Episode 40 of the Tai Chi Notebook Podcast is out on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and elsewhere.
I’m joined by my friend Benjamin Palmer. Ben has been running a Xing Yi Quan training group in deepest darkest Somerset for a good few years now, but Ben has also been training Mishima Kempo, an eclectic Japanese martial art and is thinking of starting a class in that soon.
We share the same Xing Yi teacher, Damon Smith who has been a previous guest on my show.
I visited Ben’s Xing Yi class a couple of weeks ago to teach his group some grappling and afterwards we sat down for a chat, and a nice cup of tea, so here we are in Ben’s kitchen!
How to time you strikes with your footwork, a video lesson
Sun Lu Tang, performing xing yi’s Zuan Quan.
Xing yi is a martial art I’ve got a lot of time for. The first thing I noticed about it was its approach to stepping and how different it was to other Chinese martial arts like tai chi, for example. In fact, the only other martial art I can think of that uses a similar type of stepping is yi quan, which is a derivative of xing yi, and perhaps Sun Style Tai Chi, which is obviously influenced by xing yi because it was the main martial art of the founder, Sun Lu Tang.*
When approaching xing yi for the first time, most people seem to be more interested in what’s going on in the body because it is an internal art. I think that, in a way, the label ‘internal’ is something of a blessing and a curse for xing yi because it leads to a lot of intellectualising about it, which is sometimes unnecessary. Before you need to start worrying about things like the internal workings of the body, I think you should be focusing on the footwork of xing yi, because that’s the key to getting the right feel for the art.
Xing yi stepping is different
It’s not like all Chinese martial arts don’t use stepping, (of course they do), but there’s something really nice and practical about the way xing yi uses stepping and striking in harmony*. If you look at a random xing yi link (its name for forms) then no step is wasted – something is happening on every step.
But it goes a bit deeper than than – the timing of what is happening is the thing to look for. The strikes combine with the stepping to put your mass into each strike, so rather than hitting people with just the weight of an arm, you’re hitting them with your whole body weight behind the arm.
I made a video about the timing of xing yi steps and strikes before and I’ve talked about xing yi stepping basics before, but a viewer of one of my YouTube channels, contacted me recently asking to know more about it, so I thought I’d make another video.
So, here it is – I’m demonstrating some standard ‘jab, cross, hook’ strikes on some pads first. There’s nothing special about this, then I look at how it would change if you were going to adopt the xing yi footwork. I show this with the weight staying on the back leg first, then I show how you’d do it with a palm strike and the weight on the front leg – in the way you do it with Bear (Xiong Xing). And then I show some xing yi movements in a linking form, where the steps and the striking are using the same timing. This is a mix of elements and animals.
Is there anything ‘internal’ in this? No, it’s just the mechanics of stepping and striking done together in the general way xing yi uses them. However, my controversial opinion (sorry, I’m trying not to get into arguments these days) is that you need to get this down first before you start with the more subtle internal stuff.**
* Yes, I’m sure there are other Chinese martial arts that use this sort of stepping sometimes – talking in generalities helps make a point, but it is rarely accurate.
** Xing yi is a big art, what I’m talking about is a feature of Hebei Xing Yi – other styles may vary and not use the same sort of footwork. I’m not attacking the way you do XY or the way your Sifu taught you.
I came across an interesting video by Ed Hines of i-Bagua.com recently that discussed some general principles of throws and takedowns. There is some good information here, especially about dead angles, and base. Have a watch:
Of course, in my ear I can hear my BJJ friend saying it’s all nonsense, “why not just do wrestling?”, or “he’s doing zero hand fighting!”. My friend tends to think that everything you can know, or ever want to know, about throwing and standup grappling is already inside wrestling.
