day 59: xiao kai men & chang quan (phooey!)

concepts:

• centerline
• center of gravity
• extra day
  

forms:

• leg conditioning
• spine conditioning
• xiao kai men
• pao quan
  

i had a private lesson with Sifu on Friday preceding this past Saturday's class. for sake of brevity (this post is going to be curt...i've got a whole lot of things pressing right now), i'm going to include both days together as a single post.

leg & spine conditioning

the private lesson was the beginning component of learning the bagua leg form. i say beginning because Sifu wanted me to go through the leg conditioning curriculum that preps students to learn the form. he showed me a number of exercises and drills mean to strengthen the muscles and connective tissue, as well as improve flexibility. some of them were static, others dynamic.

i saw a lot of cross-over with stuff i've done in track & field and also physical therapy--the exercises and drills weren't quite the same, but close enough that i could see their purpose. in particular, i could see that some were building isometric (static) strength and flexibility through concentric and eccentric ranges of motion, and others were building plyometric (explosive, or ballistic) strength and flexibility through the same ranges of motion. some i like more than others, and some are more painful than others, but all in all it's good stuff and (if done properly and within the correct context of conditioning) positive.

incidentally, during the course of the conditioning, Sifu discovered the same issues that my physical therapist had: i have an imbalance between front and rear quadrants of my lower body, with my lower back, buttocks, and hamstrings being underdeveloped relative to my quads and abs; and other imbalances with respect to underdeveloped hip flexors and lower abdominal muscles. the net result is a weakness in the dynamic motion of my hips (again, this is something i already knew from my physical therapist, and it continues to be a work in progress for me).

Sifu also noted that i had tight connective tissue in my knees and hips, which made it difficult for me to extend my kicks and reduced the generation of explosive power (recall: power in a strike is a function of muscle, tendons, ligaments, and bones in concert, never individually).

Sifu took a number of minutes to show me some traditional exercises he knew meant to correct these issues, including muscle-building and tendon and ligament stretching through my spine, hips, and legs. i found these interesting, because it indicated to me that 1) ancient experts had seen the same issues in the same way as modern ones, and 2) reflected the solutions they had implemented to solve these issues, which were comparable but different from modern methods.

xiao kai men

class started loosely. Kieun and Phunsak arrived early, and asked about what had been covered last week, meaning we effectively began without Sifu. we ended up reviewing a good portion of the material from last Saturday's class.

which was just as well, because it appears that everything i thought i had begun to understand i must have completely forgotten. i found i couldn't get any of the techniques to work. all i can say is that this was incredibly frustrating, and if i could only use 1 word to summarize the situation it would be "phooey!"

Sifu ended up having to spend more time with us to point out details we were missing, in particular:

• look through the center of the opponent, and move through the center, not at it
• you have to use the spine and scapula in conjunction with the back, arms and shoulders
• you have to imagine that the spine is like a bow, by turns bending or straightening to store and release energy. this is important for black bear probes with its paw, which requires a slight rolling motion of the upper body in the vertical plane into the opponent, with the spine straightening and then contracting concave. this helps to disrupt the opponent's center and then force them off-balance
• the scapula and back are important to green dragon wags its tail, which also has motion in the verticle plane, with a slight extension forward of the leading arm to take the opponent off-balance followed by a slight downward follow-through to send the opponent off-balance. here, additional power comes from the squeezing of the scapula as the back arm pushes back and down, as well as also from the back which straightens and then compresses into the follow-through
• the scapula operate in the reverse for green dragon turns its head, where they pull forward as the back spine goes slightly concave and the legs sink down.
  

today represented a bit of a setback. i basically ended up having to relearn the xiao kai men lessons again when Sifu arrived. Kieun and Phunsak seemed to try and offer some condolence, saying that they'd struggled to learn the techniques themselves. but that really wasn't much comfort.

the only things that made a difference this time in getting the techniques to work were the following:

• adding another aspect to application: the opponent's structure. the common refrain i hear is "just do the form." but it became apparent today that is an incomplete perspective. to make the form work, it's necessary to understand how to make it fit the structure of the opponent. this means recognizing their physical dimensions (height, weight, size, reach, etc.), their intent (what they are trying to do), and their posture (level of tension, level of stability, location of their center of gravity, etc.). knowing these factors allow the practitioner to modify the technique's form for maximum effectiveness. a form is not universal in terms of being fixed; just as there are different bodies of differing capabilities, a form has to adjust to match. in mathematical terms, a form is not an algorithm but rather a function; ignoring the context the form operates within throttles the relevance of the form...trust me, after today, i know.
• revising my conceptualization of the techniques themselves, thinking less on the ideas of "energy" or "sinking" or "focus" and more on the ideas of "centerline" and "center" and "controlling surface." for some reason, visualizing the techniques using all the traditional terminology was really difficult...really...difficult...it seemed to help my application by looking for the centerline, setting up a controlling surface through which effort was to be transmitted into the opponent, and then aiming to disrupt the center of gravity by directing effort through it (not past it, but through it, like an arrow going through an apple). this became clear when i noticed that Phunsak and Kieun were doing the same thing by first setting their contact points (the parts of their bodies in contact with the opponent--hands, forearms, shoulder, etc.) and then initiating the technique. these contact points were controlling surfaces, in that they "controlled" the direction of force into the opponent. mathematically, they set the direction of the force vector for which the body determines the force magnitude (note: a vector has 2 quantities: direction and magnitude). in all techniques, direction improves efficiency (in physics, this means less dissipation or waste of energy) of magnitude transmission.

for all that, i still see it's going to need more practice. and not just practice with a partner, but with many partners. this is to better understand how each form has to be adjusted to fit the opponent in order to make them work, which requires me learning how to identify the required characteristics of the opponent to make this possible.

Sifu kind of alluded to this idea later on, stating that we always need to adjust to make things work against a different opponent, which is why he always stresses changing practice partners to force ourselves to learn how to do so. techniques do not exist in a vacuum, and have to reflect the context within which they are being used. the question is just how they should reflect the context for maximum effect.

yeah, i thought i understood this stuff. but i evidently don't. frustration! phooey!

on a positive note, we did get the the 4th xiao kai men technique: black bear turns its back. Sifu relayed a helpful hint that Liu Yun Chiao had once told him, which was that to you should imagine that you are flicking sticky dough from your fingertips. this seems to help a practitioner apply an explosive follow-through of the upper body, as well as utilize the scapula to help generate force. Sifu showed us how to do this going through the tiger gate and dragon gate. i found this easier than the other previous techniques to do, which was a small measure of comfort on an otherwise discouraging day.

pao quan

we finished with pao quan. John said we should go a little farther with it, and asked that we take a few minutes to review some additional moves. Phunsak led us this time, and took us a few more steps into it. of course, out of the total 80 (or so), i'm guessing we've maybe gotten 10, meaning that there's still quite a way to go.

to end class, Sifu collected everyone together (including the baji students) and announced that he was considering also teaching on Sundays, most likely every other Sunday. we talked about how to schedule it, and eventually agreed on having Sunday class start at 9am, with Sunday classes running every other Sunday beginning this coming October 21.

this should be good, since it means more opportunity to work on the details of the techniques and forms we've been learning. based on my experience today, the details aren't really details--they're everything.