day 255: spear and push hands

concepts:

• following
• control
• yin/yang
  

lessons:

• spear (chaang)
• push hands
  

we had some new students today, with some of the CSULB students coming to check things out. they did have spears of their own, so we ended up playing musical chairs, letting people work through practicing with the full-length spears.

spear (chaang)

we continued on with the basics, with Sifu having us try the 2-person drills. the idea here was to focus on control, with both partners facing each other with their spears in contact and tracing circles while trying to maintain contact. the drill involved leading and following (i.e., letting the other person follow you, or letting you follow the other person) while tracing a circle with the spear tip (e.g., either clockwise or counterclockwise).

the act of following was definitely harder, since it required that you have enough control that you can maintain contact with the other person. Sifu noted the following:

• initially it's easier to work in big circles, but that to improve control you need to try smaller circles,
• control is much easier if you follow proper technique, with the base hand (i.e., the hand holding the base of the spear) is connected to the kua,
• control is also easier if you maintain a low stance.

i'm starting to get a little better with the spear basics, but this was another level of difficulty. it takes quite a bit of concentration to maintain contact. good technique helps, but the concentration aspect requires quite a bit of energy, and proved to be the most demanding part of this exercise.

we worked in pairs, swapping partners and spears. this ended up taking most of class, since it proved so difficult.

push hands

the rest of the time we spent on push hands--not the typical one with static feet, but a more dynamic total-body one. apparently there is a drive to introduce a different competitive event at the tournaments, one related to push hands in terms of allowing people to engage each other, except with a goal of being more similar to actual fighting, with competitors able to engage and disengage, make throws, joint locks, and move freely about the ring. it's supposed to be different from sanda, which allows punches and kicks, or shuai jiao, which involves more constant engagement. Sifu is helping out with this, and is involved in the rules formation (it's still in the formative stages).

Sifu sees this as comprising one of the 5 events of making a well-rounded fighter: spear, sword, sanda, shuai jiao, and push hands.

i should note that the term "push hands" is temporary, since the phrase itself has become locked with the current perception of tai chi practitioners locked in static footwork. the event described here is meant to be much more expansive, encompassing any martial arts style. the ulterior motive is to allow practitioners to sense the yin-yang forces in a fight and to learn how to use them. the prevailing tai chi push hands does this only with the upper body. the hope is that wit this different version you can sense yin and yang in the feet and lower body, and then thereby also sense it in the way the encounter flows through space and time.

i worked with Jay on this. it's a very useful exercise in terms of training--i see it as a step on the progression towards utilizing TCMA in full-contact combat, since it helps attune your instincts and reflexes to applying a lot of the concepts, not just in terms of yin-yang, but also in terms of jing (ting, hwa, na, fa), whirlpools & vortices, tangents and vectors, spacing & timing, rooting & releasing, balance, and structure. it's also useful in that it lets you see how the principles are consistent regardless of technique, and hence regardless of style, and that ultimately everything is about principles and less anything else.

none of these are things i'm very good at, at least not in terms of real-time spontaneous application. in practicing with Jay, i can see that i'm still thinking my way through a lot of these things, and i'm not working on an intuitive level. this is something necessary, as it's only at an intuitive level that you develop the instincts and reflexes necessary for full-contact situations.

i did okay at times, but then i would reach stopping points, where i would understand the principle but either 1) not know how to apply it, or 2) apply it the wrong way. i told Sifu it's like i'm feeling my way through a maze, and hoping each decision leads down the right path in the maze, but every once in a while i make the wrong decision and wind up at a dead end. Sifu said that's the point of training: to learn how to avoid the dead ends.

something else that also became apparent is that my posture continues to be an issue, with Jay and Sifu noting that i still slouch, and while it's gotten better, it's still bad enough that it 1) puts my head within easy reach of the opponent, making me vulnerable to a lot of head strikes and grabs, and 2) disconnects the power from my center to my shoulders, suppressing the transmission of power from my legs through the dantian at my shoulders, throttling any further projection out through the arms--which is where its supposed to go.

this is something i'll have to really focus on to completely resolve. it's going to take a lot more work.