And then again ... well said JKZ! The world is happy again ... I hope :love: Salam and cheers, Krisno
big bad bully boo hoo Last post for a while... Dillon - you'd be 'snarky' (whatever that means - cool word tho) if you were being taught how to suck eggs and then told you're a bully when you bite back m8. Nothing personal - just stick to the facts. Just to be clear about Bruce Lee (of whom I am a big fan as I said before) "Sick and Disrespectful"? I wonder how "respected" his wife and two children felt when they found out he was with his mistress at the time he fell ill? You of all people Jkz surely don't object to 'telling it like it is' - or is that only when you're doing it? He was a great movie star, an icon, and a great martial artist, we all owe him a great debt imho... but perleeze don't try to make him into Jesus! The man was fanatical, egomaniacal and had a point to prove, he took drugs, his personal life was out of balance and he certainly had 'issues'. Finally. I will not be intimidated by anybody; and much more vicious, vindictive and unpleasant individuals than any of you lot have tried, believe me. So save your energy. If having a different opinion makes me a bully - fine. I can live with that. I may not always be tactful or polite. I may not fit into (your) stereotype of a "qi-hippy" when I display anger and aggresssion. Guess what? I'm not who you think I am at all. I'm a human being with just as much right to his pov as anyone else. I'm sick to death of the assumptions being made about how I practise Taijiquan, when hardly a one of you has ever bothered to actually ask me. I'm also sick of this campaigning and politicization of Taiji like its some kind of 'movement' or something. It's a martial art, end of story. The fact that it incorporates elements of TCM, qigong/neigong and meditation is just an aspect that I choose to embrace. It's my right to do so, and yours not to. But it's just a choice - live with it. Quit waving flags. Now, I've said all I have to say. I quit waving my flag. And disappear. :yeleyes:
I don't see why today's combat environment is particularly more bloodthirsty than the "Wild West" conditions of China's late 19th and early 20th Century social breakdown. People were still killing each other until very recently in historical terms. A system is a way of understanding combat in theoretical terms. This can constantly be updated to keep it real for 21st Century life. People have been fighting each other for quite a long time now - it hasn't changed all that much. But anyway I also absorb Xingyi, Bagua, Silat and Eskrima ideas into my practice and have trained and sparred with people from other styles too. We also do flow drills and knife work etc. But the basis is Taiji that is all - the systemisation and way of examining movement. When to be hard, when to be soft. When to be smooth, when to whip. When to attack inside, when to attack outside. When to use flowing rotation, when to use counterflow. Up, down, sideways, turning, straight, curved... seamless flow and unpredictability... The Zheng Manqing set the way I practice it doesn't look much different from Bob Orlando's Silat Kuntao, aside from one or two stylistic subtleties. It is all just fighting, but "you've gotta have a system," at least to begin with. A complete beginner probably wouldn't benefit much from doing a little bit of everything. Taiji seems to work OK for Glenn Hairston and for me and my students. A student of mine who has seen active service and policework says that what we do in our classes is the most useful martial art he's seen. I taught another ex-soldier and he said what we were doing was the real deal. We all have our own understanding of what will work for us in terms of developing martial skill. While a broader knowledge of how people fight can be useful, whether on the street or in the dojo, "keeping it real" during training does not necessarily mean that you have to study a multitude of styles. There comes a time when you have to focus on what you already have and train it deeply. This may be true for people who just practice form sequences and meditation methods, but it is quite possible to relate a style to real modern combat experiences if that is the very reason you practice martial arts in the first place. Edit: Regarding this - I hope so too, Krisno.
TJB wrote: The ferocity of your personal attacks is disgusting. And no one here has tried to "make him in to Jesus" - you are just getting hysterical. Oh sorry - lol imho That's how we disguise personal attacks around here, right?
To get back to the thread.... Standing can be done on different levels, you can stand there for 20 mins a day and build up your leg muscles, this is o.k but you could instead ride a bike and see some nice scenary. Standing can also be done with a greater intention to improve yourself by combining the principles that your style stresses, this will have increased health benefits. Standing will raise the pulse rate, increase production of red and white blood cells and haemoglobin - to link to an earlier post this will help prevent heart disease, another interesting effect of standing compared to cardio.v. work is that standing "opens" the veins and arteries and they remain open for a time afterwards,with the joints bent the blood flow is not restricted. c.v work opens them as well but when the exercise is stopped they apparently reduce in width and this can then lead to heart problems. Allegedly different methods of standing can be used to prevent different illnesses. The Yi Quan practitioners seem to think it is of benefit. To prove this to yourself - try standing. As far as standing vs martial is concerned it will help improve your root and your state of relaxation and enable you to get your "power" into the opponent but they are different things and depend upon who is fighting who, not neccesarily style vs style.
