The first and second techniques in your clip show most clearly the reliance on biceps strength to act as the brace for the pincer movement. Do the movements strongly, perhaps just squeezing your hands together against an imaginary head or whatever and you'll feel the biceps of your left arm tensing. Or you could get someone else to feel your your biceps for you. Your pushing hand is being pushed and turned by your body - however the biceps of your left arm are contracting to brace against the force of that push. Honest. If your left arm accepts that your torso is turning to the left and allows itself to be pulled backwards, you have less of a problem. Pincer movements such as you demonstrate in techniques 1 & 2 don't let that happen - the left arm stubbornly refuses to be drawn back. I am right, all that matters is whether or not you care enough to worry about it. I'm sure it will work fine for you most of the time anyway, until you get old and frail I'd say never just trust everything that any teacher / "master" says or does because there is always room for improvement, and test everything. Don't just check to see how well things work for you, check how things work for your weakest against your strongest students. Image one shows strength used to crush something. Image two shows the pulley like action of the arms exerting leverage as shown by the two short arcing arrows.
Uhhh, j, I was saying YOUR interpretation was the orthodox interpretation of chi/ji when using both arms in a combined forward expression of power.Sorry I wasn't clear enough.
i will draw a diagram tmoz to show whats going on. your kindof ignoring completely what i am saying in my post however.... I will post it for a third time so we are clear. As i say i will do some diagrams tmz. thanks for the explanation J, its appreciated ... and i am taking on board what your saying... i wonder if you will take on board what i am.... chris
Yeah, course I will. I consider everything, honest. And I'm not ignoring your post, I just don't really understand what you are driving at without pictures or video clips.
Hi Jk, Middleway Just to jump in here. I agree with Middleway bicep strength is not key to this being effective. The key to making the techniques effective are: 1. Strike to unbalance on entry. 2. Correct alignment of the body. 3. Application of force through opponents void (weak space, kuzushi) whatever you want to call it. If you do these the technique will work with a surprisingly little force. And if you do inject force you get BIG outcomes. I noticed in your vid Middleway that you sometimes strike and sometimes not. The ones where you didn't you look very vulnerable to counter. Especially when you attacked the knee, you would need a good smack to the face to allow you time for that entry. The Bear.
I'd like to jump in too with my tuppence.. The way i see it, let's not forget that this is the use of trained force (jin) In taiji we train to issue with the whole body right? Don't see why this should be any different, the arm that is 'bracing' (allegedly )is issuing ji also - the other side of the sqeezing force and is part of the whole body issuing. Using the word tension here to indicate there is localised power from the bicep is misleading... Yes there is power coming from this area. Yes there is power from musculature.. But let's not also forget that we train to issue from a state of our body being 'sung'.. This facilitates integration of both arms with the rest of the body. The legs, kwa, shoulders are all involved in triangulating the power. One arm does not stand there all on its own bracing against the rest of your power/ strength. Like it is a seperate entity to the rest. Nothing is 'stiff' either.. Ji comes out from the whole body. I don't think anyone can judge this is not happening from a clip.
Ah - you talk in riddles. We all have the same bodies. Not to worry. As my first teacher pointed out, he never met an Aikidoka who could do the "unbendable arm" feat without tensing their triceps. Mental imagery and talk of issuing "energies" might fool people's bodies into being able to achieve things they couldn't achieve so easily without use of mental imagery, at least to begin with, but it is always better to know the anatomical truth in the end. Then you can face the reality of the limitations of techniques that rely on isolated and contradictory muscle strength.
So you do stuff that uses no muscle strength ? The question is how we go about it (using our bodies). Apologies if my response was too riddlesome for you. Yes we have the same bodies. But that says nothing about usage does it. Two people could do the same thing to you (looking from outside) and it would feel different. I think it stands to reason that strength will manifest where the use of the application is directed. Specific mechanics of whatever move will dictate this. In this case the arms are being used to issue ji. Both together equally is how i see it. Not one more than the other. And not just one and the other as a brace. If you were lifting someone your legs would be working harder than your arms. In some throws maybe there would be more emphasis in issuing from the torso.
