Total Body Power

Traditionally, one practices Jing, or power by practicing hitting things. Hitting things in different ways builds different kinds of Jing. You might hit a heavy bag to build muscle Jing, you might practice a one-inch punch to develop your short-range Jing, or you might practice sharp contact pushes in push hands to develop Fa-Jing. While these exercises are pretty good for training how to extert and acellerate different parts of your body in an attack, they don't always teach body unity very well.

 

I heard of an interesting technique for increasing punching power through body unity this week. Go to a gym with a heavy bag. Instead of trying to punch the bag as hard as you can or trying to fold the bag, Push the bag away from your with a nice, big shove. When the bag swings back toward you, punch at it with the objective of stopping it dead when it hits your fist. It shouldn't roll off, it shouldn't bounce away, it should just stop. You in turn should not be pushed back, knocked off balance, or twisted or crumpled by the impact of the bag on your fist.

 

The theory of this practice technique is that it will teach you to use your whole body to brace your punch. By striking the heavy bag in the traditional way, you learn how to accellerate your punch and perhaps sink in your weight, but you might miss out on the benefit of unifying your body behind your punch. By letting the bag hit your fist and by aiming to completely meet and dissipate it's energy through your own superior body structure, you learn to involve your stance, your geometry, and your core muscles behind your punch.

 

Now imagine if you could do that same in your swordsmanship? Get a wooden sword, chop down the point so that it's blunt and won't puncture your bag, and try the same thing. Now you may begin building the power to pierce hard targets such as armor!

The Dot in Tai Chi Sword

When learning the bayonet in the military, they teach you to stab, twist, and retract. In Tai Chi Sword, there is a fundamental move called "Dian" or "To Point." However, references say that it doesn't mean to point like one might point their finger but to draw a point like one would do when writing calligraphy. In Chinese calligraphy, when you draw a point, you twist the brush at the end of the mark to cleanly end the mark, making it look like a teardrop. Could this be a core mechanic of the Dian?

Renewal of Mission

"Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them." Henry David Thoreau

Perseverance and tenacity can be traps. We can get mired in it when we are working on tough, long projects where we make the change from the mentality of "I'm trying a new thing" to " if I stick to this it will pay off." Does this happen in careers and marriages? I propose that not all "stick it out" situations have to be tolerated. When we begin to feel the drag of a project that is losing momentum, isn't that a great time to regroup, seek inspiration, and renew our excitement?

I recently took out my fencing manual again. While reading on the application of "circular parries," I started to think about how it might match the Jiao, or wrapping move in Tai Chi sword. The way a circular parry works is simple but very effective. Imagine you can do a regular parry such as a Parry 6. That is, guide the attacker's mid-level thrust so that it just misses outside the shoulder of your sword hand. To do a circular Parry 6, move just like you're performing a Parry 6, but follow through and transcribe a full circle with your blade tip, ending again in Parry 6. The effect of this is that is catches and envelops the opponent's blade and when you finally stop your parry, the whirling action that they've been caught in doesn't just make them miss but actually throws their blade far off line, leaving them open for your Riposte, or counter attack.

Is the Jiao an evasion with your hand and a circling attack to your opposite's hand or wrist, or does it envelop, control, and cast away your opposites blade like a circular parry?

A Brief Side Trip to France

The other day I was surfing through cable channels and I came upon a FitTV show on "Deadly Arts." The show followed a woman through France meeting various practitioners of French martial arts. One segment of the show focused on French cane fighting, that is fighting with a cane or walking stick. Apparently there is a lively stick fighting tradition in France. What drew me in was the way they moved. Many of the moves are very similar to moves one might see in Tai Chi Sword. Their basic wind up to strike looks very much like a Dai parry, and their movement makes way for height changes, punches, and kicks, which seems to match the implied moves within the form. Here's a video:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7160370866847791791

And another by the same guys, called "Swordflasher Productions"

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6923237699114385757

More on New Holds

So with your saber grip, your pistol grip, and our Dai parry, you have a wide range of angles your sword can make with your arm. Should you allow the angle to happen at the wrist or in the hand?

I've taken to letting my sword rotate around my ring adn middle fingers. For the saber grip, you can basically grip the sword in your fist so that it makes a 90-degree angle to your arm. For the pistol grip, you let your index and middle fingers loosen and push forward with your thumb so the angle becomes flatter, from 90 degrees to 120 or more depending on what's comfortable for you. For the Dai parry, let your little finger and ring finger out a bit so that as you lift your hand back it can sink and make the angle less than 90 degrees. Don't let the sword get too loose in your hand and you'll be able to switch smoothly between grips and adapt as the situation calls.

Now with More Holds

I got to do some fencing against some good Western swordfighters, and I got whupped soundly. I learned a lot during the sparring though, including how to see the way my opponent controlled the line with the tip of his sword and how he could hide his range—techniques I use in empty hands fighting, but that I hadn't seen yet in sword fighting. It's one thing to know a technique, but it's another entirely to have that technique used against you just before they stab you in the fencing mask with an aluminum practice sword!

I learned about some shortcomings in the guard I use that night. The grip I use for my sword is similar to a saber grip. It's sturdy, but it gives up range and while it's good for blocking attacks aimed above the waist, it's actually slow against low attacks. Imagine the line the tip of your sword makes going from high to low to block a cut at your knee. That's a long distance, and I tell people I'm teaching fencing that DISTANCE=TIME.

If I adjust my grip so that the blade is flatter, I gain some range and the sword becomes more neutral between high and low attacks, minimizing the time it takes to block high or low. Let the blade fall forward in your palm. Anchor it with your ring finger and loosen your index finger as if you were holding a pistol. Take note! While this grip means less time blocking high or low, if your opponent tends to attack high, the saber grip might actually be better!

