Nonsense. You clearly have no idea how muscles work. If you're not strong enough, you're not strong enough, be that from a male or female perspective. Lots of giveaway signs you are arguing based on what your textbook tells you, rather than from experience. I've bolded the giveaway signs.
Novice as I may be, when it comes to strength, the goal in most striking martial arts is a quick and sudden burst of power, correct? The amount of force you can unleash in the time it takes to throw a punch is primarily what matters? The coordination or your brain with the responsible muscle groups determines how COMPLETE and how QUICK that contraction is. Since the word physics is in the title of the thread: let's not forget FORCE = MASS * acceleration. Obviously any fighter will have a lot of fast twitch fibers in their limbs, but the factual assertion that WE KNOW can be made is that INTERNAL practice does in fact improve communication between the brain and musculature. I say something sounds impossible because I'm not aware of it having been done and it contradicts the basic human self preservation instinct. I'm not about to give somebody an answer in definite terms when I really only know the tip of the ice burg, and that's all anybody knows yet. We'll be living on other planets before we finish figuring out the human brain, if that isn't a paradox in itself.
The fact is that if it worked so well ALL fighters would be doing it. It would be as essential as hitting pads.
Lots of mistakes there. You can internalise all you like, but if you haven't trained the muscles, they'll not respond. This is why you (well not you) train. In regard to acceleration there are different types of acceleration to train. Speed is a massive subject and you can get away first, but arrive last. In addition although the distance for a strike is only short, untrained muscles will let you down. You can accelerate quickly, but fade toward the end of the strike. You can accelerate slowly, but build speed through the movement. What you actually want is to accelerate quickly and have the trained muscular endurance to maintain that speed throughout the movement. Also as you clearly don't understand anything outside of the textbook you should be aware that there are different types of speed, such as: Perception speed Alteration speed Initiation speed Mental speed Performance speed All of these skills have to be trained separately and under some pressure. As I said earlier you can theorise all you like. Take it into the gym and see how well you do.
*reads thread* Not even rising to this one except to add that the OP has a defintion of chi/qi that isnt even agreed with by Tai Chi masters...couple that with zero experience in martial arts and this is unlikely to yield anything other than utter shash disgusing itself as science
I think there might be some misunderstanding on where I stand with external training. I think you should train as hard and long physically as you can while still yielding positive results. This basic fact should be a given. CLEARLY if you spend all of your time meditating or performing soft Qi Gong, you aren't going to develop the fighting ability of somebody spending all day in the gym. I'm simply of the very firm opinion that internal training -is- a boon to any practitioner, even if it's not a "part of your martial art". While I'll readily admit I've never been in a fight where the other guy was really trying to knock me out, I sure know that snapping into a state of meditation will even get an extra handful of reps from of me during my workout.
You cling to this false dichotomy between internal and external Try actually doing some training and maybe your opinion will start to have merit
Martial artists dont hold the trademark rights to Qi, and therefore don't get to define it. The concept that Qi places a label on has existed far longer than the term and in a vast number of cultures. Qi is just another word for an actual presence of energy in the body very easily explained by science in purpose, while not fully in function. Anything beyond that is almost exclusively conjecture, or ardent belief in personal experimentation. Some people have had luck with that experimentation and passed it on. Internal work is transcendent of martial arts on their own. Point being, if you believe Qi is representative of the electrical system in the body, or ANY force in the body whatsoever, then you can not believe it is to the Tai Chi practitioners to define it. If however, Qi is just a visualization tool that doesnt have the slightest basis in reality, then it's a meaningless definition that can be left solely to the TCMA community. (Then you have to ask yourself at what point is visualization affecting human physiology considered "reality")
You come onto a MARTIAL ARTS forum to discuss how CHI CAN BE USED IN MARTIAL ARTS Damn skippy we get to define what it is buttercup
I think you may be misinterpreting my thought process. Obviously there's overlap, bits of one in the other, continuances of one bit into the other. It's a harmony. The Taijitu (yin-yang) is a perfect diagram for such a concept. This doesn't mean they don't exist and aren't fine in their own right. This thread obviously started on martial application, and unlike what I've seen from the other threads I skimmed, held a fairly scientific line of debate when it devolved.
You've not even trained to a decent degree. If you did you'd understand how much internalising there is in hard training. By seeing internal training as exclusive you've already failed. Internal and external are mutually inclusive, not exclusive.
Ddwk21, I have some magic beans to sell you, I have no evidence there magic, and I'm using a different definition to the usual one for magic beans, are you interested still?
Obviously "Part of your martial art" was in quotes because I believe it's a part of EVERYONE'S martial art integrally. It is also a mistake to see Internal training as a byproduct and not a pursuit deserving of its own dedicated time
All of the training I've listed are deserving of their own dedicated time. Perception speed, alterations speed and so on don't happen by accident. So you are mistaken when you say me or anyone here expects internal training to be a byproduct. This is where lack of your own training becomes obvious.
I have been training in one external and one internal art for over a decade now. Right now my training is focusing on Fajing and Jing (or is that spelled Ging?) The more years I train, the less I see any distinction between the two. Perhaps if you started training in both, you would understand. Internal training and external training-------hmmm. Can you tell us what internal training is and why it differs from external training? Ah, you can't because you have no experience in any internal style and very little in an external style. But please, for the sake of discussion, tell us what is different in external and Internal training? Not esoteric stuff, actual training.
Currently, I've been using medicine balls as a favored Internal method to develop my ability to perceive and react. Take a stance, get pelted with a 20 pounder from various angles and redirecting as much force as possible. I feel like this way will help me react based on feeling + instinct immediately in the direction I take an opponent's momentum + add some firmness to my movement.
