taiji fajin

Glad to see most people here agree with me, and that it was a facetious comment about the "style." I think its amusing you say that to him. Hopefully he'll give his legs a rest and let them heal up. I hate, HATE the idea of "take this drug and you'll be thin." "Do this simple task and you'll be rich." etc. There are so many things wrong with it I'll stop myself now before this rant is 5 pages long. The abuse of the philosophy, pushing through pain and injuring yourself, here's to hoping we can stop people we know from doing it. One last side note - I agree there can be physically hardcore, I was just giving an example. Lots of dedication is hardcore, pushing yourself to injury is not.

Here's what I've seen so far. JaseP - you say for not more than a half second or so. That's good, I have no problem with using a stance like horse stance in transition, or holding for a short period, but does holding it for a long time in training help you for that? 1kickKO - you can have a 50/50 weight stance without being as low, and it will also let you use your hips better. KSN Doug, I love how legendary the valley of pain is, it getes mentioned at our school too . We were taught to try at 90 from white belt on. While I don't doubt that this got us more use to it sooner (looking at my black belt tests, our school easily had the lowest stances) I worry about its prolonged affects on the knees. KSWDanMan, that is some of the reasoning I've heard for it, too. While I agree that it does help with building strong (or as someone else has pointed out, high endurance) legs, can't you build leg muscles in another way? This still doesn't deal with the issue of injury, either. Knifehand007, side kick with your front leg, from horse stance? I always thought of horse stance being equal, with no leg "in front." cjburns, what about knee injury, though? You could try to build quickness and strength without hurting your knees. searcher, that got me interested in Hung Gar , but it didn't really explain anything about the art or horse stance to me. As you have all probably noticed, I'm still wondering what arguments can be made against injuring your knees. Yes, the stance can help you with some things, but what does it help with with that you both can't get from anywhere else and also is worth possible damage to the knees?

searcher, that's a good point, but I see that as a reason to practice dropping the stance and coming back up, not holding it. Knife - I'm afraid I've never heard of a slide up side kick. Can you describe it? I don't know those techniques either. Would the kick (and techniques) be better trained by going up and down, or trained by holding a horse stance for long periods?

Yes, that is from my taiji background . However, its less common sense than people realize. I've seen so many people leave with seriously hurt joints b/c they went to hard on joint locks, or have to stop martial arts b/c their knees were too damaged from all the low stances and incorrect landings after a jump kick. It doesn't have to hurt right away to be bad for you. Of course, while I tried to avoid injury like anyone else with half a brain, I did crank on joints, do lots of low stances for long periods of time, "worked through" pain when I really wanted to grapple, etc. Thankfully I am much calmer and more patient now, enjoying the journey and happy in knowing I'm improving myself. I don't need to prove how good I am to myself anymore. Yeah, I'm glad I found my current teacher.

What do you guys think of running two schools for two different martial arts? I don't want to give up either one, yet one of them is very anti-other martial arts, and if I want to stay within the organization so I can continue my learning, to say nothing of giving my students the chance to work with other high level people and be in a large community, then I can't integrate the two. Do you think it would be impossible to keep both up? Right now I am only teaching one, and learning the other. One day I'll have to move away from my current laoshi, though . That is going to be a sad day.

I don't know much about Chuck Norris, to be honest. Wish I did. Jackie Chan seems quick. Besides quickness, does he really have anything? Looking at his movies, and from what I've heard of his training, at best he's a falshy fighter with no real substance. Is he good? Yeah. Has he really mastered himself? No. Bruce Lee . . . . . not that I'm some "Bruce Lee was a god" person, but I thought he was good. Admittedly not from research, just listening to people. I want to hear where ovine king got that info from, to be honest. Jet Li. He honestly hasn't impressed me. Worse, my laoshi was giving us a talk about nurtuing yourself instead of pushing so hard you injure yourself and heal weaker than you were, and he mentioned that he had met Li once while Li was making a movie. He said that Li constantly had to go offstage and get his back worked on because he could barely walk after going through some of the fight scenes. I don't call that someone who has learned to fight well.

I disagree. What if you love it, yet the m.a. is bad on your knees? Sets you at a much higher risk for back injury? What if it instills a confidence in you but what it shows does not "work," and in the end that confidence gets you in trouble? There are a million reasons why you should not take something just b/c you enjoy it.

