internal before external is a waste of time?

[johnwang]

might have piqued your curiosity to the point that you might actually go and investigate the difference.

It's still not my priority at this point of my life. Too many things that I want to do right at this moment.

[Robert Young]

Lohan/Tongbei teach pivoting turning on the heel.

I would love to see some clip that turn on the heel.

{/quote]

It is kind of funny. We do all our LF moves pivoting turning on the heel too. And, it is not just long fist moves; PM, Hong Jia, and other southern Shaolin systems too.

But, I did see my LF uncle Shen, Mao-Hui taught his Ba Ji form using the front of the foot as pivoting point. I always thought that is an exception.

Just saying.

[johnwang]

It is kind of funny. We do all our LF moves pivoting turning on the heel too. And, it is not just long fist moves; PM, Hong Jia, and other southern Shaolin systems too.

But, I did see my LF uncle Shen, Mao-Hui taught his Ba Ji form using the front of the foot as pivoting point. I always thought that is an exception.

Just saying.

No matter how many times that I look at this clip, it looks to me that he was turning on his toe at 0.21, 0.34, 0.45, and 1.10.



It' clear to see that this Lohan guy turns on his toe at 0.24.



It' also clear to see that this Tongbei guy turns on his toe at 0.29.



If you look at this clip in detain, you can see Adam also turns on his toe at 2.49.




Can someone please tell me that I may have eyes problem here?

[Robert Young]

It is kind of funny. We do all our LF moves pivoting turning on the heel too. And, it is not just long fist moves; PM, Hong Jia, and other southern Shaolin systems too.

But, I did see my LF uncle Shen, Mao-Hui taught his Ba Ji form using the front of the foot as pivoting point. I always thought that is an exception.

Just saying.

No matter how many times that I look at this clip, it looks to me that he was turning on his toe at 0.21, 0.34, 0.45, and 1.10.

I can not comment about other clip, but I can definitely talk about the first one. The performer is my younger LF brother. I taught him the form basically. My teacher and I have tried to correct his moves about the toes from the day one. But, he just have trouble to corrected it, because he has hard time to focus on those details. So, his performance is basically the wrong demo regarding to turning heel.

Also, in public performance, we tended to relaxed a little bit because we usually performed two to three forms a night. So, slacking in details was common. So, you can not really use public performaces as guide line to say what is right or wrong.

[johnwang]

you can not really use public performaces as guide line to say what is right or wrong.

Our life long habbit won't change even in public performance.

his performance is basically the wrong demo regarding to turning heel.

Now you make me interesting in this subject. What can you see in the following 3 clips? Will you be able to find any clip that "turn on heel"?

[cdobe]

Whenever a martial artist uses his body in a style specific manner, he uses shenfa - or better adheres to the shenfa of his particular style. It all depends on the requirements of the style. John uses his body according to his method, so he does use shenfa.
Every CMA has its specific bufa, (stepping methods) shoufa (hand methods) and shenfa (body methods). These three are the basic external aspects of the particular styles...

[D_Glenn]

Whenever a martial artist uses his body in a style specific manner, he uses shenfa - or better adheres to the shenfa of his particular style. It all depends on the requirements of the style. John uses his body according to his method, so he does use shenfa.
Every CMA has its specific bufa, (stepping methods) shoufa (hand methods) and shenfa (body methods). These three are the basic external aspects of the particular styles...

Every style should have 'shenfa' which if they actually use these movements, trained techniques actually, of the spine or methods (fa) of moving the spine, then it is how these methods then combine with the methods of how the hands and feet move. So it's how the spine's methods coordinate with the hands, so yes we say that tongbeiquan has a different shenfa then say taijiquan. Inside Baguazhang we say the Lion has a different shenfa then the phoenix or any other animal, all the animals are different in the way the arms and legs connect to the movement of the spine and dantian. However if these animals were done without the movement/methods of the spine then they would still all look different to the outside observer but are actually just 'external' approximations of the style, and without any real 'shenfa', they'd only have 'tui fa' and 'shoufa' and would have a severe lacking in power.

So yes you could say that what John is doing does indeed look like what it's supposed to on the outside, it probably looks like his teachers as well, but somewhere along the way the actual shen fa was just lost and not properly passed on. The good thing is that there are Taijiquan guys who could teach him and then his Taijiquan would be complete. Finding Longfist guys who can do it is a bit harder but there are some. Also the number of actual techniques in the methods of the spine are pretty small so it's not really style specific. My Grandteacher didn't have the patience to teach the 'shen fa' (spine/torso methods) because it's a good 3 year process so he would just send the student to a San Huang Pao Chui school to learn it, and when they got it, they would come back and finish learning Baguazhang.



.

[Robert Young]

you can not really use public performaces as guide line to say what is right or wrong.

Our life long habbit won't change even in public performance.

Yes, but the bad habbit was built and was not corrected, then it showed on the performance.

his performance is basically the wrong demo regarding to turning heel.

Now you make me interesting in this subject. What can you see in the following 3 clips? Will you be able to find any clip that "turn on heel"?

Again, I can not speak for GM Chang's moves. But, I think in GM Han's clip, the move is to grap the attacking hand to the left and back, so the direction of applying the force is not to the front. In this situation the direction of back heel pivoting is not that important. But if the move is to punch forward, than using heel as pivoting forward is important because you need a good backup from your leg to your bady.

