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Post by LastGodslayer on Nov 11, 2012 15:32:32 GMT
Is it possible to employ fajin in any strike? For instance, in a long ascending sweeping diagonal cut while traveling past the target, I find it very hard to accelerate (explode) further. When the legs are so far apart that its difficult to turn the hip more to give more power to the cut, should the explosiveness come from the upper body?
Are there better paper based alternatives to the newspapers? I think the dulling might come from the recycled nature of the newspaper. Also, could one use a thick roll of cardboard, soaked as well, as a target?
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Post by Lancelot Chan on Nov 11, 2012 15:56:48 GMT
cardboard is HECK A LOT MORE abrasive than newspapers. I think you may try other better quality paper, but you'll have to roll it looser because they stack up tighter by default. It's possible to suddenly add power to an ascending sweeping diagonal cut but not by the method you mentioned, since you already knew that was difficult to do, thus rendering it impractical in combat. There are other smarter, lazier ways to achieve that.  |
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Post by LastGodslayer on Nov 11, 2012 16:32:04 GMT
Hmm... I thought as much  What about non paper alternatives, like pvc tubing/piping (thick walled)? |
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Post by Lancelot Chan on Nov 11, 2012 16:40:48 GMT
Yup, I had cut those too. Seems ok.  |
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Taran
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Post by Taran on Nov 15, 2012 7:34:45 GMT
As with baseball, the bulk power comes from the legs and hips, but the Snap, the "explosiveness," is in the wrist. In explosives (as in dynamite and TNT) terms, the blast is built in the hips and legs, but the brisance comes from the wrists.
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Post by LastGodslayer on Nov 15, 2012 17:45:43 GMT
But the wrists can only turn the blade. Turning the blade will reduce the range. There should be a way of keeping the arms extended somewhat and yet accelerate the cut further. But I do see how the wrists (and maybe the entire upper body and its joints) can be rotated slightly to do this.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Nov 15, 2012 23:31:09 GMT
In taiji empty hand, I've learned that the power comes from the legs, hips, torso and moves through the body, and is transmitted through the shoulders and arms, generating lots more power than if you tried just using arms and shoulders alone. The body works as a whole. The same principles apply in jianfa.
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Post by raf2 on Nov 16, 2012 14:29:57 GMT
Much like boxing, you generate most of the initial power in the hips and though rotation of the body. Then you have the arms which bring the next part of the power but to a lesser degree.
Try standing like a tree and just punch with no body movement. Then add body movement and compare the power.
Even golf where you are using your arms, the hips and rotation of the body is where the main power lies as it moved through the body, through the club and the head and transfers to the ball. I suppose it is basic physics...
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Post by MakChingYuen on Nov 16, 2012 16:43:13 GMT
my 2 cents here, many people confused between body physics and kungfu's fajin. This is one big confusion. Yes the analogy is right if you only want to explain how the body moves, but given the same movements in the body, but done by 2 person, one with internal trainings in kungfu and one without, the guy with proper training will explode a lot more power due to what made him really "fajin" and an "attempt fajin".
I know it's a sword forum, so i will keep things back to swords and blade. But kungfu is really NOT like boxing. Even you can explain some stuff with physics, it is really not a right approach to understand kungfu by doing the physics way first cuz there are too many things you cannot "see" with the bare eye and measure with a scale.
Fa-jin, what is jin? you can say you are fa-li 發力 only with boxing's analogy, there is no jin whatsoever.
If the analogy is only about body movements, there is no jin. There is only strength involved. It's not fajin.
One good example is- if you are hit by "jin" with a small power, you will numb and the numbness expand in a minute or so. The damage is also pretty bad, meaning it hurt a lot too. With no jin and only li (strength), it's like the bang of a hammer, it won't numb you and it only make you go OUCH! and that's all. You might bruise too. But with jin, you don't bruise now, you bruise later after a few hours. if your jin is developed well and the partner being hit is ready to let you hit them hard, they can faint as well. This is jin. Causing a better penetration and some unexplainable damage or results. (maybe to me). That's my 2cents, people can agree or not agree but it's all based on my own experience and teachings / demonstrations with others.
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Post by raf2 on Nov 16, 2012 17:34:18 GMT
I am speaking strictly body mechanics to produce power. It is a combination of strength, speed, timing, that is built from the base (legs/his) and works out through the tool.. in boxing it is the fist, in golf the club, for this forum, it is through the sword.