How to Interpose

I got to weighting my swords last night to get a better understanding of what I'm working with since I want to add an edged sword to my "armory" to eventually practice test cutting. I was pretty surprised by the results. My wooden practice sword weighs just under one pound. My Paul Chen practical sword weighs 1lb, 6oz, and my old display sword weighs 1lb, 10oz. Thing is, my wooden sword feels as heavy or heavier than my Paul Chen, and my display sword feels like it weighs a lot more than my Paul Chen, not just four ounces! Upon further examination, the balance is much further away from the hand in my wooden sword, as is the balance in my display sword. This apparently makes a huge difference in the maneuverability in your hand! Therefore, weight is not the only factor in deciding the speed of the sword, but the balance as well. Huh.

 

So, I said I've been thinking a lot about Ge lately. The character for Ge literally translates to "to block by interposing an object." One might think of it in this sense: if someone is giving you the evil eye from across the room and you bring up your newspaper to block their gaze, you have used Ge on them.

 

Here's how I've been practicing it: Hold the sword with two hands, in front of your body, with the point facing straight up. The height of your hands is up to you, but start about navel level. Now stand square in front of a partner and have that partner slowly thrust and cut horizontally at you. Block by rotating at your hips, causing the sword to pivot and be interposed between you and the attack. When you are done with the block, a line drawn from your nose through your sword should be perpendicular to the line of your partner's blade. This will also train yielding and body alignment.

The Foundational Defense of Tai Chi Sword

As much as I was encouraged last week by the problematic content of Stuart Olsen and Scott Rodell's books, I was discouraged this week when I picked up the translated "Taiji Sword" by Chen Weiming and " Classical T'ai Chi Sword" by Petra and Toyo Kobayashi. These books are really, really good. They're clearly written, well organized, and well researched. They have footnotes. FOOTNOTES full of references to source material and clarifying statements. Wow. I felt sad flipping through them on the way home from the store, as if this research project of mine was pointless because there wouldn't be anything for me to add to the community of thought. Still, these two books are so well done that it's ennobling to read them. To learn from and aspire to stand with works of such quality really made me feel privileged.

 

And there is hope: in spite of how well these books are done, they are primarily guides on doing the form, and their discussion of application is slight. In "Classical T'ai Chi Sword" there are also some descriptions of moves that I disagree with where I feel I might be able to contribute some value.

 

Back on the ground, I've come to feel over the past week that what I keep reading about Dai being the most-used block in Tai Chi Sword is only a half-truth. If you look at the motion of Dai, which they say is equivalent to Roll Back in empty hands, then it seems to me that Dai is inappropriate for defending against cuts. I think people who use Dai a lot are probably using it in sword sticking practice, and have overlooked that in a duel that starts out of contact and out of range, thrusts and cuts are equally likely attacks.

 

Therefore, it seems appropriate that Ge be considered the foundational technique for defense in Tai Chi Sword that students should learn before all others.

Dai: Setting up the Counter

In my mind I am building a pedagogical framework for teaching fighting dynamics. We've begun with a basic block to learn how to make contact between blades and knock a thrust attack off line. From there we learned to refine that contact, allowing us to yield and control the attack with the Dai parry.

 

Now, let's think about expanding that yield into actual movement. Picture this: you've picked up and deflected the oncoming attack with a Dai parry, smoothly redirecting the attack into a harmess empty space of your choosing. If you're clever, you rotate your body to face toward the blade, which causes the shoulder closest to the tip to spin away from the point like a Matador evading a charging bull. As you become comfortable with this motion, begin adding a little step away from the blade to make space between you and it. Either foot will do to start the step, and you should practice both ways just in case. This will soon allow you to fluidly make space to return your counterattack.

 

In Yin-Yang, when one force is at it's apex, you find a little nucleus of it's opposite energy forming. What we are on the cusp of when we step out is the emergence of the nucleus of an attack; the beginning of the flip from defense to offense.

The many faces of Dai

I'm frustrated and encouraged by the source material I find in my research. For instance, I have a book and DVD by Scott Rodell, and a book by Stuart Olsen. Both men were students of TT Liang, and both men are determined enough in their studies to have published multiple guides on Tai Chi Sword. Thing is, if you compare the descriptions of the 13 cuts in both book, many of the techniques are wildly different from eachother! It's possible that there's some subtle link between the techniques that I don't understand as a novice, but I think it's just more likely that there's little if any concensus on what the 13 cuts are and how they're used. Therefore I can march ahead with the (possibly naive) confidence that my interpretations are about as worthy as those that precede me.

 

Take Dai for instance. If you take it as simply a funny-shaped high parry, even if you combine it with Ge and Ya, you end up with a system that appears very limited in options. Even foil fencing, which is pretty simplified as martial arts go, has nine parries, semi-circular and circular variants of those parries, yielding and pressing variants, and transfers. That means there's explicitly much more than thirty expressions of defense without including footwork and voids.

 

If you take Dai as high left and high right, you find yourself in a strangely limited space. If you take Dai as the act of drawing out your opponent's blade, guiding it to fuller extension in order to maximize the space in which you can move as well as enlarging the areas you can attack, that presents a more reassuring and satisfying set of possibilities, doesn't it?

Beginning to Dai

We scrounged some time from the Wing Chun class we do Friday nights to work on a drill I'd been cooking up for the Dai parry. Begin in guard across from your partner, and have your partner Dian at the center of your chest. You should probably wear a protective mask and your partner should aim to stop short six inches from you for safety.

 

Begin by slapping the attack at 90 degrees to the blade from a variety of angles. Practice until you can parry without panicking, and block the blade just enough so that it would miss you only be a few inches instead of a few feet.

