Formosa Neijia

Lots of good discussion on my last sparring post. So much so, that I think we need a series of posts to deal with the topic.

One thing that I think needs to be made clear is the place in the continuum of training that hard sparring occupies.

Consider the following continuum:

normal standing–MA stancework–stationary technique training–footwork patterns–moving single technique practice–forms–stationary push hands/chi sao–moving push hands/chi sao–light sparring–hard sparring/fighting

To use an analogy, I would consider the beginning of the continuum as the shallow end of the pool and the opposite end as the deep end. Notice that the continuum starts with something that anyone who wants to train can do — just stand there. The opposite end shows what only a trained combat athlete can do.

One of the problems that I see is that a lot of people that play down at the shallow end of the pool pretend that what they do will work equally well at the deep end. It’s like someone who can stand in the shallow end of a pool and perhaps do the dog paddle a little bit looking at the deep and saying “Yeah, I could go there if I wanted to.” Ha! If you go to the deep end, you better know how to swim!

So think of the number of people that play at the shallow end for the majority of their training time: doing stance work, silk reeling, forms, single technique practice, etc. All of those things are CRUCIAL, it’s true. But they aren’t the same as hard sparring!

Simply put, the whole (hard sparring/fighting) is not just the sum of the parts (stances, exercises, techniques, etc.).

Sure, stances, techniques, etc. are the building blocks needed to shape and mold a fighter. But they aren’t even close to hard sparring/fighting by themselves.

This is called the genetic fallacy BTW: the belief that since B comes from A, then B must be A. That’s false. No one is going to confuse a piles of bricks with a house, I hope.

And yet, we get lots of people that imply that because they can stand in ways that people can’t easily push them over or they can manifest peng continuously throughout their form, that they can fight. It’s simply not the case, folks.

Tests of skill at one end of the spectrum show skill at that particular end and should not be confused with skill at the opposite end.

At this point, I’m very tempted to bring up the video of Chen Xiao-wang’s encounter with a certain Taiwan XYQ-BGZ guy. That’s a pretty clear example of having deep skills at certain things without those skills necessarily translating up the continuum. I won’t provide the video because I don’t want this to turn into a debate about it, per se.

For fighting arts, the whole point of training is to move to the deep end of the continuum.

Spending time on the constituent parts is necessary, but the training MUST move to the opposite end at some point for fighting skills to be gained.

That was why I mapped out my training with my CLF teacher, and that’s why I said that hard sparring must take place in the last post.

Sorry if I beat my point into the ground in this post.