The Indoor Yang Family System on the Internet

I have just started another blog in which I will lay out the forms and other material in the Indoor Yang Family System:

http://indooryang.blogspot.com/

I have so far put up the first section of the Little Nine Heavens form. I should be able to put up one or two movements each day.

I will still be publishing the books. This will give you the opportunity to work with the material before the books come out, and it will help me to sort out any errors, missing information and to find which areas need clarification.

So far I have published the Wise Hammers form book. It's available from Lulu.com, and also for a much better price from Plum Publishing.

Rules and Fighting: The Paradox of Martial Arts Training

Here is a problem that is faced in every martial art:

1) At some point, you must train realistically (e.g. full-contact.)
2) Realistic fighting is dangerous, so you must either risk serious injury or develop rules.
3) Rules change the nature of fighting.
4) At some point, the practitioners forget that their rules-based fighting isn't real fighting.

Brazilian Jiujutsu fighters (who should be respected for their dedication to full-contact training) forget that outside the ring the ground is a bad place to be.

On the other end of the spectrum, Chinese wrestlers, knowing that the ground is death on the street, set rules so that you lose the fight as soon as anything knees or above touches the ground. For an Indo fighter like me, knees-on-the-ground means that I have two more ranges to fight in before I hit the ground.

Western boxers are famous for breaking their knuckles the first time they punch someone in a bar. Judoka are lost without lapels to grab. Karateka are easily defeated by a little grappling and stalking. HAve I left anyone out?

What to do? The obvious solution is to keep reminding ourselves that we are playing. I make a point to use the word play quite a lot in my teaching. I play the sword and spear, we play sambutan, etc. The Filipinos have a word, Labanlaro (I think), which means "Cubs Playing". The idea being that tiger cubs, for example, play with each other more-and-more roughly until one of the yelps, and then they separate and start over. Then the mother tiger drags home a slightly-injured wildebeast, and they take turns trying to take it down under her watchful eye, all in the safety of the den.

Measurements of Practice

The old masters used to make their students swear to "always wear tattered sleeves."

I swear to always wear worn-out kung fu shoes.

The three most powerful words in the world.

(No, they aren't "I love you," although they are a close second.)

I deal in uncertainties. Other martial artists are certain. They are certain that their teacher knew everything. They are certain of the history of their martial art, all the way back to the Paleolithic Era. Doubting either of these things will drive them to anger.

Me, I'm never more that 70% certain about anything in the martial arts. If I am more certain than that, it's a bad sign.

The reason the martial arts are dying these days is that people's egos are closing their minds. I'm out here setting aside my own ego, even reversing it. Every day, I try to prove what I think I know wrong. I'm delighted when someone pokes a massive hole in my theories.

This has cost me, and it will probably cost me more. I'm currently releasing books on "secret" styles. I expect to be ridiculed just for claiming Taiji lineage other than Yang Chengfu.

The only way the martial arts are going to survive is if we all get together and say the most powerful words in the world:

"I don't know."

Real Training in the Chinese Arts

I just ran across an interview of Yang Fukui, a member of the Yang family who is known for his fighting prowess in full-contact competitions. I was immediately gratified to read that his training didn't consist of long forms, but rather of the individual movements in different combinations. This supports my arguments that modern Chinese arts are too focused on memorizing the forms and often fail to escape them. Here's a quotation (He's talking about Yang Banhou and Yang Jianhou, second-generation masters):

"First of all, they devoted most of their practice to gongfu and martial arts, not to health or “spiritual development,” although these two latter aspects certainly underlied their practice. Their emphasis was different. For example, they never practiced more than a two or three form or movements in sequence, in order to develop fighting skill and gongfu, and they never linked more than five forms together. There were no such things as the 24 or 85 or 108 form Taijiquan."

The entire article can be read here.

A New Book

I'm excited to announce a new book is available for order, and a revised version of an older book.

The Kunlun Green Dragon Form book is available in trade paperback format.

The Indoor Yang Wise Hammers Form is now available in trade paperback as well as workbook format.



Links have been added to the right.

Quote

"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake." - Napoleon Bonaparte