ground strength

Ground force without tension

/ Tai Chi Notebook / 4 Comments

Mike Sigman posted a video on how to use the power of the ground in your movements recently and it’s one of the best explanations I’ve seen. I’ve shared it below. It’s a simple concept to understand (but hard to do under pressure) so I think this can be applied to any martial art.

I like videos like this because they take a lot of the mystery out of Asian martial arts. Quite often you’d need to be training in a system for a number of years before you were taught these concepts, mainly due to a traditional culture of secrecy. In contrast, Mike’s approach is to start with these concepts right at the beginning of your training, so you don’t go off on the wrong track. Take a look:

Rickson Gracie using concepts found in Chinese martial arts – notably, jin

/ Tai Chi Notebook / 1 Comment

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: