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Old 08-18-2005, 09:19 AM   #28
Mike Sigman
Location: Durango, CO
Join Date: Feb 2005
Posts: 4,123
United_States
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Re: Where Does The Power come from?

Quote:
Rupert Atkinson wrote:
Power can come from the ground through the feet - up the legs, through the hips etc. It can also originate in the hips. An example of the former is any pushing or pulling technique. An example of the latter might be a downblow smashing a board. But then, even though the downblow itself requires no help from the ground, the twist of the hips to set it up still originates in the feet.
Basic power can come from the ground or from gravity... hence the vague comments about the ki of earth and the ki of heaven. Of course that doesn't tell you much (and it's not meant to, in those old sayings).

You could say that power comes from the ground in some example, but if you put a hydraulic jack on the ground and under a weight, you can certainly apply more power than if there was just a stick between the ground and the weight. If you stack 2 hydraulic jacks under the load, you can lift more weigth. And so on. Any application of power depends on the ground (or gravity if it's downward; or a combination of the two if it's outward), but the actual power depends on how many power points you can insert between the ground and the point of application (trying to not let the power factors interfere with each other).

So power should use the ground, but the best way is to let the ground be transmitted uninterruptedly through the body. Then you add the strength of the legs, the strength of the hips, the strength of the back, and any other cute additives that you can come up with... they all add up, just as the stacked hydraulic jacks did. "Ki" and "Kokyu" can be looked at a 'cute additives to overall power'. It's these additives that have allowed small people to become famously strong martial artists (apart from their technique, etc., of course).

FWIW

Mike
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