Formosa Fitness

We've got a good thread going over at the IKFF forum on kettlebell training and internal martial arts. Look for lots more of this stuff from the IKFF. Afterall, there's the offical IKFF qigong set -- a sure sign that this isn't your grandpa's physical culture. As I keep saying, things have changed. Surf that wave, baby. :)

Anyway, join us there for some great discussion.

Now that I've said I won't post much more about IMA, let me post a few recent push hands clip. Hypocrite!! Yep. :)

This is from the INBI guys that translated Chen Xin's book. Hope you made your investment and got a copy. I'm going to be funding my son's tuition with mine. :)

Anyway, this clip is very nice and look at the blend of judo/sambo in the clip. Hmmm.....where have I heard that idea before? :)

Lots of good movement and glad to see I'm not the only one who's doing this.

This is a really, really good example of taiji in usage. Granted it's a student and a teacher. Granted the student doesn't throw punches but he does kick a lot. Granted everything else people will say. But the power and sensitivity are there in spades. And through boxing gloves even. I didn't think this could be done through boxing gloves. I tried and it really screwed up my sensitivity big time. This teacher has some seriously good skill. That comes through loud and clear. Love how everyone stops and looks. They were obviously impressed. He does Yang style, too. Good to see someone from that side of the fence instead of only the Chen guys having a clue.

Speaking of Chen guys having a clue, here are two that do and they're competing against each other: Chen Bing and Chen Er-hu. Now most everyone knows Chen Bing by this point. He's the cool kid in the Chen clan these days for those great clips of him throwing a student in an MMA cage during a seminar in Miami. But Chen Er-hu is also very skilled and has a lot of Chen style usage VCDs and DVDs, all worth getting.

This clip is good because it shows Chen Bing is a bit more realistic light than the ultra popular clip of him throwing the student. Er-hu isn't a light-weight so we have a very skilled interaction here. And by all means, please check out 8:30 in the clip.

BTW, anyone looking to get good at what's in the clip could do a lot worse than Karo Parisyan's excellent Judo for MMA DVD series. Enjoy.

This is the best documentary of Taiwan MA that I've ever seen. It's coverage of the southern styles here was especially good and much appreciated. The crane guy in grey is quite skilled. I love his power and I miss that type of movement. The fifth part below features one of Taiwan's judo legends, who studied IMA and was also a professional wrestler. He's still going strong at age 80 and looks to be in really good shape. His students are very lucky to have him. Enjoy.

"It is sickness to be obsessed with winning, it is sickness to be obsessed with using the martial arts, and it is sickness to be obsessed with putting forth all one has learned. It is sickness to be obsessed with offense, and it is also sickness to be obsessed with defense. It is also sickness to be obsessed with getting rid of sickness. To find the mind obsessively on anything is considered sickness. Since all various sicknessess are in the mind, the thing is to tune the mind by getting rid of such afflictions."

"The elementary level of removing sickness is when you get into thought to be free from thought and get into attachment to be free from attachment."

-Yagyu Munenori, The Killing Sword (1632)

How about a few martial arts posts? We haven't done those in a while.

Many people have weapons forms but nothing else. How to put meat into your weapons practice?

The chances of you finding someone with usage knowledge is slim to none. Here in Taiwan, I've found only a few people that were really knowledgable about weapons usage. I was happy to get what I got from one or two of them.

Fortunately, Dr. Yang Jwing-ming has done all of us a great service by putting out three DVDs based on application and weapon drills to fill out your weapons knowledge.

You can get all of these DVDs here:

http://www.ymaa.com/publishing/dvd/weapons-collection

What I liked about them is that Yang gives you a ton of stuff that is useful no matter what style you do. Most people don't know this, but CMA weapons knowledge all has a common basis. The individualization that you see in weapons today is a relatively recent thing -- especially since weapons fell out of actual use. Weapons are now taught as vehicles to further knowledge of the style rather than for usage. But the basic use of the common weapons was fairly standard in the old days and Dr. Yang was smart to stick to that in these DVDs. So what you get is useful across the wide spectrum of Chinese styles.

What surprised me though was the amount of material he gives for the price. YMAA products were pretty good in the past, but these days their DVDs are running into hours long presentations giving you a ton of value for the money. For example, I owned the old YMAA taiji push hands tapes back in the day and thought they were very good. I looked at their re-release set this morning and they've reshot the footage, making it into a 6+ hour DVD set. You can't beat that.

So if you're looking for great fundamental weapons knowledge to add to your practice, start here. Train hard.

This is Ding Shui-de doing his Yang style and it's still one of my favorite taiji clips. Maybe it isn't the best out there, maybe he isn't the most famous person on earth, maybe others have deeper taiji. None of that matters to me. If I could attain his level in my lifetime, I'd be happy.

I really enjoy practicing a style like the Chen Pan-ling form. The more I do it, the better I like it. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles that other styles have but as i get older, none of that matters any more. Constantly wanting more seems like a young man's thing to me. At this point, I've forgotten too much already to want more. Just getting some of it back would be good. Enjoy ding's performance.