From there add in blade sharpness, thickness, angle of attack...
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Post by MakChingYuen on Nov 16, 2012 18:05:59 GMT
yes you are 100% right on your point. But I am just adding my point to re: the fajin thing people are talking about above. Which isn't just mechanics. Other than that, you are truly correct.
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Post by LastGodslayer on Nov 16, 2012 19:24:49 GMT
So by fajin, we are talking about the force that is sent through the target instead of the force that just hits the target? I can see that this is hard to explain as it isn't just the linear momentum transfer we are talking about. Can we really do this (send jin explosively) through a sword?
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Post by raf2 on Nov 16, 2012 20:01:49 GMT
I would see it the same way. When I punch. hit, strike, it is more than just hitting, but following through to transfer as much of the energy into my target. That is why I shoot 45's and we call them flying ashtrays! They might not move as fast as a 9mm, but the transference of energy is greater.
Is fajin the same?
If so I believe you can send it through the sword.
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Post by MakChingYuen on Nov 16, 2012 20:56:24 GMT
Yes fa jin can be send thru a sword or anything you hold. I did a test with my fiance back in 2009 when she get crazy into sword and martial art with me as she is in need of some serious power for self-defense.. so something deadly is good. She trained for something that is more fatal and scary which is the explosive power that doesn't explode on the spot but it transfer and hurt other places. It sounds strange but this is what happened, tested on me and one of our student back then who is a male, 280lb, about 5"11, age 38...bulk sized guy. I am a 5"5 guy, as you can see in my video.
So what happen was, we let her hit our arms and she hit with her stuff.. (bare hand) and the hit land on the right shoulder on the meaty spot, then that spot did not "hurt" like if you got smack by a bat or something, it goes numb and the numb vibrates thru the hand and you felt the hand sort of getting numb, yeah I can still move my hand and hit her back, but she also wasn't going all out though, so let's be fair and see what's going to happen next. After 5-8 seconds, my organs hurt. Dang! The kidney and something higher up start to squish together and they are pulling and shrinking.. then I start to run short in breathe, heart beat raised and sort of light headed.. now this is dangerous. So she came and smack my meridians and pull that energy back in place and I am back to normal right away. By the way, this is not just kungfu, it's chi kung plus kungfu. Not something new and many had done it in the past if you are really knowing what kungfu really is in the real deal way instead of the movie way.
She did the same thing to the student and same thing happen but this guy fainted faster and he said he was going black out in about 10-15 second and we need to quickly do the thing to solve the problem and get him back to normal. It was a really cool experience. Not done for showing others but just wanna see if it work on others except for doing it on me.. so we thought a big guy should be cool to try...
Next is that she took a blunt sword, dragon well semi-flex normal cheapo sword. I take one and we stand facing each other. I let her tap my sword using her sword and do the same transferring thing.. it was funny, the tap wasn't really hard and it did not dent the sword or anything. But then, I felt that a vibration of thing came from the sword down the handle and shoot into my arm and then my organs start to hurt like mentioned above again.
This is what I call fa-jin. It's not done like you have to "SHAKE" yourself or anything like in the chen's taichi form, those are over-dramatic and over-acting stuff, great for show, but not practical and not really necessary in a real life situation. Too bad, people fall for stage performance a lot and think those are fajin, well, seriously, no. If your teacher teach you the real deal thing, and if they know it, then you will laugh your head off when you see people shaking up the ass and think that is some explosive power. Fajin is not about going very powerful, it's about projecting and transmitting the jin, the internal power, out from the body and to anywhere, thru anything. That's my dictionary of kungfu.
If yours is different, sure. I am just sharing my 2 cent and what I experienced.
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Post by LastGodslayer on Nov 16, 2012 21:32:27 GMT
Well, raf2 is talking about what we all (at least in the western world) think about when we talk about going through the target. It is in fact the basis of proper technique in almost all sports and martial arts.
Moving jin through an object or another body is hard to conceive for me, especially since jin itself is a very much abstract notion. To do what your fiance did, I would have to be able to control the flow of some sort of esoteric energy/substance through my body, be able to channel it through my body/weapon, and to do so in a way it disrupts the same flow in someone else's body. Its very hard to picture, but I would love to see it in person.
With fajin, I was talking about that extra "pressure" I put in some strikes, where the sword is not just going fast, but it suddenly behaves like a much heavier object, so it tends to go through objects with more ease. To do this I have to put my body into it. This comes from the hip and other joints pivoting + moving not as to hit the target, but to hit beyond it.
