by BaguaMonk » Tue Aug 16, 2005 8:32 pm
Very true. Which is why I think internal arts are very important, such as Xingyi, the form, the intention and the fist are simultaneous. Even the back leg springing off the ground can be done in conjunction with an attack almost completely non-telegraphed, and explosively. Sure it takes practice. I used to do an excercise in which two people would face eachother in the common xingyi san ti posture, at about arms length (two arms). One would be on the offensive, the other on the defensive. The objective was for the offensive person to use his back leg to spring off the ground, grab their elbow and pull them inwards before the defensive person could move back, and later, simply move their arm. It was sort of easy for me because I would never look at any specific part of their body, just their chest or waist and simply move back whenever I saw any part of their body start to move. It was quite amazing realizing just how easily people accidentally telegraph themselves, sometimes it would be their legs, sometimes their hips, sometimes their shoulders. So I just focused on completely making the mind blank (obviously the more you waited the harder it was) and doing everything at once as fast and explosively as I could, and 90% of the time it worked. Kicks and punches can be thrown from the san ti position too, its pretty balanced (either 60-40 or 70-30). But that is also why isometrics, stance training, and static training is pretty important. So you can develop those long muscles and ligaments to quickly and efficiently do it.