The Way of Least Resistance

Introduction I recently canvassed a favourite issue of mine - namely the need to time your punching/striking hand at the same time (or a fraction before) your front foot lands in a step. A typical xingyi step.  Note the punch lands with the front foot.  The back leg draws up later. As you'll recall I first raised this in my article " Xingyi stepping vs. karate stepping " as a means of discussing some of the particular technical approaches used in the internal arts of China.  I principally did so as part of my drive to explain that these arts actually have some genuine, quite advanced , fighting methods that rely on simple, unadulterated physics - not " woo " (ie. "qi" or some other supernatural/paranormal phenomenon) as many people unfortunately seem to think. I followed this up with my article " Giving away the big secrets " in which I discussed one major reason why this was so important: because it uses your stepping momentum i...

Stances: the foundation of traditional martial arts Four years ago, almost to the day, I wrote an article about the function of stances in traditional martial arts.  At the time I was pleased to see that my piece met with a fairly universal positive reaction in traditional martial circles - regardless of style. I suspect this is because almost all traditional martial arts share the same stances  (more or less) and these are used  for pretty much the same pedagogic reasons: You have a forward (or bow) stance, a reverse stance, a cat stance, a horse stance, a twisted stance and, from southern China and Okinawa, " sanzhan/sanchin " - an hourglass stance.  While there are a host of other less common stances, for the most part these constitute nothing more than minor variations of, or transitions between, the previously-mentioned stances. The "odd man out": xingyi's principle stance But what if there were a stance that seemingly "bucked the trend...

Using body momentum should feel like you're falling into the punch I find it odd that so many martial artists I speak to will say to me that they can't reveal "x" or "y" because they are "sworn to secrecy" by their master(s) concerning the information in question. As far as I can tell, my teacher Chen Yun Ching has always shown me everything he could in the time available .  He has held nothing back.  And he has issued no caveats on me passing on his knowledge either. 1 The same applies to my first primary teacher, Bob Davies . For the most part none of my teachers have kept " secrets " - even if certain (profound) information known to them is hardly known to some others.  They have given me their knowledge without restriction and without fettering my own capacity to pass it on. It is in this spirit that I wish to share details of what I regard as  very important knowledge . It is knowledge to which I've alluded...

This is a first for this blog, and I hope it’s not the last. Today I’m featuring a guest blogger, Trevor Aungthan. He is both a gifted student of multiple martial systems (internal and external) as well as a qualified and experienced physiotherapist who has worked with Cirque du Soleil and is the creator of an exciting new exercise program called " Circus Conditioning ". In this article Trevor gives a fascinating and highly informative analysis of the meridians of traditional Chinese medicine, fascia and the internal arts. Enjoy! If you've ever seen an acupuncturist, you may have heard what Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) practitioners call 'meridians' - these are the pathways that Qi (or Chi) flow through in our bodies. There are 14 meridians and along each meridian are Qi (or acupuncture) points where Qi can be manipulated to restore balance, via acupuncture needles or acupoint pressure. Much research has been done and is currently ongoing on the c...