• Archive through September 15, 2003 September 15 - 10:49 pm [20]

Mark,
Why not? Maybe he's been waiting for the right student.

You could be the "ONE" Mark... Imagine that!

I wouldn't think so, how would you feel about a Chinese student who tried to learn from American teachers (maybe 'westerners' in general) and then implies that it was their fault he got little from the experience?

Cracka, please! you aint be makin' no sense

ooooohh, this one is making my dick hard, too! ron, please remove my comments and close this thread!

willard

I understand your predicament, it's much easier to go off half-cocked.

I know repetitive drilling in sports can sometimes be harmful. But where I train we do many, many kicks, punches & palms in a row, over & over.

Most guys need the reps of each move because they struggle to get it right. Even when & if you get better I think doing for example a heel kick or brush knee over & over will keep it good. It is also, like stated above, exercise.

Willard;
When every discussion board thread is making you . It means you are spending too much time in Thailand you deviant.

Mark,
this sounds like a pretty serious problem and you might want to seek profesional help. I too had a similar problem. I felt like I needed to wash my hands 1000 times a day. With the proper combination of appropriate drugs and shock therapy I was able to forget all about how dirty, filthy and disgusting my hands are. Of course the transition wasn't without a few incidents, and my filthy hands aren't the only thing I forgot about, but it's all been worth it.

Mark Hatfield,

Back to your post that started this thread...

when you said "I reviewed again the 'Effortless Combat Throws' book on training, specifically, the need for awareness and feeling in learning movements. There is nothing there with which I disagree, however high repetition training is dismissed as exercise, where time could be better spent."

Were you refering to the phrase-- "going through the motions of a technique by rote without complete conscious awarness results in a good part of the training time being wasted." -?

If so, without your alteration- the statement makes sense.

Definitely, at the same time sparring, both rehearsed and unplanned is no automatic guarantee of increased awareness, they're plenty who just go through the motions in it too.

If there is a delineation between internal and external it may be that internal styles put primary emphasis in all aspects of training on intent/will being unified with form, rather than a particular kind of form and intent being associated with external and another with internal. The degree of intent you can bring to bear in any movement once you have the basic form or external structure right, determines the quality of the movement..?

I guess it then naturally raises questions about quality and quantity of intent, like those who stand in san ti for an hour while watching TV...

I've never felt sure that I was making my point clearly here. First, for this discussion, disregard any part of developing a movement/technique which cannot be done by yourself. Disregard any mental aspect of the training and think of it purely in terms of a physical exercise to be developed.

Let's take for example the step which is refered in the Park Bok Nam books as the 'jump step' (sort of a skip) common in Hsing I.

If you don't have strong 'quads', calfs, feet and ankles and even toes, you can't do this very well, although you might not realize if you're not performing as well as you could. Stance training, particulary San Ti, helps this a lot. Weight training can use the same muscle groups but doesn't have the same affect as simply doing the actual movement. The best way to develop the this movement is by actually doing it.

The idea that a movement can be 'ingrained' in 2000 to 4000 repetitions is well known. My point is that to develop ones optimum performance can take a lot more that that. For any exercise/movement, after one has 'maxed it out' acheived a high level of performance, you can cut back a lot on practicing that movement and still maintain the skill. Folks who already have related skills well developed, require less time to develop new ones than someone starting with nothing.

The issue was with an appearent opinion that solo drills past the 2000 to 4000 mark were merely exercise and a poor use of ones' time. My personal experience is that much more practice is necessary, at least for myself, to maximise results.

When you read of masters of the 1700s, 1800s, and early 1900s, you always see the same thing, very high volume of repetitions of basic movements for months or years.

Again, this will vary with what one is practising. How many people will practice a wrist lock 2 to 4 k? That may not need that many reps. But to perform a movement such as a blow, you should develop all the muscle groups involved. This takes longer than just learning the movement.

Put it this way, suppose you were learning one of the five basic 'fists' of Hsing I. You spend one to two weeks (or less) doing the movement, then practice working on the setup, distance, timing, positioning, etc. For sport, this may be fine, but would you really have the speed and power that you would want if using it against someone who wanted to put you in the hospital?

Mark, if you disregard the two person/fighting aspect and the 'mental' aspect, you've got an athletic or exercise activity, not a martial activity. It's not an easy thing to then just 'add' that in later.

Secondly all the 'jump step' has in common with jumping is that it 'invovles a period of flight' like all activity beyond walking. The physical aspects of Xing Yi are important, but the conditioning is more a by product of the training once a basic level of fitness is achieved. What is important for power in Xing Yi is co-ordination, the six harmonies for example and maintaining that requires an intense amount of concentration.

In my own experience the physical stamina to be able to train for three or fours a day is not that difficult, but the mental stamina needed to be able to maintain the consistent focus and concentration necessary to develope skill, for that period of time is very difficult. My personal take on what constitutes focus/concentration/awareness/intent has changed
markedly since training in Xing Yi. If you are training correctly then speed and power comes out of training, not put into.

I agree with Bob#2, you gotta find yourself a teacher somehow, training Xing Yi aint like training for the long jump.

