Internal Martial Arts: Fighting Applications

Here's my report on yesterday's class on Fighting Applications. 

I like this as a class, partly because it was the first class I ever took with BKF, that's where I first met my good friend Isaac and a bunch of other folks I still know and train with at times.

We decided to cover things from all three of the internal martial arts we practice, and spend a lot of time on practice rather than forms or nei gung.

We started with Push Hands, beginning with some of the sensitivity drills that BKF used to teach in his Push Hands class, rubbing your hands together to sensitize them. I liken this to rubbing metal with a magnet, helping transfer some of its magnetic power through contact. It helps your hands and forearms awaken and become more tactile. It looks really funny though.

Then we got into the various aspects of Push Hands, shifting, rotating the arms, turning the waist etc. Over a few hours we did a lot of Push Hands. We went through how to use Peng, Liu, Ji and An within the flow. We focused a lot on An, where you press the person down into their feet, then when they rebound you give 'em a bit of a shove and off they go. Subtle, but effective when you hit it. Like bouncing a basketball down then slapping it out of the air.

The next phase was Rou Shou from Ba Gua. After circling for a while, we did some two person sensitivity training, then arm circling, then both arms circling with a partner, then on to the first slapping action of Rou Shou. Then once you can get an inside slap, we added a return slap. So if you slap their belly on the inside, you can then come back and slap it again from the other direction, or go high and slap their head instead.

I noticed how much the shifting back and forth of Tui Shou and Rou Shou engenders a kind of body movement, a sense of smooth twisting and turning that I find quite useful for freestyle sparring. You get used to moving, and rotating your body at all times so it helps deflect blows that land, as well as helping to rotate and add power to your swings. So just the mere act of Rou Shou gets your body attuned to how it should move for sparring.

Then we moved on to Hsing-i. After a nice session of San Ti standing, we moved into "dueling" mode. You face off in San Ti, then when your partner gaps, you step in and Pi Chuan them. Then you go competitive and try to hit each other in the gaps, however you can. Once you try, you stop and reset. This is a great way to build up your reaction time and mental stability under pressure. And you also notice the gaps in your own mind much more clearly when doing this kind of training.

Finally I got out the bag fulla gloves and went around sparring each person for a while. Light to the face, heavy to the body. For some we just worked on a few openings with gloves. For others, we went full on and really traded a lot of solid shots. We didn't use kicks or throws though, just to keep things simple.

At the end we had a meditation session to relax and release the intense emotions brought up by freestyle sparring. This is something that Kumar taught us to do as a way of making fight training more fruitful. The whole point of sparring is to release your worst emotions of anger, envy and stress. Then meditation allows you to release them when they are ripe for the letting go.

Overall a great class, and really enjoyable, at least for me!