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Old 01-16-2011, 08:45 PM   #61
Mike Sigman
Location: Durango, CO
Join Date: Feb 2005
Posts: 4,123
United_States
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Re: Training Internal Strength

Quote:
Budd Yuhasz wrote: View Post
I also challenge you NOT to be an asshole about it. Most of these guys will let you test them if you want at it - I encourage you to do so.
I like goofing around as much as the next guy, but in regard to "testing", there's a legitimate question about who "tests" and what they're really testing that can be a complex situation.

Think of this situation as an example: I give a regular workshop and cover the basics pretty well, show the logic, try to keep away from flashy demo's because if they try to do flashy demo's too quickly they're going back to normal strength and technique very quickly. At the end of the workshop I feel like I've done a pretty good job of laying out the big picture, the how-to exercises, I've encouraged everyone to try to drop the normal mode of movement for a few months while they try to get their foot in the door, etc. Class is over. Immediately 3 or 4 guys want to see if I'm good at push-hands, so sure I play around with them and bounce them around some... but what did they just do? They just proved that everything I just said in the workshop blew right past them; they have no real intention of changing the way they've always moved.

Or this situation. A guy who has been doing Aikido (or Taiji or karate.. you name the art) for "twenty-five" years and has a godan comes and wants to fool around a little bit to get an idea. He's impressed and swears I am godlike in my powers and he should know because he's a godan, right? Wrong. If he was a godan who knew anything about internal strength he would have already had some; since he doesn't, he's a beginner and his opinion is no more or less valid than another beginner's. So his 'seal of approval' is meaningless. I could be teaching him some jack-leg homebrew half-wrong largely guess approach to "internal strength", but if I use my 230 pounds to really lay some heavy smacks on him, I can make him a believer. Except that's not how it should work, is it?

All that being said, there's more to it than just making an impression. The way I always did it was that I went to a known expert in internal strength who may have had experience with Joe Blow and I asked: "How good is that guy?".... because in the early days I was smart enough to know that I didn't know enough to judge and my peers didn't either.

2 cents.

Mike Sigman
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