day 56: legs, xiao kai men, & tai chi

concepts:

• many directions
• coordination
• hips
  

forms:

• tai chi
• leg drills
• xiao kai men (combat applications)
  

i arrived a little early today to find a good number of other people already present. Eric was getting a personal lesson with Sifu, and John Eagles, Jonathan Shen, and Siwannda were doing their own practice routines.

tai chi

i took my usual time for warm-up, and then began with a run-through of the Yang tai chi set from the past week's UCLA class. John decided to join me to refresh his memory, and so we started going through it together. unfortunately, we found that our forms began to diverge, and after some discussion figured out that he had learned the 36-movement form, whereas the UCLA class was currently teaching the simplified 24 movement form. we decided to just go through as far as we matched, and did a couple of iterations as a qi-gong exercise.

leg drills

Jay had joined us at this point, and after some talk about what to do next, John proposed we just continue backtracking and repeat the leg drills from last week. i figured this was good, and so we spent the following minutes going through each of the drills.

it was just as well, since it appears i'd forgotten to label a few of the drills: crescent kick long (in & out), as well as crescent kick short (in & out). the short crescent isn't really so much a kick as it is knee strikes. but the arc of the motion is the same, and so i suppose is the reason why it holds the same moniker.

in addition, i also found that there were intervening drills that led to the tornado kick, which apparently considered a more advanced leg drill. the tornado kick involves extended legs, but this is sometimes difficult for people to do.

John and Jay showed me that there is a lead-in in drill using the same movements as the tornado kick, but with the legs only extending to the knee rather than out to the feet. this helps acclimate the practitioner to the footwork and turning motion. in addition, they also showed me another lead-in drill that involves the fully extended tornado kick, but with the hands outreached for the purpose of providing targets for the feet to hit. this helps the practitioner become accustomed to extending the legs.

we tried this for a few sets, but i figure that i'm going to have to work through these drills quite a bit more--particularly the tornado kick, which still requires a bit of a wind-up for me and feels a little awkward.

xiao kia men (combat applications)

we finished just as Sifu came over to begin the class. he motioned us over to the buildings, saying that he wanted to return to the original meeting place since the current location by the playground tended to get heavy traffic from people in the local community.

Sifu asked us if we had ever covered the combat applications for xiao kai men. i was kind of surprised to see that i was not the only one--although, it's entirely possible that John and Eric wanted a review for themselves. seeing our response, Sifu announced that we were going to spend some time going into the combat applications in-depth. with the time we had, we'd go through the 1st 3 techniques: green dragon turns its head, greed dragon wags its tail, and black bear probes with its paw.

green dragon turns its head

we began with green dragon turns its head. what Sifu showed us was more complex than what i'd seen in class. Sifu said that the tendency for many students is to simply treat this as a basic turn of the waist to throw the opponent on their backside. but this is deceptive, because there are actually many different kinds of movements involved:

• legs: legs sink down
• hips: this is supposed to serve as a hinge, opening up the buttocks, which acts to align the waist and spine into proper position and combining force in a direction into the opponent's center
  
• waist: this turns horizontal
• spine: alignment must be vertical
  
• lead arm: this has 2 movements--a drilling motion with the hand, but then also a turning motion of the arm that traces a slight arc down and then up into the opponent's centerline (for shorter opponents, this will be lower; for taller opponents, this will be higher)
  
• lower arm: this can serve as a controlling arm, but it also is engaged in a drilling motion, but one that goes straight into the opponent
• head: head looks in the direction of the lead arm
  

Sifu had us practice this, going left and right, and then swapping partners, so that between the 4 of us we each had extensive opportunities to explore the technique. my observations are:

• these motions are complex, particularly in conjunction, and take some effort to coordinate together
• it is very easy to simply muscle through the technique, since it can be effective simply by forcing the turn at the waist into a throw, but this is wrong
• it is more effective to NOT muscle the technique, but to do it right. in fact, we found that less effort actually means more power in the technique--if it is done right...which is difficult to do
• done right, the technique feels like you're moving air, with the opponent simply crumpling backwards
  
