Weird Taiwan Fixed Step Competition

[angryclown]

• I think you need to know what specific abilities you want to test. If you're not sure, it's probably not worth it.
• Different groups have different rules, or different levels of adherence to the rules. For example, lots of people set up for ding bu with their feet too far away (i.e. toe to toe), or they do this weird little shuffley happy feet dance the whole time. It's not moral theology, and that's all fine, but does it match with whatever specific skillset you want to train?
• If you tell people your background, there may be social/political ramifications to how you perform. I'm not smart enough to understand how that all works, I just know it happens.
• As a final word of caution, be very careful messing around in other people's turf if they have a lot of ego or money tied up in whatever they do. They are often willing to escalate until either they "win", or someone is broken on the ground. Even if it's the other guy that ends up broken, you still have to deal with the fallout, whether that's personally, legally, or both.

 

[Marin]

I was just wondering if it's useful for us to play with others from different lines. It looks like they are basically doing Ding Bu Tui Shou. We wouldn't want to be picking up their body mechanics, but maybe it's still a useful "lab" for testing our abilities with some live pressure?

If it's useful, there seems to be a lot of these clubs around from different lineages and styles, so it makes access to live pressure easier to find.

Apologies in advance for the way too many words. I am burdened with trying to fix the kid's misbehaving Ipad so I am frustrated beyond reason and do not have my wits.

I don't try to get too deep into this topic because whatever I say has an appearance and it's probably inaccurate.
I am not in a position to tell people what they cannot do or to try and influence them to stay in my cult. This cult is too much of a sausage factory to keep anyone captive.
That being said, as a teacher and with experience with my own curriculum I think it is generally not really useful to go out and mix it up with others until one is well trained and developed in this method. The reasons are as follows:
This particular curriculum is basically-
Solo drills to develop basic structure, connection/power
Solo drills to develop martial tools
Partner drills to develop facility employing martial tools
Partner drills to develop structure/connection under duress
Partner drills to develop live improvisatory abilities
Solo forms to develop and refine structure/connection/power/method

There is probably a lot more to this list, but that's a start. The partner and solo drills map out fairly clearly a spatial, kinetic, physical environment that will yield results if confusion (lack of clarify) is kept to a minimum. Clarity is entirely the purpose of having a hands on, technique and method based approach that the ubiquitous "it's all just principles" crowd resents. Our intent is to vanquish the fog and the darkness and put this thing simply into the light.

If you are quite experienced at the map this path lays out, then you may perhaps enter into the chaos of egos, bullshit philosophy, false technique, false context, cheating, gaslighting, and/or wild idiocy that you will find populating so much of the rest of this scene. In that messy environment the clarity of your developed spatial and 'jin' structure will likely shine as a beacon in the storm. At that time if you find your initial methodological organization fails under the wild pressure you may then see what you can learn or change to adapt to a new situation.

If your basic map is not well developed and reliable you will quickly surrender it out of necessity to adapt to a new environment. This, means surrendering it before it is functional. Of course the result of that is often doubt and lack of confidence in the method. In that situation, adapting to chaos before having reliable tools is not helpful. Many of the tools are here in the curriculum but you may not have learned them yet. Better to learn clear and useful tools than desperate make shift measures.

The goal, for the moment, is to reduce chaos and lack of clarity until one has a clear approach. Then start filling in the blanks with real tools rather than desperate bullshit. The best approach is to work with others who know the same methods and reinforce them until you reach that point. That is my experience anyhow.

The other issues are that those you will meet and practice with out there will either know methods that suit a really different context of engagement, (that we don't want to train for) such as competition, or a skewed idea of martial reality, or (more likely) they really really suck and just invent weird garbage. As annoying, discouraging or comical as it might be to engage, the problem is that they- are learning from and adapting to YOU every time you engage. This is exactly WHY people have these get togethers; most of them are without a paddle on the great fecal river and looking for a piece of fresh wood to grab onto (and drag under). That wood would be you in this case, offering them a lifeline. That is what they are hoping for, someone who knows something, anything, that they can leach off of, and leach they will.
You may think you suck and so no one can properly leach but you would be wrong about that. Each person will likely study the hell out of what they think you did. I do not condone helping.. I am no longer helpful.

Again, I am not in a position to tell you no, but I've laid out why I think it is counter productive, negative and takes you off the path. This path was carefully laid out for specific results. I hope we all get those results, and maybe they are not all encompassing but they are some form of clarity that can be built upon further. The same cannot be said for random approaches out there. For more on the risks, see the post directly above.