Another thinking is that GM Han was 65 according to the time of the film. And, age plays some role to the movement. In the same clip, GM Han did not even do the tornado kick as in the form he taught. Not I 'm trying to critisize my own lineage, it is simply a fact.

[cdobe]

Devlin,
I'ld say you put too much meaning into the word shenfa. It doesn't specify how you move your body. It would be interesting if you would reference your theory and lay it down. In all martial arts texts I have come across so far, ancient and modern, it simply meant what I described.

[Wanderingdragon]

To recognize Shen Fa I simply look for the connection, is the body the hand , is the hand the body, or the break thereof, broken connection no proper Shen Fa

[johnwang]

I 'm trying to critisize my own lineage, it is simply a fact.

In the past 2 days, I have tried to turn on my heel for at least a 100 times. everytime I have the feeling that my foot was "stucked" on the ground as if somone is pulling on my leg back. It's not a good feeling at all.



Also I don't know how to generate power from my heel because I cannot "spring" like an olympic sprinter. Do you believe that the best stance (posture) is the stance (posture) that you can spring out of it?

SC guys also spin on the ball of the foot. The reason is you can "hop" to adjust distance if needed. This way you can have "dynamic control". Please reference to the horizontal line (represent the ground) and foot position on all 3 pictures.





This principle in SC is called "支(Zhi) - support" that you support both your and your opponent's body weight on your "toes" for very short amount of time.

[D_Glenn]

I'ld say you put too much meaning into the word shenfa. It doesn't specify how you move your body. It would be interesting if you would reference your theory and lay it down. In all martial arts texts I have come across so far, ancient and modern, it simply meant what I described.

It's a case of 2 identical words with the same characters, but with somewhat different meanings due to context. There's the context I'm using it in where 'shen' is literally 'torso' or part that does not include the arms or legs, and 'fa' means methods/techniques of this specific area. For example when describing a martial artist's performance, one would say "That looks good but there is no 'shenfa'."

The other context comes from how the torso connects to and works with the hands and legs where 'shen, tui, and shou' all = the whole body/ 'shen' and would be said something like "Xingyiquan and Baguazhang are similar but they have different 'Shenfa'."


I guess I should rephrase and say that John's clips have no 'Bo Lang Jin' (a specific method/fa of the torso/shen) instead of leaving it vague and saying that he has no 'shenfa'. That should make it crystal clear.




.

[johnwang]

Adam Hsu has a back arm horizontal punch in this clip at 2.45. You can see some Shenfa because he did it in slow speed.



Could you show a back horizontal punch clip that have the Shenfa that you are talking about. The clip that you have shown involved circular movement, If you move your body as a whip, you can see one part of your body move first and the other part of your body move later with a chain pulling effect (Shenfa). This kind of chain effect is not that easy to do in a simple "back arm horizontal punch".

Your comment remind me a senior longfist brother that I had a long time ago (he was our longfist club president). His form was very pleasent to watch because he loved to express his Shenfa that you have described. He was so much in Shenfa that he intentionally slow down a move just to show his "one part of his body pulling another part of his body". I tried to do that in my SC cucumber vine posture, I soon found out that "using part of my body to pull another part of my body" is not only too slow, sometime it's over commit and hard to change in the middle of the Shenfa. After that, I gave up that approach.

One day I tried to use my body spin to pull my waist, use my waist to pull my upper leg, and use my upper leg to pull my lower leg for my foot sweep, it feels good because I can feel the body connection. Until one day when I used that on my opponent, my opponent lifted his leg and my sweep went under it and I almost swept myself down to the dround. After that day, I went back to the basic training that I only sweep below my wiast and ignore my fancy Shenfa.

I had a Shenfa discussion with mantis master Brendan Lai. He could vibrate his body like a mantis moving in the wind. It was very pleasent to watch. He only demonstrated his Shenfa in his slow movement. When he demonstrated his speed move, he ignored his Shenfa.

[D_Glenn]

Could you show a back horizontal punch clip that have the Shenfa that you are talking about. The clip that you have shown involved circular movement, If you move your body as a whip, you can see one part of your body move first and the other part of your body move later with a chain pulling effect (Shenfa). This kind of chain effect is not that easy to do in a simple "back arm horizontal punch".

The last strike at 1:03 is basically a horizontal punch. It's hard to see the 波浪勁 'Bolang Jin' (shenfa) in any clip. That's why my teacher's videos are filmed in multiple angles and done with many repetitions. The shirt I'm wearing is pretty loose and you can see the lumbar and upper part of the spine moving in some of the strikes:



To possibly stem some unnecessary comments please note that this was filmed about 6 years ago on an analog camera, then converted to digital with significant loss of framerate and distortion. So it looks kind of slow and fast but at that time I can't say I was striking as fast as I possibly could, probably a little more than medium speed.

[johnwang]

The mantis training has 3 different stages:

beginner stage - develop speed.
intermediate stage - develop Shenfa
advantage stage - back to nature

When the fire has reached to the highest temperature, there will be no color. When you have reached to the highest level in CMA, you have no Shenfa. The reason is simple. In combat speed, your Shenfa will disappear completely.