To clarify... when the exercise is stopped they apparently reduce in width and this can then lead to heart problems..... means that the arteries return to pre - exercise width quickly, but the flow is still increased and can be therefore greater than the aperture it is trying to flow through, if the arteries have lost any of their suppleness and have hardened then this can be detrimental to health.
Hi haoabout - Is there an age at which this starts to happen regardless of lifestyle, or does it more depend on personal factors such as genetics, environment, diet etc. ?
Hi haoabout - thanks for that. So basically we need to try to have a healthy lifestyle too. I remember something important Nigel Sutton said to me when I met him - "too many people try to do "little old man Tai Chi." If you're not a little old man, you shouldn't." I heard another Zhong Ding instructor express a similar sentiment at a Chen style push hands workshop "no one has any excuse to be unfit." I get where they are coming from. I think we all need to try be as fit and strong and healthy as we can and shouldn't spurn cardiovascular fitness, if we are capable of being quite fit. Please note here that I don't mean sprinting as someone earlier seemed to think I meant - just not being sedentary or slow and syrupy all the time. Chen style forms (especially xin jia ones and pao chui) give you a pretty good dynamic physical workout, as can application and push hands practice.
I can point to any number of people who practice any number of systems who vouch for the veracity of their training ... and in my experience the ones worth watching never seem to advertise how wonderful they are. Salam, Krisno
I just brought up the "allergic reaction" issue because your earlier statement: was certainly no more grounded in fact that in conjecture. It's possible that his death was related to his training practices, but it seems like a stretch to use that as an argument against his fitness regimen when that training was never actually linked to his death, and when there are more likely causes. The allergic reaction I was talking about is also mentioned in the wiki article on Lee : "A short time later, Lee complained of a headache, and Ting Pei gave him an analgesic. At around 7:30 P.M., he laid down for a nap. After Lee did not turn up for the dinner, Chow came to the apartment but could not wake Lee up. A doctor was summoned, who spent ten minutes attempting to revive him before sending him by ambulance to Queen Elizabeth Hospital. However, Lee was dead by the time he reached the hospital. There was no visible external injury; however, his brain had swollen considerably, from 1,400 to 1,575 grams (13%). Lee was thirty-two years old. On October 15, 2005, Chow stated in an interview that Lee was allergic to Equagesic. When the doctors announced Bruce Lee's death officially, it was coined as "Death by Misadventure."" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Lee The cerebral edema was the symptom, but many things can cause a cerebral edema. It's like a gunshot wound; technically you may die from blood loss, but it was the bullet wound that brought that situation about. "Cerebral edema is an excess accumulation of water in the intra- and/or extracellular spaces of the brain. Edema can occur as the result of many things, including head injury, allergic reaction, stroke, acute liver disease, cardiac arrest or from the lack of proper altitude acclimatization." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerebral_edema We don't know for a fact what killed him, but there are things more likely than his workout routine to be the culprit. It could have been injury-related, but a cerebral edema CAN be caused by an allergic reaction to medication. So my "facts" may not be so far off as you seem to think. That said, I don't really have any dog in this fight. Just lettin' ya know that I'm not just pullin this stuff out of my behind, so to speak. And snarky is a fun word http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/snarky Hope you enjoy using it in the days to come
Yes - I've noticed that this seems to be something of a dominant idea. Can it really be as simple as a bit of false modesty will convince people that you must be great because you are so humble? People forget why I make the comments I do - I am invariably replying to people (only on forums incidentally, where everyone is equal regardless of how stupid) saying things like "yes well, if you knew about real fighting like I do, you'd realise that your ideas of what works are wildly unrealistic" or whatever. It is a very different world being a female teacher, let alone a disabled female teacher. You have to be that much better to be taken seriously, because no one is ever likely to fear you. They can attack you and wish they hadn't, then they'll know, but nothing will ever prove the point until they have felt your knuckle hit their eyeball or your fingertips in their windpipe. If anyone needs proof, I'll fight them if they want to look me up. But I won't pretend I'm not any good just to win approval when my teachers have called me "a martial expert" and "crack troops."
Don't thank me, thank Wikipedia. Edit: In all fairness, I should point out that it IS possible that Lee's training was a factor that predisposed him to the Cerebral Edema, I just don't think that that's the most likely case.
All bow down! Th3 tru3 m4st3r has arrived!! Get over yourself, for god sake. You prattle on like nothing I've ever heard before. :bang:
