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Old 05-22-2010, 06:50 AM   #25
DH
Join Date: Aug 2005
Posts: 3,394
United_States
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Re: Control in the martial arts.

Hi Allen
Just quick, I gotta go train myself.....
It is the action of LC moving his waist and winding that powers his legs either sinking and in or rising and out in the video. If you watch around 1:35 or so you see him moving from the center but his hips (which hardly move) follow and are led by the waist. Now watch the guy in black to his left mimic him. He is moving from where? His hips. He will never get the same type of power and he will be more easily off lined (or in grappling, thrown) through them for his effort.

I have specific things I have people do to loosen up their hips from their waist but you already are in China and have a teacher to draw from. What is he telling you to do....more forms?

Tucking the sacrum is what I call "all-in" you are loading the legs on both sides, then you need to turn them or rotate around a line. You can see it in how some people move. You can also see it in some popular exercises people are doing right now. It has power and good up energy but it is more "fixed" than what I'm interested in. What is interesting is that in hip movement at any point in time you are on one side of that line.
It can also leave you in that popular (and in my opinion ill advised) "one legged army" everything goes to one path to the ground feel. FWIW, it's anathema or counter productive to good Japanese weapons work as well.
I like the two feet working together to twine around the middle myself. Think of it like two paths to the ground, instead of one -always working around like a DNA model one foot to the other hand.

With the sacrum neutral or even going slightly backward you can sink in the groin, then rotate "around the central line" making THEM work around that line and leaving them open to being off-lined, all while you are splitting the energy left / right, up/down, in/ out and turning. That way you can power the leg down and out or up and out, or cut a line drawing down and bisecting the body line and rotating (say a Naginata) and cutting up on the opposite side. Doing that with the hips is way to slow and can leave the end of the spear more open for countering.
Since I have fought with both methods one from my youth, and one in the last twenty years, I would offer that through experience (and failing repeatedly while learning) the later method is a better way to go in freestyle fighting, with various weapons and empty hands in modern venues.
Cheers
Dan

Last edited by DH : 05-22-2010 at 07:04 AM.
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