After studying harder martial arts I see where the softer stuff fits in. For example , deep San ti is good training for wrestling. The 60/40 stance is good because you can commit without being over commited.

Nei gong helps with body awareness and with keeping your joints lubricated throughout your life. I don't stretch anymore and only do nei gong as a warm up/warm down.

What have you guys found?

Stance keeping helps with core stength and stability to a certain extent. To really take advantage of stance keeping I believe one must mix in deep stances and one legged stences. These are more strenuous than regular zhan zhaung. I also like doing stepping exercises in low stances.

Stance keeping is a form of isometrics but it isn't strenuous enough. In keeping with proper principles of alignment one can do stance keeping but also add in isometric pulls against ropes/chains, playground bars/etc and also isometric pushes against walls. Add lower stances and you have a good method to build whole body strength.

All good training.

Although, as much as I've seen they are not commonly taught, both Xingyiquan and Taijiquan (at least the Yang style) have sets of isometric exercises as part of their power training.

No, no, no, Tim, they aren't "isometric exercises..." that places them in the realm of...ahem...athletics...and we all know you can't really understand "the internal" via athletics (though I gotta wonder if you are using your muscles, skeleton, connective tissue, etc. even in "a different way" how it isn't athletic?)

You gotta tart it up a bit and refer to it as internal POWER, that very few so-called experts even know...NOW we're talking.

Seriously - one thing I have found with more traditional exercises is that things like posture, movement, and power generation has crossover in the modern day in situations where you might be wearing heavy body armor and carrying/moving heavy loads. Things like xing yi and taiji in particular seem to bear this stamp, even with their martial applications and throws.

Perhaps not surprising considering the military heritage of these arts. I think the difference in throwing methods from pure shuai jiao are also a function of the presence - or lack - of armor. You just can't move the same way, though you can very much make use of the body skills learned in wrestling. Probably why wrestling was an important skill for early soldiers development, but things like xing yi developed out of the close combat use of the spear....

Goods points.

As an example, all of the throws/takedowns in Xingyiquan (of which there are many), are categorized as "kao dao" (literally, "knock downs"), that were chosen for inclusion in the style from more ancient takedowns used on the battlefield.

In a battle, the opponent may be much larger than you to begin with, and he will be wearing armor. You will also be restricted by your own armor.

The carryover in the modern world is the techniques are practical almost regardless of costume (or, in spite of it) and techniques that require a greater amount of strength (lifts for example) are excluded, since there are no weight classes.

Tim, you mentioned isometric sets in hsing yi and tai chi that aren't taught commonly. Can you describe some of these? Are they dynamic tension exercises? Thanks

Tim

Exactly what I was thinking. You see some interesting commonalities with some classical Japanese jujutsu - in particular those with a "battlefield" provenance. Older layers of the school contain simpler "takedowns" and even sacrifice throws, which I think likely were the result more of the liklihood of falling in armor versus intentionally throwing oneself to the ground.

You see more "leg displacements" and pickups, more "pressure takedowns" where a person's structure is compromised or compacted and force is generated to take their balance and make them fall back or down versus the much more agile judo or wrestling style throws which obviously derived from unarmored grappling. Some schools retain both their older, armored variants and later unarmored throwing stuff. Fascinating.

Funny as it sounds. A group of friends rented some sumo suits once. Those big puffy costumes that make you look like a sumo, and make it really hard to move. When we played "sumo", I defeated everyone that day in an almost magical fashion.

I could do all kinds of amazing Aikido stuff, stuff that is super hard to pull off when people can move normally. After that I wondered how much more useful many of the movements of Aikido would be when people were wearing armor.

The problem with modern "traditional" martial arts schools, is that most of them think their system contains some kind of strange magic techniques, and don't stop to think where the strange techniques might have had some real life application. It's usually (in my case anyways) not where you expected it to be.

Timber,

The exercises are classic isometric contraction based (done without movement), not dynamic tension.

There are both "free hand" (done without apparatus or a partner) sets and other sets that require a tool (usually a staff in Xingyiquan) or a partner (for some of the exercises in Taijiquan).

Practicing these sets increases strength and the potential for power quickly (remember, back in the day one had to develop true power and real skills in a short period of time). The power developed is geared toward the specific requirements of the Art's techniques.

It's also interesting to note old school Catch Wrestling had similar exercises, not commonly practiced today either.

Though more a separate thread, I think a great deal in aikido is actually a function of the fact that what were in their original forms armed and armored applications had the weapons and armor taken out: the large circles, wide open postures, the artful changes of direction, the flowing footwork.

That don't cut it in truly heavy armor on uneven surfaces, wearing footwear, and trying to avoid getting stabbed, swamped by multiples, and pinned to the ground.

Think less movement, small circles to linear, sharper angles cut much more closely and abruptly, more posture and angle changes versus a flow through.

Some old school jujutsu and some of the old xing yi, in particular, presents VERY differently from that aikido signature, or the signature of later taiji, ba gua (not a battlefield derived art) or blends. There is a reason for that.

Aikido and later taiji and internal arts are in my view wonderful examples of "arts" that having ancestral roots in life and death, armed and armored combatives, had that animus removed therefore allowing for a much greater range of innovation, "play," and artistry with technique.

This does not, mind you, mean that they necessarily lack the capability of developing power = most do not because they do not train in anything other than cooperative exercises;

Nor that they may not have some self defense application. But it does mean that they have lost their moorings in terms of armored movement and combat despite their storied histories...

You simply do not have the time (real world time frames are much more compressed in open, unknown environments versus closed known ones), the opportunity (that lack of time and consequences for taking too much time make for sparser chances to do too much "artful" stuff)or the inclination (lethal threat stress rapidly erodes the ability to innovate or to consider fluid movement under stress in particular when safer, less time consuming, and less skill intensive routes are available).

A wonderful window into the history of these arts, but we have to place them in not only their historical (even the "ancient" arts we practice today are modern versions of old arts, not what "they" practiced) and contextual frameworks. The only thing a modern version of a really old xing yi might have is some vestiges of the kinds of stuff we are talking about.

IMO most of those vestiges are found in the earliest, simplest, and most energy oriented (power development) aspects of these arts. What is absolutely fascinating is that you see the very same teachings and very similar stances across different art forms and even in modern day tactical/combat shooting with long guns and wearing kit: the kinds of things Tim and Timber (sounds like a new show...) are talking about repeat themselves. All the odd gobbledy gook came later when people had the luxury of not needing it for fighting to save their lives.