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Originally Posted by ttruscott
You think karate is stiff? I was so stiff karate loosened me up!  After 20 some years of karate, I found bagua which got me going in circles and FMA which taught my hands to go in circles. |
Damn that is stiff
I was comparing Karate to things like Tai Chi or Bagua. It's definitely isn't the stiffest thing out there. But compared to the 4 internal arts it's stiffer than they are. Kinda like T-bones and porter houses are steaks just different cuts of meat.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ttruscott
But after all that hard style training, I would find it hard to apply the internal rules of the Practical Method to my karate because they are opposite what karate teaches.
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Actually if you look at pre-WWII karate you'll see that it is very similar to some mainland China martial arts. Even Shoalin's external styles manage to incorporate some of the internal styles principals. You hit it on the head when you began talking about circular movements. These can be applied to some techniques in Karate.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ttruscott
Karate and CQC and FMA and everything else I have played with in the last 35 years ALL taught the unified body theory bringing the energy up from the ground and out the hand. Details were a bit different.
I've litteraly asked hundreds of tai chi players how their unified body theory is diffrent from karate's and never got a clear, physical answer.
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Lots of styles in the external category claim the unified body theory applies to them to but like I explained using the boxing punch, they all rob themselves of the power by doing it sectionally. It has a lot to do with muscle alignment and conditioning the muscles to work as a group.
In the external arts it's like this toy snake I had as a kid. You know the one thats made up of sections and if you hold it out it stays upright and wiggles side to side. Sometimes it would get stuck or need an extra push to keep going back and forth. If you swung it at somebody it would hurt like a sonuvabitch.
Now look at the way an internal fighter strikes as a bull whip. All one piece with no breaks in it. If you have every seen somebody swing a bull whip you know that that is gonna suck beyond belief. Another example of a fajin strike is a sneeze (yeah that's right achoo baby). When you sneeze if you don't hold back you feel it through your whole body. Now imagine being able to direct that force out thorough any extension of yourself.
Hope that might help a little more.
KOTF