http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c25uWLrO5jU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lYphncfIb4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFWS6ZisVE4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dohp8qLQfpg
So here we have an excellent intro to Dr. Yang’s qinna for free thanks to youtube. I assumed these clips would have been taken down by now, but I guess YMAA decided they could stay up. It is a good way to advertise Dr. Yang’s material.
One of the reasons that I’m posting these is it’s great to have them all on one page. Plus, many of these techniques (in fact, all of them that I can see) are fully transferable to push hands and san shou practices. Dr. Yang’s taiji qinna book is EXCELLENT for introducing his qinna into a taiji format. The setups come straight out of push hands and show situations that any taiji person would themselves in very regularly.
I haven’t watched every minute of all four of these clips. But from what I’ve seen here’s what I think of what’s shown.
Finger qinna is what is mostly shown in these clips, it’s excellent for attacking the opponent and their are many opportunities, especially in push hands and grappling, to make this stuff work. However, bridging needs to be paid a lot of attention to. The bridging Dr. Yang uses here is a bit weak IMO and assumes a few dumb stances by the enemy. I think it’s best to focus on contact first then work off of that. Second, finger qinna itself won’t win the game. Don’t let the pain compliance nature of what he’s showing make you think this is foolproof if you can just get the right angle. IMO finger qinna is best to set something else up. The fingers get qinna’ed, breaking the opponent’s structure and yi long enough for a more effective technique to be executed.
Finger qinna, however, is excellent for less than full-out fighting situations. Just punching someone in the mouth, etc. isn’t always the best solution. Many confrontations require a less than total response — meaning you shouldn’t always train to kill or maim the opponent. Finger qinna is an excellent tool for those situations.
HOWEVER, one important consideration needs to made about pain compliance: it’s usually just a way to train. You do the techniques with pain compliance because it’s just practice and the pain lets you and your partner know you’re doing the technique correctly. Even in fighting, finger qinna is still useful — you’d just break the fingers automatically.
Like everything, qinna takes a lot of practice, especially the finger variety because the fingers are smaller. I find elbow qinna a bit easier because the elbow is a bit bigger.
If these clips impress you, I would highly recommend that you check out his other qinna products, especially the taiji qinna material.
3 responses so far ↓
1 Chad // Apr 29, 2007 at 4:09 am
At a workshop by Dr.Yang he said he was called the “finger collector” because of this. Say what you want about his books, theory and form, his china is tops. Ouch.
2 Jose de Freitas // Apr 29, 2007 at 11:17 pm
Having taken a number of seminars with Dr. Yang (he comes to Portugal at least once a year) I can only say that his qinna is superior. My teacher thinks he is tops, and he is no slouch at qinna either (from an Eagle Claw direction). Nonetheless, as a comment to what Dave said, I’ll offer an observation that my teacher (Sifu Wu Xuan) made: he said that in the context of actual fighting, elbow qinna and secondarily, shoulder qinna are the most useful as well as those that will present themselves more readily spontaneously. They are also the safer to apply, since they attack the opponent’s structure/stance/balance more directly, and cause more damage/pain. He also says that PH is better at creating awareness of elbow qinna than of finger/wrist qinna. I would also add that one of my best friends won a semi-contact Karate tournament even though his opponent broke one of his fingers…
3 chessman71 // Apr 30, 2007 at 10:02 am
Jose,
good comment.
I agree with what your teacher said. i think elbow and shoulder qinna is easier to pull off in PH and it also gives more direct access to the person’s center. If you’re really, really good then you can do finger qinna and still control the center even from the extremities, but yeah that takes a lot of skill. The idea *should be* that the finger qinna locks the fingers then the wrist, the elbow, shoulder, then the whole body and in that order. I’m not there yet either.
As far as the finger breaking goes, I would think that it’s like a “shock to the system” that causes the opponent to totally lose focus for a moment, giving you space to finish him off.
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