The Way of Least Resistance

Over the years, I have often written about basics but I don't think I've ever talked about them more broadly - in particular about their importance. Recently I have been watching excerpts of David Carradine in the television series "Kung Fu" (my YouTube feed has assumed I'm a huge fan and this is inevitably reinforced every time I watch another video). One thing I notice is just how bad Carradine's technique is. It's downright awful. In a way, it reminds me of young Ralph Macchio in The Karate Kid: as the movie series progressed I kept expecting him to get better. I thought: "Surely he's been training in the meantime?" Only he didn't get better. Ditto Carradine. With the latter in mind, rather than show you a bit of the series, I thought it would be more illustrative to show you David Carradine demonstrating martial arts  after  he finished the series and had (apparently) undergone much, much more training. It's hard to explain exact...

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...

“Grounding” (sometimes called “rooting”) is an essential skill in traditional martial arts and is often associated with the sanchin/sanzhan stance in many schools of karate and particularly external southern Chinese arts. It also features strongly in the internal arts of xingyi and its offshoot yi quan (see my articles “ Sanchin in the Chinese martial arts ”, “ The naming of sanchin ” and “ Seisan - the universal kata” where I suggest a link between sanchin and xingyi’s “san ti” posture which utilises a stance sometimes called “zhan bu” (battle stance)). In our school we practise a kind of “standing pushing” exercise in sanchin intended to develop and test grounding. Both partners stand in sanchin at bent elbow range – one hand on the hip, one hand on the shoulder. There are no “rules” other than “no leaning” and “no sudden or pulsating thrusts”. The drill is illustrated in the video below: Sanchin pushing So far I've been able to resist such “standing pushing” by far stronge...