One thing i forgot, from the purely physical perspective maintaining alignments requires use of stabilizers that require high volume rep training, and adapt slowly but maintain that adaptation for longer, unlike motor muscles.

I don't think anyone is suggesting that repitition training replace two-person drills. When I have a training partner available, I don't waste my time doing solo exercises. I think Mark is referring to developing isometric power for striking through intensive, repetitive solo drills. Boxers practice exhaustive heavy bag drills long after they have "ingrained" the proper method of punching to increase/maintain power. A karate blow that shatters several boards wasn't developed with just a few thousand reps.

Kenneth

Exactly. Seems like while many people have made very good and valuable comments, they missed the point I was going for except for Chris Seabys' p.s.

Fair enough, so how did you end up with the thread being called quality vs quantity? On re-reading your posts i can find one small reference to intercostals and spinal erectors.

This may be of interest. It's the ineraction between those long deep muscles in the back plus other deep muscles in the neck (scalenes), and trapezium (splenius), as well as the short muscles that extend from from one vertebrae to the next (like intercostals do in the ribs), that can give the 'connected' back feeling. The external intercostals lift ribs, pretty passive unlike the internal (deeper) intercostals that depress under more conscious control with help from deep thorax muscles and muscles in the neck like the scalenes and of course the diaphram.

Getting these groups of muscles to act as a 'single unit' to facilitate the extension, compression, flexion and rotation of that 'core' area of the upper body is obviously very important and deep muscles generally respond indirectly,(i.e. very hard next to impossible to isolate)to high and very high reps . Also the fact that the deep muscles of the neck are important to the 'front and back' adds some weight to the emphasis alot of IMA teachers place on 'holding' the neck.

Another interesting aspect is how when conscious control is engaged like in breathing for example, a larger number muscles both deep and superficial are automatically brought into play, giving credence to the role of will in unifying. Actually if you study the requirements of IMA on posture, alignment and breathing it fits in pretty well with efficient biomechanics.

But i'd add that when i studied some of this, it was one of the areas where there was still debate on some muscles functions particularly with regards to the action of synergists.

Chris

It was just a handy title. Excellent post.

hi, chris, interesting post. how did you come upon this understanding of muscles/anatomy?

i can't judge it myself--and i'm not judging your last couple posts at all. just referencing them to some nei kung exercises i've learned. and wondering how you came to your knowledge/conclusions.

best...

It may well be interesting but it's up to you judge the validity of the claims. The muscle functions could be checked or verified easily enough, the parrallels drawn with regards to IMA is going to vary with your own experiences in this case may need to draw on some biofeedback. I've got no problem with people exercising their judicious rights.

hi chris, well what you were saying made sense to me, though i'm in no position to judge the muscle functions in that detail. most of all i was thinking of how what you said might apply in some nei kung i do. i'd never come across any body function (or whatever you'd call this subject)books, that dealt with this stuff in the detail you describe. so i was wondering how you developed your understanding. best...

Chris

Rereading your posts again reminds me that somebody, somewhere wrote on the old business of 'sperm changing into chi, chi compressing and going into the bones' etc. The opinion was that the old writers had developed a 'deep' body awareness of functions and tissues which folks are not usually conscious of. This was their means of trying to comprehend and explain what they were feeling.

Internal enthusiast,

just basic anatomy and physiology for human movement science, but i think some aspects in respect to deep muscle function may have caught my eye more than other people, it's not 'glamorous' like big muscle motor activity. Why, i don't really know except maybe that in my IMA training i've learned to try and look beyond just the superficial and delve a little deeper, not that i believe what i've written is any great insight.

The other thing is feedback. I try to always maximize the feedback i get from training. If you haven't got access to a biomechanics lab.., then you have to devise your own methods to achieve it; this is where the quality aspect comes in.

Mark,

i guess you are talking about condensing breathing. I'd certainly agree with those opinions. I think getting good biofeedback (awareness) is essential, but you can only communicate your interpretation of those 'feelings' to others within a format your are comfortable in and there are alot of languages (metaphors) including science to choose from. If your audience isn't as fluent in that language or share the same experiences its not surprising that disagreements will arise. Even a biophysicist and a biologist don't really talk the same talk, and some aspect is usually lost or distorted in the translation.

It helps if you can identify which features vary and which don't, are invariant. Like in mapping when moving from 3D to 2D you have choices depending on what approach you take in what features are preserved, but you can't preserve them all. Although some holographic techniques may change that in the future.

sheesh.


frickin' sheesh.

thanks chris. re: your remarks on deep muscle function...i've only found a bit of info on their function, and that's often contradictory, ime (not that i've made a study of it.)

re: feedback, no i don't have access to a lab. i'd think something like that was interesting, but beyond my ken. to the extent that i've had any "experiments" going, it's simply been my
naive testing of what seems to work on another human being trying to do something, and how it could be "handled." best...

sorry, all. in my efforts to edit i seem to have double posted and can't clear it.

Bob #2, yeah... that probably was overly self indulgent even for me.

Internal enthusiast,

The posts were only for interest and it is a very much a situation of work in progress, so much so that it may well be a case of looking for evidence to add weight rather than disprove, hence the judicious rights comment.