Soft styles of Kung Fu: More powerful than any hard style?

[Taikudo-ka]

I have practised karate moves and katas in an extremely slow, relaxed "Tai Chi" style. The idea was to eliminate all muscle tension and get the move technically "correct" with absolute minimal effort. Then I switched to "fast" mode and was astonished at how much faster I was. The difference was that I was no longer tensing antagonist muscles so much.

 

As far as soft styles "out-powering" hard styles, there is some basis of truth here. By eliminating antagonist muscle tension, your strikes will become more powerful. You'll also "follow thru" more, rather than pulling the punch on impact, which is what happens when you tense up. See, the old "soft style" masters were neither stupid nor relying on magic.

[Shaolin]

By eliminating antagonist muscle tension, your strikes will become more powerful. You'll also "follow thru" more, rather than pulling the punch on impact, which is what happens when you tense up. See, the old "soft style" masters were neither stupid nor relying on magic.

 

Very significant and its importance often overlooked.

 

Other factors are that the 'relaxed' 'soft' stylist is relying on the alignment and precise positioning of the body in combination with relaxation in order to release as much energy as possible. Indeed when a student tries to 'punch really hard' he often will release less energy because so much of it is left in his tensed up body. This combined with his distorted structure can very well mean he has 'less power' to do damage with not to mention being off balance, unrooted and quite vulnerable.

 

Soft and semi-soft systems understand the fact that there will always be an opponent who is stronger and faster - this is reality. In this case the practitioner must use something else to deal with the opponent, since there is really no other choice. Soft styles teach how to yield to overwhelming strength by using this energy against them and deal with superior speed by being more efficient in their movements.... 'I move last but arrive first.' It ain't no joke.

[ChangWuJi]

Look at this thing from different angle - every1 who speaks about "internal" staff all the time mentions health and long life. If you look at masters in so called "external" arts area, you can see that many of them lived long lives, just like masters from "internal" area. Some died young, from both sides, but in general picture is the same, so what's the matter?

 

And one more thing - let think that for example bagua contains something that makes this style really better then any pther style. What does it mean? That means that peoples who use bagua should beat other styles, so there are two ways for future development - every1 starts doing bagua (since its the best, HUH) or someone invents or simply steal something that makes bagua better and create\upgrade his own style so it could resist bagua. So on, so forth...

 

What we see now? Hundreds of styles in China, and every one can resist another one, that means that in some sense all these styles are equal since styles (and masters who developed and passed it through years) survived through hundreds of years of real fighting, not modern bulls@t championships.

[rabid hamster]

Look at this thing from different angle - every1 who speaks about "internal" staff all the time mentions health and long life. If you look at masters in so called "external" arts area, you can see that many of them lived long lives, just like masters from "internal" area. Some died young, from both sides, but in general picture is the same, so what's the matter?

 

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pracitcing qi gong, tai chi, bagua and a few other internal arts can heal a lot of injuries, allow your body to heal quicker, and make you more immunue to diseases not to mention a bunch of other benefits(like not needing as much clothing in the winter)... as for longetivity you could probably live long by doing internal or external as long as you live healthy. internal arts i think can also reduce arthritis so it's good for older people too.. But i don't think aikido has huge healing benefits though??? I'm not sure about this. i think it's best to practice both external and internal.

[mysteri]

the only difference between soft and hard styles is their approach to the same ends: healthy strong bodies and good martial skill. we could all agree that most "hard" systems like hung ga or choy lee fut, one could learn and be a pretty okay fighter within 2-3 years. whereas generally the study of softer systems, like taijiquan, would take around 10 years before someone can use their internal energy at a high enough level for good fighting. shaolin starts off with harder fighting tecnhniques for the first few years, and learn more internal applications years down the line. whereas someone learnin from a wutang derivative(like taijiquan) would learn internal methods primarily and then more fighting techniques later in their training as advanced techniques. after about 15-20 years, both approaches meet around the same place, and make a more complete martial artist... btw- a lot of kung fu systems use the "ball-n-chain" concept, not jus soft styles. jus my 2 cents..