Here’s a solid piece of wisdom about IMA from Steve Cotter, who’s mostly known for his kettlebell training.
I would say that most people do not have access to high quality MA instruction in the traditional sense, and so they adapt a very external approach to skill acquisition in the arts. In that context, if you are going to pursue a muscular-power based system of movement, which is 99.99% of the exiting systems, it is wise to study the techniques of tension and know when and how to apply them.
The pursuit of totally energy-based systems that do not depend upon muscular power but rather on breath/intent only moving through the frame is so far out of the mainstream awareness that there is not an easy way to bridge the gap. Qigong as a general practice is the first step for most, be it tai chi or otherwise…
I have a qigong and MA Master and he can throw me around the room effortlessly, and can do the same to anyone else, too. I know that if I want to do what he does, I have to practice what he teaches me. I don’t look to weight training for answers about energy or MA.
I agree that IMA and neigong are very far outside of the mainstream awareness, and that’s the main problem people have when trying to train this material. In order to train something that is outside the normal awareness, you have to approach it differently than you would anything else in your experience. But few people are willing to do that.
Instead, we fall back on what we know, which is muscle oriented movement. And yet, as Steve points out above, if you want IMA-type movement, then substituting muscle power will never work. But that is what a majority of people do.
4 responses so far ↓
1 Frank Bellemare // Mar 6, 2008 at 2:13 am
Dave, you left that important part out:
“Soft can overcome hard, and hard can overcome soft. In most cases, hard will overcome soft; I find for most people, being strong and connected is sometime more effective self-defense than soft-only practitioners. When most hear ’soft’ they think weak, and yet in most cases soft is weak. ”
Of course to develop high-level skills in IMA you need to rely on something other than brute force and big muscles. Yet if you look at the big picture in fighting, you have to admit that being stronger will often make up for lesser technique. If for some reason your opponent is more skilled than you are, you’d better have something else to fall back on.
2 brian // Mar 6, 2008 at 7:03 am
Also, even if being soft is great for fighting (rare as it is) don’t you need strength to live everyday life? How are you going to use pure softness to lift that grocery into your car?
brian
3 YMAA.com // Mar 7, 2008 at 12:54 am
“Soft” does not equal weak.
Soft means relaxed with maximum Qi circulation throughout the body.
That Qi returns to the real lower dan tian, and when conserved properly, it reaches a higher capacity than normal, which in fact makes you stronger.
Even if you are not practicing Taiji, the body is the same for all of us. The principle is the same for softness in any fighting style.
4 Frank Bellemare // Mar 7, 2008 at 5:16 am
I guess this may be one of those neverending debates where no one is right and no one is wrong. From my experience, building strength through weight training or pole shaking or whatever “external” means is not detrimental to actual IMA skills. It does stiffen you up when you do it too much or too often, but it’s not inherently bad. Ideally, you would be both strong and soft.
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