He probably has a point, and a lot of the clever ‘internal’ things that Tai Chi teachers demonstrate are really just found in wrestling basics, or are obvious if you do wrestling. But here’s the thing – not everybody wants to do wrestling or even can do wrestling! It’s time-intensive hard, physical work, from which you will probably get injured, and, frankly, it’s for young people, not anybody over the age of 30. Not to mention that you’ll also need to invest in a good quality BJJ mat for grappling training.
If you’re going to approach takedowns without having the time or energy required to learn wrestling, then you’re going to need a softer approach. Oh, hello internal arts.
How to defend everything
I wonder if you’ve ever seen the video “how to defend everything” by Chris Paines on YouTube? (It won’t embed, so I’ve had to link it). It’s about BJJ, not internal arts, and focused ground work, not standing, but those principles he’s expounding, I feel, are universal to all grappling, and they’ve really changed my approach to takedowns. It’s also very simple. Simple is good – simple is practical.
At 50 minutes it’s quite a long video, and some of the important points don’t happen until near the end, so I’ll give you a quick summary: In a nutshell, there are 5 parts of the human body that you need to access in at least one place to achieve a throw or takedown.
Part 1. Back of the head, Parts 2-3. Armpits and Parts 4-5. Back of the knees.
(back of knee area extends down to ankle, armpit area extends down to hip).
When I do takedowns I just keep looking to insert a part of my body (arm/hand/foot/head/whatever) into one of those places. I just keep spamming it as an attack. If you keep doing that then eventually you manage to ‘own’ one of those places and a takedown will sort of present itself, especially if you get more than one.
You can analyse any throw on YouTube and you’ll find that the person who did the throw got some part of their body into at least one of those places to make it happen. Now, that might mean that the model being used is too general (i.e. it covers a lot of the body!), however, I think it’s still a useful model if you want to work on defence (which people rarely do!)
If you’re doing some grappling and you get taken down, then replay what happened in your mind – you will have let your opponent into one of the 5 spaces for too long. Long enough for them to get a takedown on you. The answer to preventing the takedown then becomes about reclaiming control over those 5 points of your body, rather than trying to do some sort of pre-scripted counter to the throw.
N.B. You can look at standing on the foot as a possible exception to these rules, however… that doesn’t tend to work in a pure grappling environment, unless you also get one of the other 5 as well. Standing on a foot and striking somebody however is a different beast – it’s much more effective. It’s the same with standing wrist locks… they can work, but 9 times out of 10 they won’t – i.e. they are very low percentage, and almost certainly don’t work against experienced people. Your time is better spent trying to get one of the 5 control points. (Apologies to Aikido 🙂 )
N.B. 2 – But what about the gi or wrestling jacket? Well, think of it this way, a collar grip is simply a very effective lever to the under armpit area, so when you grip the collar, you are effectively cheating because it’s giving you easy access to their armpit area. It’s why, when we go for chokes we grip deep on the collar, under the ear, but when we go for throws we tend to grip much lower down, so that the lever to the armpit is stronger.
“The origin of internal arts” is probably what I’d have called this really interesting podcast with Peter Lorge about the history of internal martial arts, however Kung Fu Genius decided to name it “Chinese Martial Arts History is Mostly FAKE” because, well, it probably generates more clicks, or something. Anyway, Lorge turns over a few sacred cows here, and I also liked what he had to say about BJJ.
Have a listen:
I think Peter makes a great point about all these different ‘internal’ things throughout Chinese history all definitely existing, but all being completely separate and unconnected until the 1920s Guoshu Institute needed to create the category of “internal” to exist in opposition to shaolin and external, so it brought them all together. (The gentleman whose name he forgets when talking about this is obviously Sun Lu Tang.)
I do wonder if instead of looking back for mentions of “internal” throughout Chinese history a look back for the phrase Liu He “six harmonies” would make a better connection between the dots of Chinese martial arts history. While the term “Neijia” may not appear very often pre-1920s, Liu He definitely did. If we’re looking at how we got where we are today, then that’s probably a better bet.