 

[Marin]

I probably could have said it all concisely with, if you mix up out there you will learn those folk's wild flailing, they will try to learn your clarity and you will get confused as to why things don't work well in contexts you did not fully understand.

For what it's worth, @Edmond in the northwest you do have some of our folks near you. Best suggestion is look them up and get better at the known.

 

[Edmond]

I probably could have said it all concisely with, if you mix up out there you will learn those folk's wild flailing, they will try to learn your clarity and you will get confused as to why things don't work well in contexts you did not fully understand.

For what it's worth, @Edmond in the northwest you do have some of our folks near you. Best suggestion is look them up and get better at the known.

Thanks for the very detailed answer and I very much appreciate that longer verbose answer, @Marin. It brings a lot more clarity to how our curriculum is put together and intended to deliver results.

With that understanding, it is quite clear that messing around with others even for experimentation is counterproductive and a waste of time. It was a naive idea to fill the self-perceived gap of live pressure in my isolated training, but there is really no way around it. I need the correct live pressure in the right context to have clarity, and the only way is to train with others in our line.

If I got an hour to train, I would gain more by practicing our form and solo drills than flailing with random people and getting confused. I'll stick to that. I've been meeting up with @chrisdonnahee once in a while, and sometimes @johnyii is in town. Looking forward to meet with @Kozmo one day. If there's anyone else in the area, I'd like to know.

 

[Marin]

Thanks for the very detailed answer and I very much appreciate that longer verbose answer, @Marin. It brings a lot more clarity to how our curriculum is put together and intended to deliver results.

With that understanding, it is quite clear that messing around with others even for experimentation is counterproductive and a waste of time. It was a naive idea to fill the self-perceived gap of live pressure in my isolated training, but there is really no way around it. I need the correct live pressure in the right context to have clarity, and the only way is to train with others in our line.

If I got an hour to train, I would gain more by practicing our form and solo drills than flailing with random people and getting confused. I'll stick to that. I've been meeting up with @chrisdonnahee once in a while, and sometimes @johnyii is in town. Looking forward to meet with @Kozmo one day. If there's anyone else in the area, I'd like to know.

When I respond to such question I think it inevitably creates the appearance that I want to keep people in my own little cult or business ecosystem. That is partially true, but not for the reasons a cynic might assume. Of course I don't want to lose students I've invested in, but I am not particularly worried about that as I don't believe people are likely to find anything/anyone more compelling for those interested in tangible structure and application mapping. It's not that I am *better* than others, but I do have confidence that others are not interested in doing what we are doing, or they would be doing it I suppose. I don't see anyone doing it. In this case I am not worried because if I lose students who are looking for something I do not offer then that saves me some difficulty.

The issue about 'keeping people inside' is also not what it seems. I really do not need to keep anyone from seeing what is outside. It's more of an issue that I put actual effort into trying to help people make progress and I do not want to spend that effort cleaning up the mess when people absorb outside bad methods or habits. It is natural for beginners and younger, inexperienced students to have many questions and uncertainties about their training and goals. Many people would be automatically worried that a teacher is wasting their time or bullshitting them for money. I cannot discount those concerns. I can say though that this approach is all too boring and too logical to fit into that scenario. Boring and logical (that shows results) is how we actually progress. While the practice is slow the results are relatively faster than other approaches.

Those who lack confidence in this path really should find something that inspires more confidence. I fully support that because I am not in the confidence business. I am in the hard work + patience= tangible results business. Those who lack confidence in this process seem to actually just lack either hard work or patience or both, so they don't see the results that create the confidence. In that case some commercial Taiji sales associate out there can definitely solve the problem!

At a certain point when I began to see results from training I really just gave up on the outside scene. I did not see those people making progress. In the few cases where people became good at something, it was still not something they could explain or teach or even really understand. It was mostly dumb luck and repetition. I know there are people better, stronger, more risk engaged than myself out there, but I basically gave up on caring about anything that is not clearly producing tangible results. I would rather have meager tangible results from an approach that I can make sense of than something potentially more impressive that I cannot understand and have to have faith in. I have no faith, I need logical mechanics. Anyone who looks outside the bubble here is going to see that stuff. For SOME students this will look impressive and enticing, and for them I strongly suggest they chase it. Go for it! Save me the headache.

For you, @Edmond and students in a similar position my overall suggestion is to find ways to get more time in with in person training and hands on with other students in the method. There is no substitute when it comes to usage and facility. Your kid is still small, but time moves on. You are not the only one with such limitations.

 

[Kozmo]

Hope we can get together some time soon Edmond! I can be pretty flexible with my time and really value partner training!!