen of the defender. 2. The other palm reaches the same level as the solar plexus. Again, no mention of slow motion. Page 275 is the only page to show applications: in the first picture the upper hand checks a reverse punch (clearly wouldn't work) while the lower hand checks an upward front kick; the second illustration shows the application the same except that the punch is a a reverse punch from back stance (still implausible). Summarily, the illustrated applications are a load of nonsense, but again make no suggestion of slowness. Personally, I move the hands quickly into the position where they're starting to press, locking them in close to the body, then drop them as the back hip rotates through and the stance drops slightly. This is slower than the initial movement into position, and consistent with using the technique against some resistance or joint. But, there's no justification for that from the Encyclopaedia.