Friday, January 27, 2006
News Flash -- I'm an idiot!
I've completely misunderstood yi quan's three fists. I thought that stamping fist (which I can't find any links to, so maybe the name was mistranslated) was an inertial transfer, but that's totally wrong. Sifu Fung was absolutely right when he kept calling "battering ram method" not part of the way things were supposed to work. I didn't put two & two together at the time, but it's very simple: you can't hit someone via gravity transfer when your inertia is settled ("when your energy is sink" as he would have said) -- it's already at rest, so there's no potential to transfer. Whatever my old "gravity hit" was, it isn't yi quan. Urg, sometimes I feel like such a maroon! I'll take some of that humble pie now thank you.
6 comments:
Your gravity hit is just a time-condensed Dempsey strike....
At least, when I think of how you do it, it really does seem that way, a sudden, sharp distribution of momentum. I don't, otoh, understand how you can claim to have no inertia, while transferring energy. You mean, no big ubervisible inertia?
I think you're totally correct vis-a-vis Dempsey, with pro's and con's to each. As to "no inertia", if you look carefully, I said "no potential" -- big, big difference. When you walk around normally, you're actively suspending your weight/inertia above its structural supports. You can then use the "down energy" of this weight to attack with if you like. But, if your energy is settled and at rest, there's no potential-energy, no "down energy" to use, because it's already at rest. I tried it last night and only bounced off the wall by an inch or less, although it was really loud when I landed since I was mostly dead weight. The gravity hit is not yi quan at all. It does strike me as the kind of thing the taiqi people might do, though, because it can be so gentle.
Taiji gentleness is voluntary in the strike: you can transfer long (gentle) or short (kill).
It seems to me that you are making a slight alteration of your frame (term used loosely) simply in order to be able to make the strike... aka creating potential, that creation involving inertia...
But I could be wrong, as I could never do this as well as you.
Not really, more of folding or unfolding within the frame.
... but yi quan folds first then hits (which unfolds), whereas the gravity hit is the reverse of that.
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