Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Su Dong Chen: Crossing Fist Application
Back to Martial Arts:
Master Su Dong Chen began training at Hong Yi Xiang's Tang Shou Tao martial arts school in 1968. He has a very impressive background, and has a unique way of presenting the Chinese Internal Martial Arts. He is currently teaching and living in Japan.
Here, he demonstrates an application of "crossing fist" from Xingyi. We have used similar applications in our Wing Chun instruction, but this is a little different. In true xingyi fashion, you keep pressing in all the time. Too bad this clip is so short, but he has lots of others I may bring up.
Here is Su Dong Chen's website, "The Essence Of Evolution", with lots of information on his Internal arts styles, and short video clips. I'm going to be studying this guy for a while.
Here, from Wikipedia is some background on Tang Shou Tao:
"Tang Shou Tao is not a separate style of martial art, but rather a practical, step-by-step, systematic approach to learning internal martial arts and developing highly refined levels of skill. It incorporates elements of all three of the major Chinese internal arts (xingyiquan, baguazhang, and taijiquan) as well as Shaolin kung fu and qigong. However, the emphasis of this system is on xingyi and bagua. Although the system itself was formed and founded by Hung I-Hsiang during the 1950s and 1960s, the roots of using the commonalities of bagua and xingyi in practice and application can easily be traced back through Hung's teacher Chang Chun-Feng (張俊峰) to his teachers, Li Cunyi (李存義) and Gao Yisheng (高義盛).
When Hung I-Hsiang took a trip to Japan, he was very impressed with the way martial arts instruction was organized there. He liked the uniforms, the belt system, and the systematic approach to training. Subsequently, he adopted many of the Japanese style martial arts school characteristics when he opened his own school. The students had belt ranks, wore Japanese style uniforms, and Hung devised a more systematic approach to martial arts instruction than what was typical of most Chinese style schools".
Very cool stuff.
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Anybody else had trouble loading YouTube lately?
I've done tons of computer clean-ups, spyware checks etc, and I still have to let a video load and come back to view it later.
Could just be the slow DSL service on our remote undisclosed island hideout...
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4 comments:
First thought: some of that is right out of Naihanchi Shodan...
Was Naihanchi the horse stance side-moving form?
Interesting how the arts share similarities
To me it is more like Uchi Uki with fluid variations, before all Karate became "wooden arms boxing" and all sort of fluidity and relaxation disappeared. Thinks about it: he is showing one-hand uchi uki, if you take away the actions of the other arm and leave just the motion of one arm, that's it. I spotted this similarity between Heng Quan and Uchi Uki years ago, because Bassai is my favorite kata and Heng Quan also has in some way this idea of Bassai, which is to recover fast from a difficult position by pressing your opponent, and using arm and hand motions that mesh attack, defense and sticking together. If you think of the first few moves of Bassai, up to the point where you turn back to the front and cover your right fist with your left palm before opening your left arm, it is ALL Heng Quan or variations therefore.
DR: Yes, Naifanchi Shodan is the first of the three Horse Stance Forms in Okinawan karate. They're called Tekki in Japanese Karate. And yes, there's a lot of Uchi Uki "theme" there too. I just never bothered much with those particular Kata and don't particularly enjoy them.
Jose;
I think this is a clear example of how the bunkai in Karate was not transmitted or understood. This movement is a great example.
I didn't understand it until I played with wing chun, and now further with the internal arts.
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