The Bruce Lee documentary “I am Bruce Lee” featuring such luminaries as Jon Jones (now disgraced for failing a drug test, but still one of the finest fighters the UFC has ever seem) and my own erstwhile Kung Fu student and author of Mythologies, Paul Bowman.
You can watch it here.
An interesting clip popped up on the BBC website today about self defence for women by a woman. Here it is:
Here’s my potentially mansplaining view: She makes 3 quick points at the end – I really agree with her first two, (don’t be afraid to offend and use your voice) but her last one – “widen your stance” – I don’t get. I’d say the opposite – get ready to move! Get up on your toes (mentally, if not always physically) and get ready for movement. If you make a sitting duck of yourself against a man whose’s first move is probably going to be to try and grab you then that’s not good. Equally, if he’s going to strike you then adopting a firm, wide stance is not going to help either.
Watch my previous post about movement for self defence from Rob Poynton to see what I’m talking about.
Either way, I’m glad she made the point that despite all the martial arts techniques on show, the first two points can be done by anyone and are the most effective.
The comments section on that video is interesting too:
“I want to see that viral video of men teaching boys how to fight off the urge to be predatory.”
“But god forbid she be allowed carry a firearm to more effectively defend herself”
“Give her a gun and she’ll be unbeatble”
“Learning to hate men!“
“Unrealistic sweep, and sloppy arm bar. Train Jiu Jitsu, that will give you more realistic techniques that actually work. The clinch was also poorly done, with no control.”
” I remember reading somewhere that a man was jumped by 2 women. They we’re basically groping him & trying to take his trousers off. They wouldn’t stop & he slapped them. Next day, he had police at his door for common assault.”
There you have it – the great unwashed of the world live in every comments section. Never look below the line 🙂
Here’s a seminar clip I came across recently of the legendary Rickson Gracie teaching in Tokyo, Japan this year. He’s going over concepts that should be familiar to Tai Chi people, or in fact anybody who has a deep understanding of Chinese martial arts. It’s the concept called “jin” – often translated as refined force. It’s using the power of the ground, transmitted through a relaxed (“sung”) body to produce an unusual strength that isn’t reliant on excessive muscle use (“li”).
Jin is talked about all the time in the Tai Chi Classics, most notably on the issuing of force with the famous phrase:
The jin should be
rooted in the feet,
generated from the legs,
controlled by the waist,
and expressed through the fingers.
What’s interesting to me is why it’s only really Rickson Gracie (and his students) who talks about and demonstrates this stuff in BJJ? Did he find it elsewhere and integrate it, or was it always there if you had eyes to see it?
Anyway, here’s his workshop:
I really liked the above clip by Rob Poynton of Cutting Edge Systema. It’s about the idea of using movement, rather than a fixed, rooted stance or hand blocks, to defend yourself.
To break down the message:
It’s simple, common sense advice when it comes to martial arts. The XingYi I learned was based around exactly the same concepts, incidentally. If you look at a lot of MMA fighters you see the same set of principles in action. If you think about it, you generally don’t see them doing a lot of blocking with their hands. Instead, they are moving and slipping punches. Obviously, there are exceptions – for example, the last MMA fight I watched was Yoel Romero vs Luke Rockhold, at UFC 221 in which Romero did a series of bizarre-looking arm blocks throughout the fight, yet came out on top.
To be fair though, it wasn’t getting him anywhere – he was getting him picked apart by Rockhold until Romero finally broke through and delivered a knockout blow, possibly by virtue of being one of the toughest human beings alive at the moment.
I think Rob’s right in saying that the traditional arts are slow to teach this concept of movement, though. Generally, you hear things said like “if you don’t spar you’ll never be able to use it”, which is true, of course, but how about actually breaking down and analysing what you learn in sparring, and bringing it back into training to refine it? I think that’s what Rob is showing here.
The point about a fear-based response vs a confidence-based response is also very interesting.
Of course, the counter-argument is ‘where are all the great Systema fighters, then?’ But it’s pretty clear that Systema isn’t really designed primarily for being used in a cage. It seems like a pretty useful life skill though, full of concepts you can more easily transfer to your day to day existence.
It’s quite ‘Zen’ and deconstructionist to talk about labels not mattering. But over long years I’ve come to the conclusion that labels (for martial arts) exist in the world because they do matter. If they didn’t matter (to whatever extent) then they wouldn’t exist.
I was reading recently (an idea from Mike Sigman) that the best way to view a martial art with regard to the question of “How internal is this?” is as a sliding scale of 1 through 10 from just using local muscle on the left (0-1), through to external martial arts in the middle (5) that use Jin (ground force) to some extent, on to internal martial arts at the end (10 being the highest) that use full dantien control of movement.