This post is going to start somewhere you don’t expect – over 1,000 years ago in Song Dynasty China during which we find the legendary founder of Xing Yi, Yue Fei, a general in the Song Dynasty army, mulling over the advancing (heavily armoured) Jin cavalry, and wondering how his foot soldiers are going to fair against the crushing advance of an army that had destroyed the Liao Dynasty troops, scattering them to the Western regions.
The Jin/Song wars would last a century, starting in 1125, when the Jin attacked the Song after a series of negotiations between the previous allies failed. During this period North and Southern China was effectively separated between Jin and Song, with the Song retreating into the south of China. The Jin advance into southern China in 1130 was stymied by Song generals like Yue Fei and Han Shzhong. Eventually the Song allied with the Mongols in 1233 to defeat the Jin, but the Mongols then went on to defeat their previous allies, the Song, and thus the Yuan Dynasty was born.
But why this history lesson? Well, one weapon that was popular during the Song/Jin wars was the ‘sword breaker’ called a bian, which translates as ‘whip’. But it was a very solid short stick made of iron, not a flexible whip. It was often used on horseback because it was effective against heavily armoured warriors, and the Jin cavalry was very heavily armoured.
The Tai Chi move “Single Whip” (Dan Bian), has the same character for whip as the one used for the ‘sword breaker’. It’s also similar to the characters for ‘shoulder pole’, which I’d previously speculated was a possible origin for the name. But people who are better at Chinese than me have cast doubt on this theory. It seems much more likely that it’s the ‘sword breaker’ weapon that is being referred to, not a shoulder pole.
“Recently I’ve been made aware of some theories about the meaning behind “Single Whip” 單鞭 (dān biān)
Basically the claim is that the posture resembles a farmer carrying something on a pole or yoke and that the name refers to this yoke.
This yoke or shoulder pole is called 扁擔 (biǎndan)
So right away, simply linguistically, this claim is a little bit problematic.
English Character Pinyin Romanization. Single Whip 單 鞭 dān biān Shoulder Pole 扁 擔 biǎndan
We’re dealing with four completely different characters with completely different meanings. The dan in biandan is POLE not single.
To a native Chinese speaker this is like comparing apples to tennis balls. It’s just a ridiculous claim.”
The post goes on to look at the historical record, which is fairly interesting, and makes the case for the bian being the ‘sword breaker’.
Fair enough, the shoulder pole idea was just a theory of mine based on the similar name, and the way it looks. As with all good theories, it can be disproved with evidence. But as I also said in that original post of mine:
“The ‘whip’ could also be used as a weapon in Chinese Marital Arts. Again, it was usually referring to a short stick, not a flexible whip. In the excellent “Chinese Martial Arts Training Manuals” by Brian Kennedy and Elizabeth Guo you’ll find a description of a book called “Tiger Tail Whip” by Jiang Rong Qiao published in 1930. It features a “long routine for the metal tiger tail ‘whip’, which is rigid and actually amounts to a type of cane.””
“Chinese Martial Arts Training Manuals”, by Brian Kennedy and Elizabeth Guo
The ‘sword breaker’ or ‘bar mace’ was certainly more substantial than a cane. As the name implies, it could break swords, but it was also good for attacking heavily armoured soldiers as it could impact the person under the armour. Check out what it could do in this excellent video:
What’s in a name?
But it’s still hard to work out why the Single Whip posture would be named after the ‘sword breaker’ in the first place. I mean, the posture doesn’t resemble the weapon at all… But then I saw something very interesting recently:
“This brick carving is from a tomb of Jurchen Jin (1125–1234), describing a battle between Song and Jin cavalries. The one who faced to us with a sword breaker 锏 might be Jin cavalry, who snatched the pole weapon (三尖两刃刀, lit. ‘Three points double edged blade’ fig. 3) away from Song cavalry and swung his sword breaker 锏 to attack his head from right to left. Song cavalry’s head and helmet were totally whacked. Well, pole weapon user should always keep distance with enemy and, such blunt weapons like mace, sword breaker etc. are really excellent weapon against heavy armor. Picture 2 was drawn by 咪咪妈的刘sir.”