 

Once you are comfortable with this, try to match the entry speed of the attack and bring (Dai) the parry back toward you. Imagine that you are gently touching and guiding the tip of their blade into and empty and harmless space of your choosing, such as the space next to your ear above your shoulder. Practice until the motion is supple and gentle, and no longer a smashing of blades together but so gentle you could imagine yourself conducting the Dai with just a rolled up newspaper.

 

Finally, add a gentle step in with your Dai parry. 90 degrees away from the attack at first, and then smaller distances and more toward your opponent as you gain confidence.

 

If you become smooth at linking your Dai to a counterattack with smooth footwork, you will be able to move with harmony around your opponent, effortlessly evading their attack while maneuvering to attack.

Tuesday

I saw "Snakes on a Plane," and it's more of a social experience than a cinematic one. You go to be part of the audience and to take in the rush of mutual fandom rather than watch a story of quality. It's actually lower than a B grade movie and would probably be something you'd skip over if you came across it on cable. Going to see this movie was like trying to avoid the event horizon of a black hole. I was safe for a while, but as more and more of my friends added their mass to the opening night wave, eventually no amount of resistance could help me escape.

Learning martial arts can be like this too. People fall into a kind of group-think about how things work, and they march ahead confident that the dogma they subscribe to is the correct answer. Take the sword fingers in Gim for example. Text after text and teacher after teacher will tell you that the postures are for balancing out your chi. Since your sword hand is manifesting all of the chi when you fight, your empty hand needs something to do to even out the flow of chi. Maybe this is true, yet it seems few people seem to ask if this is just mumbo jumbo to explain something that never really existed?

[insert more sword stuff here :)]

Monday (Identity Crisis)

It's funny how something you have taken for granted as true all your life can suddenly turn out differently than you expected. Growing up, I used to think all Chinese in the world spoke Cantonese since every Chinese person I'd ever known spoke that. I was shocked to find out that most of the Chinese in the world speak the Mandarin dialect and that we Cantonese speakers were just the fringe emigrant community that had collected in communities in other countries.

I was also shocked to find out last week that my name isn't Charlie Wing Hing Wong. Not legally at least. Even though I have a drivers license, a US passport, and a mortgage in that name. Tighter national security rules recently triggered an audit at the RMV and they sent me a polite letter saying I had to get my Social Security card (Wing Hing Wong) to match my drivers license before they'd renew it when it expires this fall. I figured it'd be simple to do, but I soon found myself jumping through bureaucratic hoops only to be faced by a clerk at the Probate office determined to treat me like an illegal immigrant criminal for having mismatched identification. "This is the problem with You People..." he lectures me while looking over my birth certificate and name change form. "You think you can do whatever you want and it's okay..." he says. You People? I used that birth certificate to get my drivers license. I used that birth certificate to get my US passport. If there's some problem with having it not match my passport, why is it my fault? I showed ID, they gave me a passport. The war on terror claims strange casualties.

[more sword stuff later]

...

What is the most critical consideration when making your entry?

Not letting them hit you, of course.

Beng: Getting In

One of the problems with striking martial arts such as boxing or swordfighting is that it is easy to get results without a lot of skill. If I walk over and punch you in the face or hit you with a chair, you'll be hurt without my demonstrating any advanced fighting ability. What's more, if I'm just really strong and tough, I can probably blunder my way over to you, taking some hurtful hits along the way if you're a good martial artist, and then knock you out with one meaty punch. Take Bob Sapp for instance. He's beaten some really excellent mixed martial arts fighters simply because his opponents could not imagine how tough and strong he was, even though he's not that great a fighter. Ernesto Hoost lost to him because he thought he could go toe to toe with the monster. Hoost is a great fighter, but just just not built like Bob.

Given that, we must learn to fight in a way that takes advantage of physical superiority when we have it, but is ready to change the game when the opponent has it.

Therefore, since we're still on basic offense, let's talk about Beng. We've covered our two long range attacks, Pi and Dian, so now we want to get a little deeper into the hostile territory around our opposite. Beng is one way we can do that. Experiment with giving your opposite's blade a good slap with the flat of your blade from as many angles as you can think of, and learn how to launch an attack from wherever your sword is after you've executed the Beng. I propose that once you get good at it, your sword should move like you're skipping a stone or bouncing a ball at your target.

What is the first target you should consider?
Clearly the most devastating targets would be the heart or brain, but to get to those targets, you must pass your opposite's guard first. If they are sensible, their guard will be between you and their brain or heart, which means you must break through that defense and possibly survive an attack going in to reach your goal. Remember what I said about "To Live"? Your goal is not to slay your enemy. It is to survive the fight in as close to one piece as possible. What you've got going for you is that their guard isn't a spiky or electrified shield. It's a hand holding a weapon. If you can hit that hand, you can force them to drop their weapon. If you can even just knock the weapon out of the way, it might open the way for you to hit that brain or heart you had on your wish list. Therefore, I think hand is the first target you should consider.

Given 1000 hours of practice to perfect one attack and no other, what would be the deadliest attack of the eight attacks?
This was kind of a trick question. Clearly Ji and Ci are the most capable of lopping off or puncturing something vitally important to your opposite. However, what if they're at least pretty good at moving and parrying? Ji and Ci are bigger moves and therefore give your opposite more time to escape. If I saw someone cutting down trees with their Ji, I'd certainly opt to get outta Dodge rather than fight them. Chou also requires you to get in deep and risk getting hit. Jiao and Ti are kind of special purpose. Jie, is a fantastic move from the defensive side because it means you could hurt them as they attack. Pi and Dian are fast and allow you to attack from relative safety. Pi might be easier to apply since it sweeps a plane instead of attacking on a line. Therefore, if you're a defensive player, Jie might be the best move for you. If you're offensive, Pi might be the best since it would allow you to strike to disarm and immobilize, giving you a clear and easy way to finish your opposite.

