The Way of Least Resistance

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...

A long history of tall tales... Chinese martial arts – in particular the Daoist internal arts 1 of taijiquan, baguazhang and xingyiquan – have long been associated with mythological tales invoking superhuman feats; acts that defy the laws of physics. Such myths are not only incidental to the traditional histories and lineages; sometimes they are deeply wedded to them. It seems that virtually no tale of the exploits of old masters is complete without such supernatural elements. Accordingly it should come as no surprise that the Chinese movie industry is built squarely on “ wire fu ” – green wires that suspend the actors and stunt men and women so that they can appear to “fly”. Modern examples include films such as “ House of Flying Daggers ” and “ Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon ”. A trailer from “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” – note the taijiquan technique “ji” by Michelle Yeoh at about 1:22. The role of legend in the martial arts My first introduction to Hong Kong cinema was of...

Introduction Recently the subject of “advanced techniques” has been debated on the Traditional Fighting Arts Forums . I think it is self-evident that there are some techniques or forms are much harder to learn - not just because they require mere athleticism, but because they require subtler kinaesthetics and the ability to execute them depends on years upon years of “precursor” training. They might be more effective, but frequently they won’t; simple is often the best. 1 I happen to call such “hard to learn” techniques “advanced”. Why? Because I think beginners should start with things that are easier to learn. Advanced techniques vs. advanced practitioners My comments above are at odds with the views of those who would argue that “there are no advanced techniques, only advanced practitioners”. On this analysis, the techniques themselves are relatively simple. All that changes is the complexity of the combinations of these simple techniques. Indeed there is something to be said f...