Now, what I notice about this carving, and the painting, is that it isn’t a million miles away from the application of single whip that we practice in our Tai Chi. Check it out:
Maybe that’s where the name “Single Whip” comes from? The application of the move is certainly similar to the way you’d use a ‘sword breaker’ way back in the Jin/Song wars to grab the opponent’s long pole weapon and bash them on the head with your ‘whip’.
But why “single”? Well, it turns out that the ‘sword breaker’ was often a two handed weapon. You had one in each hand, as this carving of the Jin cavalry shows:
You can also see double maces being used by cavalry in the painting that opens this article.
It’s as good an explanation for “single whip” as I’ve read anywhere else. And at least this reasoning makes some sense. At the end of the day, it’s just another theory, ready for some eager beaver to disprove.
If you’ve been doing Tai Chi, meditation or yoga for any length of time you’ll have heard the old adage to ‘put your tongue behind the two front teeth‘. The explanation given for this is usually that it “connects the two meridians that go up the back and down the front of the body called the Ren and Du meridians, creating the micro-cosmic orbit”.
Micro cosmic orbit connected… man. Photo by Elina Fairytale on Pexels.com
Personally, I have my doubts about the whole idea of ‘energy’ or Qi ‘flowing’ around the body. I often think it’s really an ancient aberration of the simple idea of forces moving inside the body. In Chinese martial arts there’s a phrase you often hear – rise, drill, overturn, fall, which matches this circuit in the body with a martial technique. The best example of which is Pi Quan from Xing Yi, during which forces in the body (jin) rise up and then come crashing down into a strike.
Strength and balance
However, it’s not just Chinese medicine that recommends this tongue position. I’ve recently discovered that there are a lot of Western sources advocating the same tongue position. For example, Colgate toothpaste has an article about correct tongue position on its website that recommends the exact same thing – the tongue resting on the upper palette behind the two front teeth. The article links to a study in Radiology and Oncology called “Three-dimensional Ultrasound Evaluation of Tongue Posture and Its Impact on Articulation Disorders in Preschool Children with Anterior Open Bite“, which notes that “children with poor tongue posture were reported to have a higher incidence of anterior open bite, a type of malocclusion where the front teeth don’t touch when the mouth is shut. This may be because the tongue puts pressure on the teeth which can shift their position over time.” (Colgate).
In this article from Healthline, Dr. Ron Baise, dentist of 92 Dental in London explains “Your tongue should be touching the roof of your mouth when resting… It should not be touching the bottom of your mouth. The front tip of your tongue should be about half an inch higher than your front teeth.“
While dentists may be aware of the benefits of good tongue position for your teeth and preventing problems with your speech, or mouth breathing from occurring, some exercise enthusiasts are going further and claiming that proper tongue position actually increases your strength and balance, something that is undoubtedly important for martial arts, like Xing Yi.
Pi Quan is said to be like the swinging of an axe. (Photo by Ivan Samkov on Pexels.com)
Now, I’m as aware as the next Tai Chi blogger that cherry picking studies that confirm your beliefs (and presumably ignoring everything that doesn’t) is a bit of a red flag. However, the idea that your tongue position effects strength and balance makes more sense to me than imaginary energy channels (Du/Ren) that may, or may not, exist in real life.
Apparently, good tongue placement can give you superpowers!
I remain slightly skeptical about the whole issue, however, my tongue does naturally rest behind my two front teeth on the upper pallet of my mouth… I can feel it there now as I write this. Was it always there? Or have I turned this into my natural position thanks to starting Tai Chi in my 20s?… I don’t know. All I can say is that it feels comfortable, and if my Ren and Du channels are connecting because of it, and my strength and vision is better because of it then…. so much the better.
