Most fights quickly turn into "just hit the other guy before he hits you". Most fighting "styles" are impractical. Who's gonna stand there while you set up one of these long-winded, but cool looking moves? You know the ones I mean.
You win a fight by being stronger, faster, tougher, and smarter than your opponent, not by learning a magical martial arts technique. Or maybe I'm just tired of the over glorified asian fighting styles.
That's a different martial art philosophy, and on the opposite side with Taiji. It's not 'styles' matters in any kind of martial art, they are for the purpose of training students to remember the movements in their muscle memory. What's really like is when you have learned and practice long enough, you are naturally as one as the Qi, so in any moment you are set and ready in every movement. And you can move extremely fast through these hard training. And when you do remember these by heart, you will 'forget' your are actually using them, like your can learn to walk, but never thought about it.
The philosophy in many Kong Fu, focus on the idea of using tricks, and deflect the energy of your enemy, (四兩撥千斤). And watching close to the movements of your opponents, and when they moves you will move to the best position to intersect or avoid their movement's trajectory with least effort way, thus faster than your opponent. Since you move with less energy, and to a specific point, you should be faster. And that's what 'style' and 'positions' are for, they are collected knowledge of what kind of movements is most effective as sets. And if the opponents are hitting hard, They can't stop their fists and kicks, and easily tripped, or using thier psychology of afraid being miss, (if you hit hard and fast, but miss its bad than not hitting at all, most will redirect or just fall over), and make those force backfire, or just make the opponents tired, hence show their weakness.
There is no such thing as setting up long-winded thing, that's what people always saw when people are practice the Taiji art of Qi, not martial art. They use the basic forms, but not for fighting (I can't translate with better word 勁). And it's hard to learn the Taiji Chuan as martial art, and most teachers don't want to teach students who only want to make money out of it, or learning it for the sole purpose of fighting others. Its against the basic believe of Taiji. Its for people who are weaker than their opponents to defend themselves. Its pursuit for peace,not provoke, and harm others. There are other kinds of Kong Fu for that purpose.
If you are searching for your philosophy of hit hard and quick. Taiji is not for you. You can find many other form of Kong Fu, that actually focus on physical force.(外功, 硬功). The idea of economic energy using also fairly common in recent Kong Fu sects (Their derived from the old one), even they are focus on external form only. Principles are the basic and the same, but different roads take to different results.
P.S. Kong Fu is nothing like what you saw in movies, not even Hong Kong movies, that's just for show. It need to be pretty. (Many martial art competitions as well, for the purpose of sports). And one of the reason why many traditional martial art masters don't like JKD, since it contains too much commercial aspects in it. And lack of a central philosophy other than just fighting, fighting for fighting sake is just violent. But still this is just the philosophy of the east. No one said its better or worst, just different.
I think the point of martial arts isn't to "win" a fight - It's to discipline yourself. There's different styles and philosophies, but all of them point towards mastering your mind, spirit, and body rather than domination. From what I understand, Asian culture is more about the capability of their own self than Western culture - Eastern culture tends to see weapons or fighting styles as an extension of body or will, while Western culture focuses on the style or weapon as a tool to further one's will.
So, combat has some part in Martial Arts, but a fight is more of an opportunity to improve oneself rather than just come out on top. If martial arts were really all about winning, then it would have devolved into a gun competition a long time ago.
We often say to become one with one's weapon and tool. It's the user that matter. And there are Taiji sword, Taiji rod, Taiji blade, in all forms. (But I never heard a Taiji gun
). Archery is in fact quite important in traditional fighting and warfare. But after 15 century, many reasons causing the lack of technology development in gun powder weaponry, probably has something to do with the last dynasty started as using horse archers and heavy cavalry effectively do defeat the previous one. And never catch up with the new era.
Wining is also important in martial art really, we got a saying 文無第一, 武無第二, basically means one can lose of the battle of debates, but no one want to lose the battle of fighting. Still it's more of a defense purpose mostly, since it started as a means to fight the government (綠林), and farmers / monks are usually poor armors and weapons than soldiers. Over time it becomes even less aggressive when fight is no longer about human muscles.
Old habits die hard anyway. After a two year hiatus, I'm back in a much more limited fashion with judo, more as a form of exercise than anything. Plus, it's a helluva lot of fun to be tossing people while remembering things I thought I had forgot. It's all in the muscle memory, regardless of whether I remembered the terminology or not. Great stress relief after a long day at work too.
Muscle memory thing, that's good to heard someone also mention it. And I think my early training as a kid, help to learn Taiji faster, but in a way also interfere a bit. I need to practice a bit of the old, and than back to Taiji again. And some who I forgot some of the old style I have, when I practice the old form. And teachers always said they can see my old training during learning Taiji form.
Hopefully you can keep up the daily practice. (I know its hard when you are busy working, or married, had kids). Just keep a habit of it, best every morning. (I like morning than night, but if both are available time, I choose the early, night time is for my meditation
)
P.S Good angle head logo, I am really waiting to see who doctor Song is, and no spoiler
)
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Topic: Martial Arts / Martial Arts Philosophy / etc (Read 2970 times)