• i found that i had more success rotating to my left versus rotating to my right. Eric said this may be because as a right-handed person, my body has developed an ingrained pattern of motion going right, while my body is relatively free of pre-existing habits for anything going left, making it easier to learn new movements going left.

green dragon wags its tail

next, Sifu showed us green dragon wags its tail. this incorporates the unicorn with the hands and arms, but with legs in bow-and-arrow stance. Sifu pointed out the following:

• legs: legs shift weight forward into bow-and-arrow stance so that the body is situated above the front leg...but not so far that weight goes beyond it
• hips: hips have to turn in the movement so that they become square at the finish
• spine: this is supposed to be straight vertical, and extends upward through the technique
• lead arm: this follows the unicorn motion, but the arm should not extend. in fact, the hand should not extend too far beyond the elbow, and the upper arm should not extend too far from the chest
• lower arm: this is supposed to go down and back as the lead arm goes into phoenix
  

we repeated the drill as before, swapping directions left and right, as well as partners between the 4 of us. my observations on this are:

• like green dragon turns its head, there is a lot more going on here than is readily apparent simply watching it in class
• unlike green dragon turns its head, you can't muscle this technique through. either you do the technique right and it works, or you do the technique wrong and it doesn't
• if i thought about the technique, it didn't work. Eric commented that this is one where you just have to "let things go" and commit to the technique. i found this hard, since i'm still unfamiliar with the combination of actions
• if the technique is done right, it produces a lot of power with very little effort. i managed this a few times, and was actually kind of shocked by the result. unfortunately, this didn't happen enough.
• done right, the feeling is a whip of power extending from the fingertips of the lower hand and up its arm through the scapula and spine into the leading hand and culminating in a flick of the wrist.
  
• you have to commit to the technique, and by this i mean i had to actually exaggerate the motions--i'm guessing that what i thought was right wasn't going far enough, and what i thought was too far was closer to right

black bear probes with its paw

Sifu had us move on to black bear probes with its paw. here, too, he showed that there was a greater level of complexity that what we tended to see others do. he pointed out the following:

• legs: they sink down, but also turn into 70-30 stance
• hips: again, they act as a hinge, opening the buttocks to align the waist and spine. in addition, the hips start square to the opponent, and then turning to finish at right angle to the opponent
• waist: there is a slight turning at the waist, following the hips, but there is supposed to be a slight bending down through the technique
• spine: the spine is supposed to begin vertical, and only bend enough to follow the bend at the waist
• lead hand: this is supposed to move down. Sifu said you can visualize that you're moving a brush down
• rear hand: this is supposed grasp the opponent's arm and move backward
  

Sifu also pointed out that with this technique, it did not matter how your body was oriented relative to the opponent in terms of foot or body positioning, and showed that it can work either from dragon gate or tiger gate. in addition, he also showed that it works regardless if the lead hand is on the opponent's clavicle, shoulder, upper arm, elbow, or forearm.

my observations are as follows:

• for some reason, i found this easier than the other techniques.
• it seems to make a huge difference to imagine the legs squeezing together as you sink down, and to exaggerate the movement of the hips from being square to the opponent to right angles--i suspect that these 2 actions serve to lengthen the distance the opponent is being forced down, increasing the amount their center of gravity is taken forward and down
• the technique is less effective if you attempt to push with the lead hand, but too little force on the lead hand results in it slipping. the ideal points seems to be just enough force to maintain contact with the opponent, but not so much that it results in pushing--i found pushing does NOT work, but actually makes things worse
• the technique seems to be more effective to imagine power going through the spine and then going down through the rear hand. that is, if the intent is more pulling down with the rear hand.
• the physics of this seems to be that the lead hand is forming a fulcrum, while the rear hand is pulling as a counter-balance weight at the end of a lever formed by the body, creating torque that draws the opponent under--when added to the descending of the entire assembly (including the fulcrum), this means that the opponent is forced directly into the ground
• done right, the feeling is descending straight down, and the opponent's body crumpling beneath you
  

we finished at this point, partly because it was now 1pm, and partly because we were getting sore throwing each other to the ground. Sifu called the class to an end, and we went to the post-class lunch.