View Single Post
Old 10-03-2011, 08:50 PM   #16
Cady Goldfield
Join Date: Oct 2006
Posts: 1,035
United_States
Offline
Re: Internal Strength in sparring

Quote:
Hunter Lonsberry wrote: View Post
Given the level of IS knowledge in china when compared to the west, you would be surprised if they did not take advantage of that sort of training.
The existance of IS knowledge in China, and the open availability of IS knowledge there, are two different things. I get the impression that such skills aren't so widely known as we might think.

Teachers of traditional "internal" martial arts in China are not so open, and perhaps they would be especially reluctant to teach anything of substance to people who approach them not to learn and embrace the teachers' art, but simply to mine them for their IS skills in order to apply them to judo, boxing, wrestling and what-have-you. It's not something to be so freely given away, and typically, "the goodies" are jealously guarded. A lot of their own longtime students don't even get them.

Also, I'd think that athletes who go in for international-level competition training are far more likely to be very focused on the methods and techniques of their chosen sport-art, and less inclined to want to spend the large amount of time it takes to train IS and learn to apply it effectively and as second nature, even if they were aware of its existance and value. The competition life of athletes is fairly short. It seems to me that they typically want methods and techniques they can pocket and use as quickly as possible and be ready to employ it in the next big competition. It seems similar to the situation with professional MMA people-- with the more open availability of folks teaching IS in the West, you'd think that these guys would have heard about it and want it for their own. But, with a few very unique exceptions, there doesn't seem to be a goldrush going on there, either.

FWIW.
  Reply With Quote