One of my friends had a pair of foam Jool Bohngs (korean name for them) in his trunk so he could practice as he traveled. He went to Canada, where they asked him if he had weapons, drugs, etc. He said no since he forgot about them, being foam and all. They searched his car, and found the foam weapons. They were taken away and he was fined for "smuggling weapons." Made it interesting when that was on his record and he was traveling to Tibet. Eventually he was able to get it removed from his record by appealing the case to a judge, but I still think its hysterical.

Testing this week? Good luck, You'll have to tell us how it goes. Do you know yet who the masters are that are going to be there? As for the differences: I was talking about the mantis grab, though, it was never explained as pulling the attackers apart to me. I'll have to try it like that. My instructor told us it was about moving energy, and after that two different mantis blocks at the same time. We were told to imagine we were pulling something elastic apart, such as taffy. From there, I have started doing it with the more ki based method of using intention to feel the the whole body is growing, and specifically (since it starts from the main area where ki is stored) as using external movement to help control internal movement, ie the arms moving to expand the ki out in the body, so then after awhile the internal could control the external, ie, moving your ki outward to make the arms more solid. In Joo Muhk Maga Ki Bohn Soo #8, it is not an exact translation over, it more deals with the (again) intention, and with general arm movements. As the chop is coming down, it is caught with both hands having the fingers pointed in the same direction (avoiding the thumb sticking out in case the block is slightly off, so your thumb is not broken). This hand set up is similar to the end of Cho Geup Hyung, though they are angled slightly off. Since a powerful downward chop like that is not likely to be stopped in a short distance, the hands absorb the blow, moving slightly downward as the hand hits them (this is also in accordance with the fundamental technique principals "you won hwa"). The movement back up resembles the end of Cho Geup Hyung. The only differences are the footwork continues in the technique (and opposite foot is forward to start with) and instead of ending with a double palm strike, it ends with one of your hands going up toward the attackers hand and pulling it into a joint lock. The power needed to push their hand back up (or even to just push them away after the attack, if you do not want to use the lock) can be trained doing Cho Geup Hyung. It makes the movement much more powerful, and the joint lock tighter. Thanks about the thread, I'm really hoping it will lead to interesting areas, both because of subtle differences we have all been taught, and also because of things we have learned or incorporated on our own.

Here's my venture into trying to make my posts more open to all korean martial arts, not just mine. A common stance is "horse stance." Roughly, it is sinking the body to where the leg bones create an approximate 90 degrees at the knee. It is done in many different forms, and held in other exercises. My question is, what is the benefit of this? Why do horse stance at all? Answer: Horse stance works out the leg muscles so you can kick powerfully. It also is a stance that keeps your weight centered. Counter argument: My weight is still centered if I have my legs equally far apart but am in a higher stance. This also allows me (if legs are only slightly bent) to absorb a perturbation or release energy in both the upward AND downward directions, where in horse stance you are too low to move downward without sacrificing a powerful structure. The extreme lowness also hinders waist rotation, taking away from the power of your punches. As for working the leg muscles, yes, it does. However, you will have your toes rotated too far outward, causing lateral stress on the knee and possibly patella femoral pain syndrome. You might also have your knees in front of your toes. This causes extreme vertical stress on the knee. You *might* be able to avoid these by being as close to 90 degrees as possible at the ankles, waist, and hips. However, if all of these are at 90 degrees, your center of mass will be too far back and you will fall. Draw a little stick figure and do some physics if you don't believe you break the 90 degrees in your horse stance, it doesn't matter how strong your ankles or calves or any of your other muscles are, your center of mass is far outside your base of support. Since we've lost an opposable toe (sorry to any Creationists on the board), we simply do not have the grasping power with our toes to hold ourselves up like that. In a nutshell, ask anyone working in kinesiology or any field that deals with injury to the knee, they will tell you that lots of time spent in a low stance like that causes damage to the knee over time. I can think of better ways to work out my leg muscles without hurting my knees. So, what do people think?

A large portion of them come from word of mouth, but also I am on a University campus, and so we do demonstrations for the students. That gets a large number of them.

Yes, its good. There are other reasons to take it for just that, though. And other martial arts are good for fighting as well. Personally, I think the external martial arts start you off getting good quicker, but the internal martial arts have more potential for those who reach the highest levels. I would fight a bagua beginner over a BJJ beginner. I would fight a BJJ master over fighting a bagua master.