I had an interesting comment on my last post that made me think about the whole idea of making up your own forms (or Tao Lu) – in Tai Chi, Xing Yi, or whatever.
I’ve tried to do this over the course of several years and I’ve come to a few conclusions about it, which I’ll elaborate on here. Firstly, it’s hard. Making up new forms is not as easy as you think. But secondly, it depends what martial art you are making up a form in.
Author, performing Xini Yi Chicken (Ji) posture
If your martial art has forms that are constructed like lego bricks that can be slotted together in any order and still seem to work then it’s pretty simple to concoct a new form. Xing Yi is a good example of a martial art that has this quality. I was always told never to call Xing Yi tao lu by the English name “forms” because the correct term was lian huan which means “linking sequence” for this very reason.
The idea, (in our Xing Yi at any rate), is that all the links you learn are just examples, and you need to be constantly moving towards being able to spontaneously vary them as required, and then ultimately spontaneously create them. This idea has become heretical in the modern Xing Yi world to a large extent because modern Xing Yi has lost a lot of this spontaneous feel it used to (I admit that’s a subjective point) have, and things have become set in stone – forms that were once supposed to be fluid and flexible have become fixed and rigid. Forms of famous masters from the past now tend to be fixed forever. When words like “orthodox” start appearing to describe something you know it’s already dead, or on the way to dying.
But of course, anybody can make up a form, but is it any good? That’s a different matter. And it usually depends on the person doing it, not the moves themselves. With Xing Yi animals you can also ask the question – can I see the character of the animal being used coming out through the moves?
With Tai Chi I find it a lot harder to make up a form. Tai Chi’s approach to a form is quite different to Xing Yi, or other Kung Fu styles. The Tai Chi form tends to be a highly crafted piece of work that has been honed to perfection over many years. It is fixed because you need to be able to forget about the moves and concentrate more on what’s inside. It helps to do that if you don’t have to worry about what’s coming next because you’ve done it so many times that you can let go of that part of your brain and let it be aware of other things.
Tai Chi forms tend to start and finish in the same place for this reason. Usually, anyway. While long forms don’t tend to be balanced on left and right, a lot of the more modern, shorter forms make more of an effort to balance left and right movements.
If you understand Tai Chi and how to ‘pull’ or direct the limbs from the dantien movement then, sure you can make up your own Tai Chi forms, however, there is almost zero history of doing this in Tai Chi circles and it’s not really encouraged. I think this is because Tai Chi has push hands, which can be used as a kind of free-form expression of Tai Chi, completely away from the form and in contact with a partner to give you something to respond to, which is the whole strategy of Tai Chi Chuan, at least according to the Tai Chi Classics it is. To ‘give up yourself and follow the other’ you have to be spontaneous. There’s no other choice!
So, to conclude. I think that’s it’s in its application where the spirit of improvisation and spontaneity can be found in Tai Chi, not in the forms. I don’t think Tai Chi is particularly concerned with creating endless variations of forms and patterns like Xing Yi is, at all. Xing Yi, having a weapons starting point, doesn’t use this hands-on feeling and sensitivity to get started with spontaneity. Instead, it likes to create patterns, then vary them endlessly. Of course, you work with a partner when required, but it’s a different approach. Which is all quite natural, as these are two different martial arts, created by entirely different groups of people in a different locations and time periods.
You might like our Heretics history of Tai Chi and Xing Yi for more on that.
We should stop now and again to look back to see how far we’ve come. The Heretics podcast has reached episode 100! It’s a podcast designed to challenge the way you see the world, hence the name. We cover a lot of religious topics, but also a lot of esoteric topics and martial arts. To celebrate episode 100 we’ve done a 2 hour special on Xing Yi. The first hour is a continuation of our History of Xing Yi series, but the second hour is an off the cuff discussion about Xing Yi that you might enjoy more. Expect some heretical ideas and controversy!