There is also the versatility to consider. Pi is not great for finishing your opposite, but that might not be your first choice of results. You may be able to settle things just by winging them and giving them a stern glare afterwards.

Quiz:
What is the most critical consideration when making your entry?

Fighting Dimensions: Adding Y and Z to X

Here's a little lingo from western swordsmanship that might be useful. True edge and false edge. The edge isn't something you have to think much about when you have a sabre or katana in your hand because there's only one to talk about. With the Gim, there are two edges, so one needs to be able to clearly describe in words which of the two we're writing or talking about so others can recreate the described moves. When holding the blade, think of the true edge as the edge that faces your opponent. With a katana, the true edge is obvious. The false edge is the edge that faces you. With a katana, that's the blunt backside of the sword. In the Gim though, it's sharp and should be thought of as another possibility during the fight.

Once you have grasped the Pi and Dian in basic practice, add another dimension to your training. Instead of using the Dian and Pi from directly in front of your opposite, try adding these variations: with the Dian, attempt hitting your opponent's hand from different angles. Try sidestepping and hitting the back of the hand or the inside of the wrist. Try squatting and hitting from below or jumping and hitting from above. (I don't recomment jumping in a fight, but try it out just to see it and feel it.) For Pi, try attacking from the sides and from above and below as with the Dian, but also try cutting with the false side of the blade.

What are desirable targets?
Pi and Dian are surface attacks, using speed and the accuracy of the tip of the sword to deal damage rather than massive kinetic energy. Therefore we must look at targets that would suffer greatly from a half-inch deep cut that might be no wider than two or three inches. While the whole body could be a target, a cut to the chest or even cutting off a nose or ear would be far from debilitating for our opposite, so we would prioritize for targets that would greatly reduce our opposite's effectiveness. Fingers are a good start. In fact, any small bones such as fingers, wrists and collar bones would impair them. Toes too. Arteries? The neck and the inner thigh contain massive, vulnerable arteries. Ligaments? The inner wrist and achilles tendon would be devestating. Organs? Possibly the eye or even around the eye.

What is the appropriate distance between you and your opponent?
There are two sides to consider. You want to be as close as you can be so as to deliver your attacks in the minimum amount of time, and far enough away so that your opposite cannot hit you without some kind of telling movement. Therefore, if you and your opposite have equivalent reach, start at a distance where you opposite could not hit you with a Dian or Pi without at least taking a step to reveal their intent. When you are faster, you can start closer. If you are slower or shoter, start farther away. We're talking life and death (theoretically) so don't give your opposite an free hits.

Quiz:
What is the first target you should consider?
Given 1000 hours of practice to perfect one attack and no other, what would be the deadliest attack of the eight attacks?

Fighting Tai Chi: On Distance

I used to teach this self-defense class I called "Fighting Concepts." I'd been asked to teach martial arts in a one-hour a week format, and I'd wondered how could someone possibly teach martial arts in only an hour a week? What I did was throw out the traditional training and drilling that I had learned with, and came up with a series of games that would teach students to appreciate different aspects of the fight and think creatively. I reasoned that if I couldn't give them discipline and skill (not enough time) that I would give them cleverness and adaptability.

The first thing I taught my students (after I showed them the basics of punching and kicking) was how to appreciate range. Know the limit of your reach and the limit of your opponent. How far can you punch? How can you contort your body to extend that reach? How can you streamline your movements to reduce "tells" that will alert your opponent to the oncoming attack? How can you add footwork to increase your range?

In Tai Chi Sword, I've broken down the 13 techniques into multiple sub groups. Of these, I consider two moves, Pi and Dian to be long-range attacks, so let's start with those. Take your fighting stance across from your opposite and slowly play tag using gentle Pi and Dian attacks. I recommend using wooden swords and wearing heavy, protective gloves like lacrosse or street hockey gloves--a Dian to the front of the hand can be painful and destructive even at fairly low speeds. Go back and forth attacking each other. As an attacker, aim and anything you like. As a defender, do not parry but simply try to move out of the way.

Quiz:
What are desirable targets?
What is the appropriate distance between you and your opponent?

Xi: The Final Technique of 13

I think to understand a martial art you have to grasp what the secret sauce of that martial art is. What is the concept or technique that makes that martial art different from others, and what is the unique way that martial art exploits that difference to gain a fighting advantage? For example, many would say the strength of Wing Chun kung fu is in it's sticky hands techniques that allow the WC practitioner to fight almost completely by touch at close range. I like to think that the secret sauce of Hung Gar lies in it's 12 Bridges: techniques designed to give the HG practitioner a leverage advantage against a foe nearly instantaneously in almost any situation.

I think Xi, or Washing, is one of those special techniques of Tai Chi Sword. When researching how this move is done, I was flummoxed by how every source showed a different application of the move. How could they all be so divergent, I wondered. I've come to think that Xi is what in sport fencing would be called "taking the steel" and "transfers." The idea is fairly general: any time your blade contacts your opposite's blade, you may have an opportunity ti Xi. Keep contact with the opposite's blade and control it so that it cannot hit you while you hit them.

A simple example might be if your opposite is standing in guard, touch the right or outside of your blade to their blade (assuming you're both right handed). Now keep the point of your blade on the centerline, but push your sword at the guard toward your opposite's left shoulder. The wedge shape you make with your sword will brush their blade aside like you were a snowplow while your point moves unopposed toward your opposite's neck. The key is to control your opposite's blade even as you attack.

