Formosa Neijia

People usually compare learning MA to building a house, a useful analogy in most cases.

But when it comes to sparring, I think other analogies might help us see the picture more clearly.

Think of a pyramid, for example. If you want a pyramid to be really high, you need a really wide base. Sometimes I see people who claim to do IMA as fighting arts laying a really, really wide base of skills before they move on to anything else up the continuum I talked about in pt. 2 of my sparring series. They practice standing, forms, etc. for years and often enough, never move up the continuum because they haven’t perfected the lower level skills yet. They spend so much time building the base, that they never get to the rest of the pyramid.

Now think of a tree. It grows roots and then a trunk, then branches and, in some cases fruit. But as it continues to live, the roots also grow, as does the trunk and the other parts. In other words, no part of the tree must be the biggest it will ever get BEFORE all the other parts grow and take the shape. The base of the tree simply expands (the roots too) as the tree matures.

Now think of training IMA like that. Foundational training is done, but it doesn’t have to be perfected to the Nth degree before students can move on to basic practices of material up the curriculum. After all, forms, push hands and sparring all have basic practices. In fact, IT’S ALL BASIC until you get good at it, regardless of the amount of time that you’ve spent training foundational material. What I mean is that there is basic push hands practice just as there is advanced push hands. There is basic sparring just as there is advanced. Thing is, you get better at all this stuff BY DOING IT. And remember, skill at one part of the curriculum does not necesaarily imply skill in the other parts. 

I would suggest that students be allowed to move on to new material or new foci in training once they are able to manifest say 80% of the desired attribute or have that level of proficiency in material. Obviously, that judgement is subjective and is the teacher’s call. My point is that if people are training for peng, structure, relaxation, etc. it would be a better idea for the teacher to have the student train to that level and move on to new material while the student seeks to perfect the material beyond the 80% mark on their own. Gains in any attribute trained come quicker at the beginning and then progress slows as training that attribute continues. We would do best to take advatage of that curve and let students seek perfection (if they can attain that) on their own time.

I think this is more realistic and rewarding training. Chasing endless degrees of structure or peng, etc. before people are allowed to do anything else is a terrible idea IMO.

So let’s take taiji, for example. Many schools train short forms, some schools train multiple short forms. Most Chen schools also teach multiple forms, even multiple frames with various forms. That’s a lot of forms! MUST we wait until a student has learned all those forms AND multiple weapon sets BEFORE basic sparring can take place? IN most places, the answer is yes. WHY? It’s ridiculous.

Instead, perhaps basics could be taught along with the short form. When the short form is then learned, less class time should be spent on it. What class time is spent should focus on improving it. But freed up classtime could be spent on basic push hands and application practice of the moves in the short form. Then basic sparring could be introduced so that students could actually APPLY the applications from the short form. (Why do teachers who teach “applications” usually fail to teach how to actually APPLY them?)

At that point, students would then have a basis in fundamentals, form, push hands, and sparring. That basis in the various elements of taiji could then be improved over time.

This follows the tree analogy. Basic training (the root) need not be perfected to the Nth degree before form training (the trunk) takes place. Form need not be perfect before push hands (the limbs) and then sparring (the fruit) take place. We allow our practice (the whole tree) to grow as needed over time.