http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJvxqp-Bqzw
First off, I’m a big fan of Sam Masich. I think a lot of his video work is great. I used to have his xingyiquan tapes, and I thought they were the best you could buy then, and they probably still are today. I haven’t seen anything in the past 15 years that surpasses them.
But in this clip above, I see some problems with the fighting material/applications that are being taught.
The application here is high pat on horse from Yang style. Stop the vid at the 1:25 mark. Sam moves from single whip into high pat on horse because his partner blocks the application from single whip. But did you notice that he pulled back from making contact with her in order to then do high pat?
What was the most obvious application that he missed that would have been devastating and would have followed the ideas of sticking and adhering even better? KAO — done here as shoulder stroke.
Notice at 1:25 and in subsequent repeats of the technique that he has a perfect set-up for a right shoulder strike. It’s RIGHT THERE. Now this can be done softly and smoothly — there’s no need to fajing into the arm and break the elbow, but that is an option.
If doing kao isn’t desired, the setup for a rollback armbar is RIGHT there, as well. It’s perfect. To not take any of those option is to not use the advantage of having the arm straight like that.
Finally, people will NOT stand there and let you keep their arm straight for a long time. Once you’ve got the first gate (the wrist) you need to attack the next link in the chain higher up — the elbow or shoulder gate. Those are the quickest since the arm pull exposes those two areas by straightening the arm.
By ignoring something these things, you train people AWAY from the next natural reaction. Why retreat and do high pat on horse here? It’s unnecessary and unwieldy.
When doing a two-person form, we have to be careful to train stuff that is realistic and closely mirrors fighting situations. Pulling back like that gives your opponent a LOT of space to work with. When you disengage, you give him space and time to counter your next move. Both training partners end up losing a chance to train their nervous systems for real usage. IMO this is one weakness of two-man forms. The form needs to be constructed so that the next best application that fits the situation is used.
3 responses so far ↓
1 Dojo Rat // Jun 18, 2007 at 11:02 am
Dave;
I had a nice seminar on push hands with Sam several years ago. Small group, great instruction, nice guy.
I will review the video to see what you are getting at,
Message to follow Monday am on your G-mail,
John At Dojo Rat
2 Q // Jun 18, 2007 at 8:41 pm
Well, I’ve been taught that often when looking at stuff different from your own that what looks like mistakes may serve a purpose different than what you are familiar with. Maybe he’s trying to train a reaction in case the opponent got away? I’m just guessing though as I am not familiar w/ his stuff. However, I think a kao there or a Gao snake throw would be fantastic.
3 GrahamB // Jun 19, 2007 at 2:24 pm
That video just looks cooky to me. I’m not convinced any of those parries or deflections would work, because they look weak. But because there is not power in any of the strikes they just keep going.
You can get a familiarity with the application from this stuff (slow movement sparring is especially valuable), but I think that overall this type of application training done here is just too ’soft’ to be all that useful.
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