Mike Sigman

When I see posts getting longer and longer, I know from experience that someone is defensively picking the fly-specks out of pepper to maintain a defense. Pass. And when it gets to David Orange and his ole pal Dan Harden being the souls of non-offensive posting, I have to admit that I have probably been blind all this time. Heh.

But enough of that. So you've got this general description of a couple of "techniques" with no explanation of how they work in terms of the forces generated. I notice you try to make the request for a mechanical description some quirk that only Mike Sigman has, but let me assure you that many people work from those kinds of descriptions, David. And a lot of Asians do. If you can't really explain things, please don't try to make it somehow a failing on my part. Take your example, if that's the one you want to use, that's great.... and tell us *why* and how such a technique works physically.

Let me point back to the example of someone standing in a so-called "immoveable" stance, in a "relaxed" way, ground a steady push of limited magnitude. No matter what term they use to describe such a force-equilibrium situation, the analysis is going to force the descriptions into only one or two possibilities, all factors being equal. There are even a few different ways of approaching the analysis, but real-world physics is still going to rule. A Ki-Society guy may think he is "just relaxing", but we can hold him to details and ultimately he's going to have to acknowledge that there are some real and describable mechanics involved in what he does. He cannot "resist an incoming force" and not put his own forces into play, even if he thinks he's just relaxing.

Someone may "sap the attacker's strength" or they may "neutralize the opponent" or they may "aiki" the attack.... but if you rigorously follow the descriptions, you'll find that most of these things are just terminology differences, IF we're talking about the same actual forces in all the discussions. Notice how I avoid discussions, as an example, of "unbendable arm". I know from experience that too often people are not talking about the same forces setup, so I avoid discussing "unbendable arm" unless they want to be fairly detailed in the exact forces. You see why. So asking for detailed force information is not some sneaky Mike Sigman trick.... it's what anyone with any sense would ask for.

Granted, someone could counter with "some of these things must be shown and felt to be understood". I agree with that in relation to establishing a baseline understanding for communication, generally, but notice that Rob, Dan, Tohei, Shioda, Inaba, and many others make complete sense to me with their descriptions (and vice versa in many cases, without doubt) .... if you know how to do it, the communication isn't that difficult. And people learn through communicating; that's the whole point.

Last time I'll ask. See if you can give a physical, factual description to support the physical examples I named like Ueshiba/SumoPractitioner or your wrist example... and try to reconcile your "ura of kiai" with practical mechanics. Here's your chance.

Regards,

Mike Sigman