Beng: The Explosive Technique

A friend suggested over the weekend that there is a certain kind of strength and peace you receive from training within a group. He said it helps you realize part of your path and your place in the world by learning to work with, and having the support of others with similar goals. I empathize. I certainly miss the time when I attended a regular martial arts school, and much of my training and learning, this blog included, goes toward recreating and possibly even improving upon those nostalgic memories.

 

In particular, there are some things that are better learned in groups. Some techniques require the context of the dynamics of person to person interaction to understand adequately. You can see them, sure, but to properly learn and appreciate the move, you must feel them. The last two techniques we'll cover in our research fall into that category. They are so subtle, so structurally and mechanically complex and variable, that one must practice with a partner to learn them. It is also why we have saved them for last.

 

The first of the two is called Beng, or exploding. Very much like the Beat in fencing, it is simply when your sword snaps out with a burst of energy, often striking the opponent's blade and then bouncing or skipping onward to attack. If fencing, the Beat is usually only used to knock the opponent's blade aside to the left or right, but what if we could use that energy fully in three dimensions? Imagine if you could paralyze your opposite's blade with a sharp, forward Beng against their blade, collapsing their defense and preventing them from extending? What if you could pull your opposite's blade out straight by sharply hooking the back of their blade, causing them to become overextended and off balance? What about Beng up or down, or multiple Bengs in succession?

 

Begin practice by standing in guard against your opposite. With a quick squeeze of the hand or a flick of the wrist, bounce your blade off your opposite's blade. Your goal is to knock their guard off line while the bounce of your blade conveniently causes your blade to come to rest exactly where it started--on line, ready to attack, and now totally unobstructed! Once you've mastered this basic Beng, try variations with all the different directions: up, down, left, right, forward, and back. Then try multiple Beng combinations: forward-down, left-right, back-up, etc.

Posts delayed this week

I'll be at a trade show, so posting will be delayed until Friday. I'll try to retroactively catch up in my spare moments.

Another Take on the Parries

I'm thinking of buying a fish. Betas seem like low maintenence creatures, and it pleases me to think I could name it some rough and tough name like Knuckles, Lefty, or Enzo. I've already staked out a space on my desk with a little sign that says " Reserved for Knuckles the Fish."

 

Over the weekend, before I came up with this fish plan, I got to practice fundamental cuts with my friend Alex. She doesn't know anything about swords, but she does have an active curiosity about all things martial. While I was showing her the eight attacks, she showed me some really interesting variant angles for Jiao (Wrapping) that I hadn't considered. This just goes to show that all sources are potentially valuable for insights.

 

Before we move on to the last two techniques, I want to offer an alternate view on the three parries. While talking to my buddy Robin who is from Singapore, he offered a different translation of the word Dai. He said it might be more appropriate to translate Dai as " to bring to or with you." If this is the case, then the idea that Dai pulls your opposite's attack toward you and deflects them just enough to miss fits well with some descriptions I've read that Dai is analogous to Roll-Back in Tai Chi. This suggests that we might be able to think of Dai as yielding and deflecting, Ge as blocking with neutral energy (without forward or backwards movement) and Ya as pressing or pushing energy.

 

Dai is commonly depicted for high attacks, but if you think of it as bringing and receiving at attack, you should be able to use the same blade energy for middle and low attacks. Same would hold true for Ge and Ya I think. These additional applications may not be commonly taught, or over time the level and the energy may have become confused and connected with eachother.

Ti: The Eighth Deadly Technique

I know only a handful of moves in kendo. I'm an anime fan, I love samurai movies, ninjas have their moments for me, but kendo and kenjitsu have never held much pull for me. I did have the opportunity while at Guard Up to learn a thing here an there though, and one of them I think was called nuki. It was a neat move, where you kind of raise your sword and skip back when an opponent is swinging at you, but pretty much that was all it was until one day when I had to substitute for a sick instructor in a class called Sport Armor.

 

Sport Armor was this class where all the students wore hard plastic motocross armor and helmets. Even though the class was taught with padded swords, the idea was that the armor would allow you to fight at close to full speed and power with less fear of injury. Well, there I was, and while sparring I was holding off the brutal cuts of my opponent, and then it occurred to me to try nuki. I waited for the swing, lifted my sword up and out of the way as the cut swished by me, and found that I could swiftly step forward and chop my opponent cleanly on the forehead. It worked like magic, as if I'd practiced hours and hours and waited insidiously for my chance to strike!

 

I'm proposing that Ti, our eighth deadly technique is similar to nuki. Ti means to "lift" and I have come to think that it is used much like Jiao as a compound attack. When an opponent cuts for your hand and you are not in a position to use Jiao to wrap them, lift the hand out of the way, let the attack pass, then bring the blade down on their arm or head or wherever with a Pi cut. The lifting of the hands sets you up for the cut, and if timed right, your opponent may still be finishing their first move when you bring the sword back down.

 

Let's take stock: we have five attacks, three parries, and three counters. Of the three counters, we have one basic counter, and two compound counters. That gives us eleven moves. The final two are special blade controlling techniques which we'll examine next week! Have a great weekend!

Jiao: Compound Defense and Attack

Eureka! That move I said was confounding me? I've figured out a place for it in my map of the 13 cuts! The final two deadly techniques will be considered compound actions in my theory of Tai Chi. That is, they are not a single move, but they are a couple moves strung together that may be so common in use that they are considered core techniques in Tai Chi. Hopefully my explanations will support the theory.

 

There's a creative pleasure that comes from deciphering martial arts. It might be similar to what sleuths feel when they're closing in on the perpetrator of a crime or what a scientist feels like when they are unravelling a technical conundrum. Is it a mental analog for hunting? For me it feels like when you get a case of the giggles when you're in the library; you're trying to keep your composure, but the idea is bubbling up from inside you and you are fighting the impulse to overflow into the quiet civility around you.