Who gives a monkeys about parlour tricks like "unbendable arm"? We are talking about effective technique. No one is talking mystical from what I can see. I am sorry, much of my terminology is in Japanese terms so I am trying to convert them to pain english but there nothing mystical about them. The Bear.
That is not what I said, CH. The point is that the body can use whole body integrated strength, pushed into place from the ground up to the hands, or it can use isolated muscle strength, based on isolated muscular contraction. The first is substantial and the later insubstantial. In the case of a wedge-like Ji technique, everything converges at the same moment to exert whole body strength forwards. There is no contradiction there. Where the body attempts to crush something between the hands then the rear hand is exerting whole body strength in essentially the same way as a cross punch, and the lead hand is fighting that whole-body momentum. The thing being crushed between the two hands can only be squeezed with the force of the weakest of the two pushing forces, which is entirely reliant on contracting muscles in that front arm. My diagram shows it pretty clearly. There is no way for the front arm to pull inwards without using the isolated musculature of the arm and chest. One arm is substantial and the other insubstantial. The rear arm is substantial. However the lead arm can also be substantial if it behaves in a way that is harmonious with the rest of the body. If viewed from above, a right lead Ji that used convergence would involve everything observing clockwise arcs. The right foot would turn clockwise to point in the target direction, if it was not already facing that direction. Weight would be pushed onto the right leg and the torso would turn clockwise. The left foot could pivot inwards in a clockwise arc. The left elbow would also drop into line to be pushed by the body. The right arm would support this push by moving in the same direction as it. The two hands can excute Ji on their own or together, according to some Chen stylists. For the right arm to attempt to move in a counterclockwise fashion is contradictory. Imagine pushing someone against a paper wall. They would not be crushed because the wall would tear. Imagine pushing someone against the front arm, as shown most clearly in Chris's first two applications on the video clip. The head or thigh is only being crushed with as much force as Chris's right arm can exert inwards. Tell me how else it is being pushed in towards his body. Another way to think of it is moving exactly as he is doing in the clip, he might be able to push a car with his left arm, but he couldn't pull it with his right. His right could join in with the pushing though and he could also push or jostle his way through a crowd in that way. The Ji character means squeezing in that manner - like squeezing between people in a crowd. Another way, he could perhaps squash a water melon against a wall by pushing with it both hands, but he couldn't crush it between his two hands in the way he is executing Ji. I'm sure the total force the body could exert in each case could be measured in a laboratory.
i do get this part, but.. Not sure why or how you use these terms in relation to that. One arm would be insubstantial if it was not doing anything. But the way i understand it is not it is two foces applied in directions facing eachother. angles at which they travel doesn't really change that . eg. could be side to side (boxing the ears. up down (strum the flute) or forward / back (what chris is showing..) I get where you're coming from. But i gotta say not necessarily! Can you not envisage that the momentum of the body is split between both arms and are converging in on eachother to a central point ( to crush something inbetween ) You can issue forward, you could just use one hand.. you trained force of ji can still be used to strike. Your other side (shoulder, hip, leg) can triangulate your strength. Different effect - nothing spectacular. I have to disagree. i think you can use both your arms to squeeze together in this position (push and pull equally and simultaniously) in conjunction with your whole body. I disagree that they have to be 'isolated'.. For example if my weight is on my right leg then it is substantial (yin) My other leg is insubstantial (yang) One leg can move the other can't. In this case both arms CAN do something. One can pull /sqeeze in, the other can squeeze in the opposite way . in this case push out. The back / lats, shoulders, scapular get to work here. Like pincers. I do think if you want to that you can direct this to push from one side and pull in from the other equally. I really do.. You're assuming looking at the outside that his other arm is not involved in the squeezin in.. Not sure why. I think it can be. But may be we should let Chris answer that from his perspective too.. I want to say pulling, but to me it is different than pulling. The position of his arm gives the effect of pulling in, even though it is squeezing in imo.. The position of the arm gives his strength direction.. in this case back toward you. If he pulled with the bicep his elbow would bend significantly/ noticably - it doesn't. If he is bracing then he can brace equally with his whole body as he can equally push with it. I don't see why doing two things at once in this way can't both involve your whole body in a relatively equal fashion. i know i make plenty of errors. I'm not that good but i don't think this is impossible for me or any one else.. Not sure about that. Luckily we are not aiming to fight cars! Interpreation can and do differ. same basic idea though applied differently. Seems reasonable to me.. I think what you describe is a different application that uses the wall as a third point of contact. A very strong one that cant be moved.. Chris's app only uses the body. There is no reason to assume that the structure, allignment and 'pulling force' of the lead arm is necessarily 'weaker' than what the rear does as he is applying it.. Is there? I think there may be, and can be done that way. But not necessarily so.. Chris will probably say something completely different now I sometime train against a wall issuing ji into it - minus the melon. It can be used for striking/ pushing something away. Like a discharge. It would feel quite sharp due to the trianglation from the rest of the body. In this case the points where they cross - two lines of power, one from each side - would meet forward from you. Theoretically forward from you in space and time... Of course you can change your angles so the lines converge nearer. Bringing a change of effect.