I left the reader with a question at the end… I asked them to take a look at another fight on the same UFC 295 card where British heavyweight Tom Aspinall took the interim heavyweight belt by defeating Sergei Pavlovich. The question was what animal style could we say that Tom Aspinall was a good example of. Take a look at the fight before reading further if, you haven’t already.
So, nobody decided to answer in my comments section but I got a few replies in private groups on Facebook, etc. One person got it half right, but they mixed two animals together in their answer, and only one was right. Interestingly most people seemed to opt for Tom being a rather large Monkey (Hu Xing). I get why, Tom is clearly bouncing in and out on his toes, despite being a massive human, but really that’s where the similarity with monkey ends. Monkey would try to attack from further out than Tom is standing, or from further in – it’s a very ‘in your face’ animal, but also a joker and a trickster. Taking pot shots, then running away. Remember the classic Monkey vs Tiger fight video? That’s Monkey. I can think of at least one modern MMA fighter who is a classic monkey – I’ll post about him in the future.
This charming man
So, let’s look at what Tom actually is. He’s 100% Snake because Snake has Yin and Yang aspects. The key feature of snake is a coiling body, which can be used for either very quick strikes (Yang snake) or wrapping and coiling actions (Yin snake) for defence and grappling/locking. You can see this defensive coil aspect (Yin snake) particularly well when Tom is defending. There’s a little section in the round where he slips punches from Sergei while he coils and winds his body as he circles off – this is classic snake behaviour – just imagine if you were stupid enough to try to grab an angry snake by the neck – it would bend and coil around your hand, particularly if it was a python.
Snake’s are very aggressive, successful predators dating back to the time of the dinosaurs, and they’re always sensing forward, flicking out their tongue, and of course, they have the famous (and sometimes) venomous bite. When a snake bites the action is incredibly fast – you’ll notice that when Tom flicks out his jab the speed catches Sergei completely by surprise. For a big man he punches very quickly. The finish is so fast it’s hard to see, but Tom punches Sergei twice before Sergei can even react, steps back, looks at him, then punches him again sending him to the canvas:
Throughout the fight, Tom is flicking out single jabs and single low kicks too, very quickly.
Snake in Xing Yi is also associated with locking and grappling actions – we didn’t see any from Tom in this fight, but that doesn’t change the character that Tom is showing. (He’s actually a very accomplished grappler as well).
But what about Sergei? Well, we didn’t see much from Sergei in this fight, but from what we saw I’d vote Bear for him. His stepping is short as are his rounded punches. He’s incredibly powerful, and he landed the first strike of the match on Tom, which was so powerful he almost finished it there and then. Luckily for Tom he managed to absorb it. In our style we always include Bear and Eagle together, so I think Sergei’s got the potential for some Eagle strikes too, but the fight simply didn’t last long enough for him to show them.
* I suppose this post needs to end with some sort of “this is just my opinion” type of disclaimer. But I find people tend to get offended about everything they possibly can regarding Xing Yi these days, so I’m not going to loose too much sleep over it. And obviously Tom has probably never heard of Xing Yi – I’m just using it as a tool to analyse his fighting style. And if you want to enter an MMA match then MMA training is obviously the best way to train for it, not Xing Yi.
There are different lineages of Xing Yi, it’s been transplanted to different countries, and it’s very old, so it’s quite possible that none of my understanding of Xing Yi snake resonates with your particular lineage. It’s a sad fact that most Xing Yi animals have become just a set of techniques or moves, that have long since lost any connection to actual biological animals – successive waves of crushing political ideology, (both nationalism and communism) imposed on a marital art at the barrel of a gun will kind of do that. I will say however, that my understanding of Xing Yi snake is not really based on a particular style of Xing Yi, or a way of doing the move, but on tying to get back to what real snakes do. And I won’t say I wrote the book on Xing Yi Snake, but I did write one chapter of it.
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