The Way of Least Resistance

Introduction There is a tendency in the Chinese, and increasingly in the Japanese, martial arts to venerate “standing post” training - what is known as zhan zhuang (站樁 - literally “standing like a post”).  In particular the internal arts of China are known for this practise.  Even more particularly, the art of yiquan (意拳 - literally “concept fist”) focuses almost entirely on this as a martial training method. Yiquan, which is also called “da cheng quan” (大成拳 - literally “great achievement boxing”), was developed by xingyiquan master Wang Xiangzhai (26 November 1885 - 12 July 1963).  One of his students was the Taiwan-based martial artist Wang Shujin (a master of xingyiquan, baguazhang and taijiquan who happens to have also been one of my grandmaster Chen Pan Ling's main students). In Japan the yiquan tradition was continued by Kenichi Sawai, founder of the school of taikiken (体気拳 - literally “mind and spirit fist”). So what is the point of “standing post traini...

I have a mate named Harry who will dismiss a (sometimes obviously) valid point or argument with the retort: "Details, details...". Of course he always says it with a little smile. It's a long-standing joke we have. The reason it has particular ironic resonance with us is that we are both, in our own ways, rather fond of details - particularly in debate. Some might even describe us as pedantic (although I think this description is as dismissive of the importance of "details" as Harry's joke). Details are important, particularly in the martial arts. Consider the following example: The late, great, Chinese martial arts teacher Chen Pan-Ling was given the task by the then Chinese government of collating knowledge of martial systems before their likely extinction in the face of the advance of the Japanese and later the Communists. Being one of the most respected scientists of his era (he was the leading hydraulics engineer in pre-war China) and having an ...

When Kanryo Higaonna died, Miyagi is quoted as saying that he felt he was "groping his way along an unlit road". To fully understand this metaphor you have to be in a completely isolated place like in the outback here in Australia where on a cloudy night there is no light - zero (where in most places on Earth there is a distant light on the horizon from one city/town or other). Even as you walk along a well demarcated road you soon find yourself straying into the bushes. More than once during our gashuku in the wilderness I have made the mistake of visiting the "sanitary convenience" without checking the batteries of my torch - only to find out on my return trip that they had gone flat. With the campfire out you can become lost very quickly. In one case (in the middle of the night on a Gashuku in 1989) I wondered off the 4wd track (I couldn't even see its boundaries) and walked almost the opposite way for a kilometre or more. The only way I got home was by gropi...