What I meant by substantial in this case is pushed into place through the legs, braced against the ground. The front arm can't do that in the crushing kinds of squeeze being discussed. The front arm is not seen to fold significantly at the elbow, because it is being pushed against by the whole body push of the other hand, which is a greater force. Anyway, you can believe what you like. Here's one last funny picture then I'm getting on with my work. How much force do you think the person in the picture can exert on the watermelon (round green thing) against the wall (grey thing) by pushing his weight onto his front (left leg), pushing against the ground with his rear (right ) leg and turning his torso anti-clockwise? Where would isolated muscle tension appear? Now if you don't believe me, get a ten year old girl to squeeze your head between her hands in the way Chris employs Ji in techniques 1 & 2 (they are the clearest examples). You might want to turn your head sideways to avoid a nosebleed. Then get her to push your head against a wall using both hands. Do you think she could do any harm to an attacker with the first method? No, because it relies on biceps strength. Could she be taught to push or strike an attacker over using the second method? Yes she could, especially if the angle and targeting were correct, because it allows her to use her whole body, with her rear leg pushing against the ground. She could also be taught to generate a lot of whole body momentum that way for striking purposes. I feel sick. Must be something I ate.
Just to go on record I have never fought a watermelon and never intend to nor have any watermelons been injured in the pursuit of my martial arts training. The Bear.
dont have time for a responce right now ... as somethings going down .. BUT a quickie if you will. j, You are basing this entire argument on the form expression of Ji As a movement, which i ..perhaps foolishly ... showed an example of possible application in the clip. To be clear... the crush or squeezing action against the head is not .. you place your hands on their head and then squeeze. It is you strike simultaniously from two directions so that the force triangulates to the centre point. Sqeezing someones head in the way you are discribing will not do much damage to ANYONE ... regardless of bicep strength or not. ... Maybe the hulk could have some success ... but few others. the diagrams are correct from the angle you are explaining them ... but that angle itself is missing the point due to the incorrect assumption of application or force and power direction. The Idea is to triangulate force. CH eloquently explained the concept ... The use of the form movement as an example of fighting is not really relevant. It is ONE idea in ONE posture. Ji can be any of the seven stars triangulating force. Not just palms!!! So if you are expressing ji with the use of elbow and hip ... for instance ... how does this Bicep problem then relate??? Cheers Chris
Explain what you mean and I might have a better chance of answering. The front hand cannot triangulate force travelling backwards while the other travels forwards - it doesn't make a triangle, it cause two vectors to meet in a head on collision. So to ask you to clarify for me: 1) How is the force being "triangulated" in the techniques shown? 2) What does this mean in plain English and in anatomical terms? 3) I'm going to need diagrams or films of specific examples, then I might be able to tell you. That is assuming you want to discuss it. The attached pictures show examples of 1) Tongbei - "through the back" principle. One side advances while the other retreats, like a pulley system. Some of the Ji techniques you describe seem to rely on the collison of the two opposing tongbei vectors. This is quite different from the two vectors converging to a stilletto heel as in picture two, both of which can employ whole body power. I'm not saying that two tongbei vectors cannot be used in conjunction. I understand Yang Luchan used this principle which he learned from the Chens to good effect, pulling an opponent in to a strike. I am just saying that I don't consider it to be Ji, and I think its uses as shown are a bit limited. I make a comment and it opens a whole can of worms. No worms were harmed in the writing of this post.