 

The first of the two moves is Jiao, or "wrapping." Earlier, I talked about Dian and Pi as long-ranged attacks. I propose that when you're using the long ranged attacks, a very desirable target is your opposite's sword hand. It's probably the part of their body that's closest to you, and if you deliver a good hit to their hand, you'll probably seriously impair their ability to fight.

 

So you're minding your own business and your opposite goes for your hand. First, get your hand out of the way. Move your hand six inches to the right or left so their blade just misses. As you move your hand, set up your counterattack by dropping your blade tip down to the level of your opposite's wrist. Now, with a small turn and arc of the hand, draw the tip of your blade across the hand or wrist of your opposite. The motion you trace in the air with your hand for the whole move might look like a letter D on it's flat side if you cut by going over their hand. If you went under, it would be a D on it's round side like a bowl.

Jie: Way of the Intercepting Sword

I tend to be very reductionist in my learning. I try to figure out that the smallest reasonable unit of knowledge is for a subject I'm studying and then try to group things into small, conceptual sets. For example, of the 13 cuts of Tai Chi Sword, I've broken them down into eight attacks, three parries, and two add-on or miscellaneous techniques. Yet of the eight attacks, I tend to think of five of them as useful core techniques. Of those five, two are first-choice long range techniques, and three are middle range techniques. See if you can sort them out based on what you've read about them.

When I get beyond the core ideas, I tend to ask myself why bother expanding? Every additional idea should add value to the whole, and we should resist adding things indiscriminately.

Now we're getting into the reeds a bit with the next three attacks. I left these out when I was describing the other attacks because they're a little more special purpose and they're also a little harder to use. You might call them advanced attacks. One of them, which I will describe last of these three, is particularly weird and I'm still not sure how it fits into the pantheon of moves we're learning.

So you have some attacks and some defenses. You can move on your feet and you're developing a good feel for position, distance and timing. Time to pull out the gutsy moves that get you bonus points during the battle. Next time your opposite winds up for a swing, either because they're slower than you or they're wasting energy on a big windup, hit them with Jie. Jie means to "intercept."

Imagine if you will a baseball player ready to take a swing at a fastball. Now imagine that the fastball is you and your organs are the strike zone. Now imagine that the bat is sharp. As the player takes his swing, what if you could just put out your sword so that as he moves his wrist crashes into the front edge of your blade? You wouldn't have to do very much work and the player would probably be handless, putting him at a distinct disadvantage against your next move. This move may exemplify the saying "the kung fu man does not strike first, but hits first."

You missed me ya, ya, ya!

Alright. Bad joke.

 

Here we are at the third and final block of Tai Chi Sword. This might feel weird to you who know martial arts or fencing. In Wing Chun, there's probably six core blocks and then a dozen additional ones. In foil fencing there are nine parries. How can Tai Chi get away with just three? I think other systems are more mechanistic about they way they define their defenses. In fencing, you have high inside parry with palm up (Parry 4), high inside parry with palm down (Parry 3), high ourside parry with palm up (Parry 6), etc. In Tai Chi, I've approached each of the techniques in a more generalized sense. Instead of high block left, high block right, high block with drooping wrist, high block with point toward the sky, etc., we have one energy concept: carry their attack high enough to miss.

 

Let me remind you that I'm aiming to get to a place where I can use the gim and the general methods of the Tai Chi Sword. My interpretations may be totally non-cannonical or just plain wrong. However, if it helps us get some useful perspective on the weapon and fighting style for our own training, I think that's valuable.

 

My thinking on Dai (Carrying) is that it represents a preference for the energy of the parry while disregarding the actual move used. This might be appropriate for a style that focuses on sensitivity and harmonization. The different shapes and positions you might get yourself into during an engagment might be so numerous that it's impractical to try to name them all. Therefore, think of the idea of guiding your opposite's blade into a harmless empty space, or carrying it to where you want it to go with a smooth, gentle contact not a harsh block or bounce between blades.

 

Ya is the opposite of Dai. Ya means to "press." It exploits the low bridge the same way the Dai exploits the high bridge to make your opposite's blade too short to hit you. When executing the basic Ya, rotate your sword so that the front edge is facing away from you and the back edge (thumb side) is facing toward you an the blade is parallel to the floow as if you were going to put it on a table. Then simply press down. I prefer not to press beyond the level of my belt. If the attack is particularly low, I will bend at my knees to lower my blade and maintain balance rather than bending over. Execute to your preference.

The Geometry of Bridging

Back when I took Wing Chun with Stanley Jue and Jerome Majeed, Stanley brought his wife to the school because he was instructing her on Wing Chun at home. Amy was a fiesty fighter, and I discovered one day while sparring against her that while I was more than a foot taller than her, she was definitely landing more hits on me than I expected. What's more, I found that I was having a really hard time blocking her attacks! What turns out to have been my disadvantage was geometry. While Amy could punch straight across at my stomach, I actually had to reach down to block her, causing my arms to be shorter and throwing off my timing against her.

Let's put it another way. You're standing opposite someone of equal height and reach to you. If you reach out and just touch them with the tip of your fingers on the collar bone and they reach out for your belt, because of the angle they must cross, they will actually not be able to touch you. This is the bridging geometry principle we will use to our advantage with the high bridge parry called Dai.

Dai means "carry" and we're going to use it to carry high bridge attacks up and away from us. If your opposite thrusts for your face, they are probably attacking over your sword and raising their attack to form a high bridge. Let the tip of your sword drop and lift your hand so that the handle moves up and the blade of the sword kind of drags behind lazily. Meet your opposite's blade with the flat of your blade and carry it into a higher bridge just over the top of your head. Adjust the angle so you don't just slip past them and still get stabbed in the face. I like about 45 degrees. You might also rock back a little as you do this. The shortening caused by the rising angle and you slight rock back will cause them to fall short! When you become more practiced, try lifting their blade into the space next to your head and above your shoulders. You are now able to protect yourself from high bridge attacks with Dai!