They work well in teaching things such as feeling your opponent, weight shifting, etc. Moves don't really transfer well back and forth, though, with the possible exception of some hip throws.

Welcome to the board. What ma do you practice?

Just normal work-out things, nothing really ma specific. Things like laying on your stomach, and then raising the front half of your body in reps with your arms out in front of you, somewhat like super man. Then you can add in things like also raising your legs, raising just right arm and just left leg, etc. Or there are machines at gyms that can workout your back.

I practice one with my girlfriend, and one without. For the most part it helps. The only "problem" is when she doesn't agree with what we're doing in class. I co-teach with 3 other people (our teacher left, and the 4 highest ranking people, all the same rank, run it together now). Sometimes I am outnumbered with what I feel would be good to do in class on a day, and we do something that I (and she) dislikes. Then she gets annoyed, though she knows its not all my "fault."

"no pain no gain" is a philosophy used in many external martial arts. Everything from extreme workouts that make your muscles sore to hitting hard objects to "harden" your hands, legs, etc. What do people think of this philosophy? Personally, I use to like it, but now dislike it. While doing some "damage" to yourself is necessary (simplistically, muscle grows by tearing and then healing), the way most people take this is not good. An injured leg does not heal stronger. A dislocated shoulder is more prone to injury in the future. "Working through" a knee, ankle, or wrist problem makes it worse, not better. I am not suggesting that we do not do physically demanding exercises. Far from it. I am just saying, I prefer the philosophy, "nurture, nurture, nurture" over "no pain no gain." If my wrist hurts, I am going to take it easy on it. Side note - this thread came about after reading someone's "style" - Most hardcore style ever where you have to break your own bone to pass a black belt test because it's that hardcore and street effective and hardcore. Trying not to attack this person, but hardcore is breaking a bone? I consider someone "hardcore" when they can do standing meditation for hours and hours, when they can dedicate their lives to practicing a martial art, not 30 minutes a day, not a hour a day, but 4, 6 or more hours every day, in a way that is truely taxing, not just physically tiring.

KS forms teach meany things - balance, breathing control, practicing punches, kicks, blocks, strength training, the list goes on. However, I'm wondering what other things are the more "hidden" in the forms that people have thought of. Examples - Cho Geup Hyung: Backward shift and bringing hands down right before double palm strike at the beginning could get your body use to weight shifting and correct motion for backwards elbow strike. Double palm strike at the end, hand movement can translate to Joo Muhk Maga Ki Bohn Soo #8. Guhm Moo Hyung: Ki expansion before side kick at the end can translate to lots of places, using the intention of the body growing large to tighten joint locks, such as in Sohn Mohk Soo 5 (can even use as a break here before the throw) or Yahng Sohn Mohk Soo #14 (hands "growing" apart used to hurt / break finger joints to help your wrists escape). What other things have you guys come up with or been shown? It does not have to be for a technique that we also practice, but just a general motion to help with defense, joint locking (perhaps moving jointlocking?) etc.

Meditate a lot. Find someone who really knows (do background checks) a lot about meditation and get them to train you in it. Internal energy building meditation. If you do this enough, you will get the confidence.

do more meditation, this will go away (along with many other things getting better)

Very true. I can quasi-imagine it through some reading, know the motions when I see someone do them, and really understand the energy behind it when my laoshi uses it against me. Chen style has, from what I've heard, a lot more silk reeling emphasis than the other styles (can anyone in other styles confirm this?) but its very helpful in whatever style you practice.

Mr. T

How much emphasis (or explanation) do you guys give / get on the internal energy aspect of meditation?

Silk Reeling is a spiraling energy type of exercise. It works the 18 balls very well, along with being helpful with jointlocking, counterjointlocking, and other things. Do a google search on it and I'm sure you can find a lot. There are also videos out there that are helpful (though of course videos never show you all of it and are no substitute for a instructor you meet with in person).

I've never had any training under KJN Sims, just watched some testing, though I did get some under KJN Harmon, which was very good. How do you guys train meditation? Do you do it in the concentration way (repeat each technique in your mind) or the way that is more about quieting the mind? I've only heard Kuk Sa Nim talk about doing it the concentration way (he said he could go through all techniques below black belt in one second after training for long enough), but I have heard him talk about *wanting* to try the quiet way, "One day I want to stand under a tree and meditate." Which way do you do? Which way do you think is more helpful, or which helps what?