Thread: The Leather Man
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Old 07-31-2007, 04:14 PM   #47
Mike Sigman
Location: Durango, CO
Join Date: Feb 2005
Posts: 4,123
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Re: The Leather Man

Quote:
Lee Salzman wrote: View Post
I guess I lay my cards on the table by saying this, but, if we're talking yiquan, then the process of learning coordinated strength via the yiquan I learned does not suppose fascia, nor does knowing about fascia shed light on how one trains yiquan in this way. Doesn't mean it might not be involved, it just means it doesn't inform the bulk of the training at all, anymore than say the myonucleus, myofibrils, or the cytoplasm, because practical issues do instead.

And if you tag ideas onto a concept, that while maybe is tangible, but on the other hand isn't predictive or prescriptive, then how much better is it than magic? Because it still opens the door for very subjective interpretation, and thus for people to start turning it into magic, because the framework for explanation is still lacking. -- "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." -- How many people really know how their TV works? Or even how to program a VCR? I don't think buzz words help. If anything, discuss the practical exercises, and reason from there, but reasoning from a nebulous buzz word down...?
Well, the exact same argument could be made about fascia in ki, kokyu, etc., and people could similarly lay their cards on the table that knowing the fascia idea doesn't help them any, and so on. But doesn't that depend on how much they know to start with? If you don't know much, then piling the fascia information on top does not do any good. However, people that have a basic understanding of the concepts seem to, in my experience, benefit from the fascia perspective... and it's certainly predictive and reproducible. If you want to set a baseling of what level people would benefit from the knowledge, that might be a good discussion. My perspective is that someone with even moderate knowledge of how the skills actually work benefits fairly obviously. Would the suggestion be that the level is so low that we should forego some aspects of the discussion?

Best.

Mike
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