Ge: The First Parry of Tai Chi Sword

In Chinese martial arts there's this concept called Bridging. It's a model for thinking about the options available when you are attempting to connect an attack or deal with an attack during a fight. When your opposite touches you, the connection between your bodies is called a bridge. You might think of bridging as having three flavors. If your opposite reaches out and touches you and their arm is parallel to the floor, that's a level, or middle, bridge. If they reach out and touch you and their arm is rising as might be the case if they were shorter than you or touching the top of your head, that's called a high bridge. If they reach out and their arm is descending like if they were reaching for your belt or if they were much taller than you, that's called a low bridge.

When thinking of defense, a rule of thumb is to draw a line from your shoulder to their elbow, and then follow that line for your block. Therefore, if someone is attacking you with a high bridge, an invisible line would probably go from your shoulder to the underside of their arm. You would therefore attempt some kind of block against the underside of their arm. For middle bridge you'd block to the sides, and for low bridges you'd block down. Simple, right? The thinking behind bridging is that is gives you a reliable starting point to think of your attack and defense. The actual move you use and the energy you apply is up to you.

With bridging in mind, we will learn the first of three parries in Tai Chi sword: Ge. Ge means "to block." In my interpretation of Tai Chi sword, it is a mid-level block, used to deflect attacks aimed roughly between your collar bones and your belt. Here's how the great sword choreographer Anthony DeLongis explains it: Imagine that you are in a doorway. Take a step backwards so that the frame is just in front of you. Now, as attacks come at you, gently sweep each attack with the flat of your blade just enough to the side so that the attack hits the door frame. Cool, huh? Anthony DeLongis can be seen fencing against Jet Li and his gim in the opening of Fearless.

The Will to Live

There's this movie you should see if you want to understand the practical underpinnings of Chinese martial arts: its called To Live.

 

Plot summary is this: rich landowners lose everything and then some during the communist revolution in China, and in the end they're grateful. They're not grateful for all the terrible things that happen to them, but they are grateful that they're still alive. I like to think of Chinese martial arts like that. In Japanese martial arts, you can see from the way many of them practice their techniques that in their martial art, it's okay to get killed as long as you slay your opponent. Honor and victory are revered above personal safety. In Chinese life though, you have disease, raiders, invaders, natural disaster, manmade disaster, your own government, incompetence and bad luck trying to kill you on a daily basis. Therefore, the primary goal isn't to demonstrate one's skill or to uphold the honor of a lord who feels no loyalty to you, but to make it home to your family alive and in one piece.

 

Therefore, you should be strong and disciplined, but also open to all conceivable possibilities that may lead you to survival during a fight. Some might call certain options cheating. I tend to think of it a good sense. The connection to the 13 techniques of Tai Chi and the concept of Duifang is that you should throw out your dogma and rigid techniques, and move with the informed fluidity of wisdom, discipline, and intent to win. (A taoist might say skip the intent to win part. Up to you.)

Duifang!

You burst into the hallway, hot on the heals of the six-fingered man. Blocking your path, you see a swarthy swordsman dressed all in black leathers with a scar across one cheek and a fierce-looking sword at the ready. He raises his sword and beckons. Do you:

1. Rush him and run him through, counting on your superior speed and training to win the match? (Turn to page 9)
2. Wait for him to attack and defly finish him with a well-placed counter attack? (Turn to page 13)
3. Find a new way to follow the six-fingered man? (Turn to page 22)
4. Test your opponent, taking a moment to understand him even though the six-fingered man is putting distance between you? (Turn to page 49)

I'm going to take a brief break from describing my thoughts on deadly techniques to go on a tangent on fighting philosophy. With five blade techniques in hand, next I'm going to teach the three basic defenses before continuing with the final five advanced techniques. First, we're going to learn a new word: Duifang.

 

Scott Rodell writes about this word in his Tai Chi Sword book, and he describes the word as meaning "opposite." In a duel, you might have an opponent, but in Tai Chi (which subscribes to a possibly more developed sense of energy) insead of an opponent you have an opposite. The intent, motion, and energy of your opposite must be met with the perfectly matched response. I'm not going to say "harmony" because then everyone would try to be soft and squishy when duelling. The fact is, sometimes speed and power are the appropriate ways to win the day. Sometimes they're not. Hard, soft, fast, slow, bold or deceptive, use the technique that best matches the moves of your opponent and that will end the fight in your favor in the shortest amount of time with the least injury to yourself. In my opinion, that is the best use of Duifang.

Chou: The Fifth Deadly Technique

You may be a little concerned at this point that there haven't been any descriptions of cool slashing cuts like you see in the movies. After all, isn't COOL why most of us picked kung fu over other martial arts? Well, have no fear because there is a horrible and deadly slashing technique in Tai Chi sword: it's called Chou.

Now, don't get too excited. Well, not just yet. While Chou is a cool technique, it is probably not going to be used the way you see in movies when fighters use the Dao, or broadsword. The Dao is a heavy weapon with a curved blade, and that makes it great for slashing because the curve allows you to continue drawing your sword easily across your distressed and soon to be former opponent. When using the Gim, your wrist must make up for the lack of curve in the blade. Get a partner. Promise the partner you are not going to cut them. Using a wooden sword (you promised, remember?) place the middle edge against their arm, a few inches below the shoulder. Now lightly draw the sword across their arm by pulling the handle to the opposite side of their body, like you're wiping gore off the blade. The pulling and dragging action keeps the sharp edge of the blade moving and cutting against your opponent. With a real blade (I told you to practice with a wooden sword, remember?) this would create a deep cut.

