Formosa Neijia

I had the pleasure of beginning my sword training this week. I started learning the san cai jian form and accompaning two-man practices. What follows are my random thoughts on sword training.

1. Don’t get a heavy wooden sword to practice with. i did the He-Man thing and got the heaviest wooden sword that i could buy. Big mistake. I have to do all the basic exercises thousands of time in order to get the technique and power just right. That means a lot of wrist movements, which means you need a light sword to begin with. Not everything is strength trainging, something I should have intuitively known. But I’m a blockhead sometimes!

2. The swordwork is extremely subtle. I had no idea it had this many fine details. The iaido swordwork I did in Japan had subtlties too, but they were of a different nature. This type of swordwork involves a lot of subtle manipulations of the blade and requires a very sensitive hand. You MUST know where the edges are at all times and you have to be really relaxed to let the power come out. You can’t muscle the jian.

I’ve never done anything this delicate before on any MA I’ve ever studied. It requires a completely different mindset than what I’ve done in the past.

3. Two-man work is a lot like push hands. My teacher has me cross swords with him so that I can feel how the power works and build it myself. BTW, there is NO WAY this can be learned except through teacher-student contact. I have my teacher’s DVD on this, but that would never suffice. The power is just too subtle. You have to feel this from someone that has it. Even then, I had a really, really hard time doing it myself. The different powers or jings can be different in minute ways and that, combined with transmitting the power through the sword, is very difficult.

My teacher has experience with Western sword fencing, as well. This has influenced his sword usage to some extent I’m sure and I feel really lucky to have the opportunity to train this with him. He’s not just into teaching sword forms. That’s really rare.

I can tell that this type of jian training will make all my other stuff more subtle and allow me to pick up on small details. I expect some pretty direct influence on my push hands so we’ll see about that in the future.