I can imagine that if there is a jin inside, then it would be possible to carry it into the sword as well, magnifying the effect. Maybe this is the basis for the "wind cut" (the air beyond the arc of the blade is itslef sharp somehow and slices through objects)? If this is possible, I don't know how to do it. Would love seeing it in action though...
But going back to non esoteric approaches, how can one increase the power of a cut, when the hip cannot be rotated any further?
(by the way, sorry for the hijack; maybe we should move this conversation to a fajin thread?)
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Post by MakChingYuen on Nov 16, 2012 21:42:39 GMT
Fajin with a sword cannot cut with the wind, at least not for me, but it must require the blade to touch and cut physically as well. The reason for fajin in sword is because you want to not do a DEADLY cut like all of you with the katana background do with the cutting test -- tatami rolls, jugs, etc,.. you all aim for cutting thru it, cutting it in half, cutting it open, etc,. That's the goal of these test anyway. In Chinese sword tactic, at least my way, is not the like that. Fajin is use so that you can use small movements to achieve great damage, it doesn't need to cut the guy in half or cut the arm off.. I just need the sword to penetrate the guy with good power, that's all, but with tiny movements. Just like a sneaky way to do a reverse cut with a twist of the wrist, now that kind of small movement won't do much harm compare to a badass chop with the katana or something.. but then if fajin is used, then when it's hit onto a person, the damage is greatly increased, which I am happy with already since I achieved my goal. Chinese sword is not about cutting people in half in one move, it's totally different from katana tactic and mindset. That's why when you start to chop things in half and going that approach in Chinese sword, you miss out a lot of fun. Not saying that chopping those things are WRONG, but I am just saying that there are many other fun things in Chinese sword art instead of just chopping something in halves. That is the major difference between jian and other weapons in other culture too. Jian is fast, intelligent and agile. No worry about the thread thing, it's okay~ |
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Post by LastGodslayer on Nov 16, 2012 21:57:06 GMT
I can appreciate the Chinese sword arts' perspective on efficient combat. A small debilitating strike is almost as effective as cleaving someone in two, but much more eficient in a drawn out combat. In fact, its exactly the kind of opponent's style I'd hate to fight! Fajin can probably make that kind of combat very annoying.
Since real fajin is an internal skill, can it be used with any melee weapon?
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Post by raf2 on Nov 16, 2012 23:16:23 GMT
Actually, the more combatants you can wound in battle the better vs. outright killing them. A lot more manpower and resources will be wasted tending to those wounded and it can be more demoralizing with a lot of seriously wounded around. The dead can just be left for the time being, whereas the wounded will be crying in agony, and it will take one or two others to drag them off to be helped.
SO I too can see fajin being a sound tactic in battle.
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Post by MakChingYuen on Nov 17, 2012 0:11:42 GMT
As I said, fajin should be able to use on anything even a whip (soft) or a chain. But the fact is, can YOU the practitioner do it or not. It takes a lot of time to develop the power I mentioned and it is not easy. So when you learn to fajin with a sword, then you are okay with a broadsword and stuff like that length and character. But if put that onto a staff, and if you really want expectations to be there.. then you need to train harder to project that force out more. So it's matter of the practitioner and not the skills itself. I don't doubt people can fajin and throw darts too, but I can't, hahaha... I am only honest enough to say I can do it with and short and long traditional weapons but I suck at the soft weapons (chain, rope, etc,. that kind of stuff).
i had fought katana people before and my style really do annoy him a lot because I am sneaky and fast with always the tip pointing at him and he just hate it. When he rush forward with a strike, I just work on the footwork and with little wrist movements I got his wrist, arms and so on. It was a friendly match and we are using wooden stuff to play, but then yeah, it's so slow and my eyes can see it so clearly where he is going before he move forward. I do know some katana guys are good but then it's really not my cup of tea due to this energy wasting factor. Not saying it's bad, but just not my style.
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Post by MakChingYuen on Nov 17, 2012 0:13:21 GMT
haha.. well no wonder the han dynasty love jian more than anything else. LOL! You are right, the wounded people require money, food, and many resources to save and time to cure the wound too.. like if they are wounded and their arms cannot move.. even you save their life and treat their wounds, they can't instantly turn back into a warrior like in video games too.. hahaha..
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