I’d put things like Wing Chun or Karate that go beyond just using basic movement in the middle of the scale. These things often get called the true ‘internal’ versions of the arts, but they don’t really use the dantien. The official version of Yang style Tai Chi that you see done by Yang Jun I don’t think is a full 10 either – it just doesn’t use the datien for full control all the time. I think Chen style Tai Chi would be a 10 – of course, that’s the theory. Most practitioners would be bottom to middle of the scale at best.
There was some talk recently on internal aspects in arts like BJJ. I think BJJ and Judo have the potential for being in the middle of the scale – some Jin usage. Often this is what you see termed as ‘invisible jiujitsu’. I think that’s exactly what you need for groundwork (and for fighting generally) – beyond that it’s a case of returns vs time spent. If you want to make your living as a pianist you don’t need to become a master of the very hardest pieces of classical music. It’s almost irrelevant. Of course, if you want to devote your life to it then, it’s your life and it’s a world of discovery.
I went in at 11 and it was still touch and go until 3.00pm when I got the call to put the gown on (this is the one true sign that your operation is definitely going to go ahead). Surgery (orbital floor repair) all seemed to go really well and they sound very pleased with the result. My eye is a swollen bloody mess at the moment but it already feels more like a normal eye compared to the soggy, sad thing it was turning into, with much freer range of movement of the eyeball. Plus, I’m now bionic 
🙂
A couple of comedy moments – they forgot to draw an arrow on my head this time, which made for a funny conversation in pre-surgery and working out that the chirpy porter (they are always chirpy) who took me down knew similar jiujitsu people. Some more comedy escapades with getting a check X-Ray the next day, which ended up with me being literally taken around the houses from one building to another across a street (in a wheelchair), swapping wheelchairs with another team and then finding out the X-Ray machine was broken, so having to go all the way back and find another one.
So, lots of fun and games, but the upshot is, I was broken and the NHS fixed me and I’m very grateful. Now I just need to rest and recover. Thank you for listening, and hopefully, this is the last of my hospital updates and we can all get back to talking about martial arts.
Lots of great reactions to my post yesterday about my experiences with the NHS.
I contacted a nurse who works at the BRI, but will remain anonymous, and got them to read it. They were just as nice as all the staff I’ve talked to before, and very sorry about my situation. It was interesting that the thing that really got them about my post was how a patient has to put their life on hold before going in, and the stress and frustration it causes when the operation is cancelled through no fault of their own. I guess when you see 10, 20, 50 people a day you just don’t have time to consider their lives outside of the immediate medical problem.
They did say one thing that was interesting – “we’re always open to ways to doing things differently”. That got me thinking about ways they could do things differently.
Ok, here’s one very simple thing:
How about you pre-warn the patient that their operation *might* be cancelled. Or, even that there’s a high probability that it *will* be cancelled?
That way we can plan better, and we won’t feel as crushed as we do when the rug is once again pulled from under our feet. I naively had no idea it was even a possibility when I rocked up for my first cancelled surgery.
Take a look at this photo – it’s all the info I’ve been sent about my operation.
Here are the headings on the pamphlets: Requirements for admission, Moving to the discharge lounge, Hospital acquired thrombosis, Pressure ulcers – everyone’s business, Your visit to the Pre-operative Department (POD), Keeping patients warm, The management of pain after surgery, Keeping an eye on your alcohol use, You and your anaesthetic.
It’s all about what *you* need to do to make this happen.
Not once, in any of the literature is there a single mention that your operation might be cancelled.
Not once in my surgical consultations was it ever mentioned to me that the operation being cancelled was even a possibility.
Being given hope, only that have it taken away, is a kind of psychological torture, and it needs to be recognised more openly by the NHS.
Sexy surgical socks
This is a really interesting article from Practical Method Tai Chi about the passive-aggressive world of Tai Chi push hands challenges in China – I really try to avoid pushing hands with people I don’t know for many of the reasons described here.
I think the best use of push hands is as a teaching tool, where it is invaluable. Used as a method to compare skills it inevitably turns into ‘Wrestling Lite’, and the best wrestler wins.
Check out the article here.
You might also like: Thoughts on Push hands by Mike Sigman
Things have been getting a bit ‘academic’ lately on the blog, so let’s just have some fun. I just saw this fight choreography for Batman vs Bane in an upcoming computer game called Batman the Enemy Within. Check it out:
It’s interesting for a number of reasons – firstly, it’s really good! People putting this much work into fight sequences for a game surprised me. This isn’t motion capture – the sequence is a “visual reference for animators”. It would be really interesting to see how the final sequence looks when fully animated. You can see some examples of their animated work below:
Secondly, they’re using a woman as the Batman character. Partly I think this is to create a size difference between the two characters. Bane is meant to be bigger, and he can inject venom to “Hulk up” a bit when he needs to.
Finally, the fighting style used looks very jiu jitsu-based, of the “flying armbar” variety. At one stage in the movie franchise Batman moved towards a fighting style that was based more around Filipino arts.
Great work.
The Tai Chi Notebook 