Notice that you are not chopping! That's for Pi and Ji! With suppleness and skill, you can use Chou in a number of mid-distance attacks that we'll examine later! When your opponent thinks you've gone in too close and they have the advantage on you in the close-fighting game, show them the error of their strategy with your Chou technique! Okay, now you can get excited. :-)

Ji: The Fourth Deadly Technique

I saw "Peaceful Warrior" at the Kendall over the weekend. It is a bit overblown at times, but reminds us well that the outside world can scramble up our thoughts so much that we cannot live to the truth that comes from within. A book on Quakerism I've been reading also addresses this: Quakers gather to "pray" in silence, in a fashion that might be called meditation if it were an eastern art. They still their minds and spirits, and listen for the internal voice the "small voice" within to instruct them, free (hopefully) of the biases of outside opinions...

 

Ji is described as a cut using the extreme third of the blade. Mainly because I like symmetry and not out of any historical or martial insight, I'm going to say Ji is to Pi what Ci is to Dian . I suggest using Ji as the heavy commitment version of the fast, light Pi cut. Where Pi uses a quick rap to cut thin bones such as the thumb or collarbone, Ji uses a more powerful stroke like that of an axe swing to say, sever hands and split skulls. Don't think cutting like you might see a samurai do, but think chopping, like a woodsman.

 

This gives you a good fundamental set of moves. With Pi, Dian, Ci and Ji, you have enough tools to attack effectively in most situations in basic sword fighting. From here we will begin learning attacks that are a little harder to apply, because they will often require some aspect of footwork or complex handwork to execute.

Balance and Motion

I've gotten sick twice since I've been working at my new company. Twice. I generally don't get sick more than once every few years! I suspect it is from living a very busy life--perhaps a little too busy. I can't help but think about the idea of the Yin-Yang, about how life must be balanced between activity and recovery and how I must be unbalanced toward activity and not getting enough recovery, making me vulnerable to... germs.

There's also another aspect of the Yin-Yang I'm wondering about: it's a circle. To me that suggests that creation and destruction happens within a defined space. The space of your life, the space of a day, the space of your understanding. It means we need to think of our activities as being constrained by limited resources and that we should plan appropriately.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled lesson: footwork.

There is a particular kind of step you see often in the Tai Chi Sword form. The practitioner begins in a kind of ready stance, knees bent, feet shoulder width apart, then extends and plants their heel in the direction he/she intends to move. Then the practitioner shifts their balance to that foot as they roll from the heel to the full foot.

Try this. From your ready stance, lift the foot and extend it, but instead of planting it on the heel, thrust using your grounded leg, your glutes, and the momentum of kicking out your raised leg to cause you to burst forward. Then, land the foot by smoothly touching your heel to the ground rolling onto the foot and bending your knee all at once to bring your weight onto it. Now you have quickly and safely advanced and moved your weight at speed! This is basically the mechanic of a fencing lunge.

Ack!

Been sick... can't write...

Ci: The Third Deadly Technique

Friday's practice session was very productive. We learned up to "Black Dragon Swings Its Tail." It's funny learning the Yang form because different teachers count and name the moves a little differently, and some of the moves vary as well. It feels a little like linguistic drift, where people who all started at the same place settle abroad and develop new accents. I bet if we were feeling a little more anthropological, we could track changes in the form through comparing students from around the world and cross referencing their "bloodline changes."

"Black Dragon Swings Its Tail" is very cool, as is the move that leads up to it in our form, which is called "Ancient Tree with Twisted Roots." Books I have on the form discuss these moves as special blocks for overhead and leg attacks, but I strongly feel that they are infighting moves. I showed my friend Pete the two moves, and asked what he thought they might be used for, and he instantly said "pommel strike!" Could be the way I did the move, but hopefully it's the common sensibilities of empty hands martial artists...

After you have practiced the Pi and Dian techniques, you might want to move on to Ci. Ci is also called "thrusting." From your ready stance, begin by dropping the point of your sword as if you were going to perform Dian. As you extend, step forward into a bow stance (or a lunge stance if you know fencing). Put your shoulder in behind the arm and sword so all of your weight is in the move. You may also want to turn in with the shoulder and hips to give the attack more power if the situation warrants and it doesn't seem too dangerous to commit so much. Imagine you're putting your sword through a door.

Where Dian might be for striking fingers and ligaments, Ci is for hitting organs. The more organs you remove from your opponent, the less effective they will be against you.

The first two deadly techniques: Splitting and Pointing

There are people who say you only need to learn one punch really well in order to win most fights that you might get into. I tend to agree with this. Fighting seems really easy: hit the guy until he falls down--and it is in concept, but what one discovers when they get into a full-contact fight is that it is really, really hard to land a solid hit on your opponent on purpose. People move, people block, people hit back. However, if you have a punch that is strong and practiced to the point that it is not only very reliable, strong and consistent but that you are able to place it wherever you desire with accuracy, you may have more to work with that your opponent from the moment the fight begins.

 

The same may be true for swordsmanship, and I think the two most fundamental techniques in Tai Chi gim are the Pi and Dian techniques. Pi mean "splitting" and is most likely used like when the magistrate in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon splits the tea cup with the Green Destiny. Dian means "pointing" and is basically a stab. I'm grouping these two moves together because they are mechanical complements to eachother and because they both aim to use the extreme two or three inches of the sword. This to me means they are your longest weapons and therefore your first line of attack or defense.

 

The two mechanics I'm talking about are bringing down the point of the sword and extending with your elbow. Beginning with Pi, from your guard stance, extend your arm from the elbow and then bring down the point. Try to cast the sword like a fishing reel, not chop like with an axe. You should end up with the arm and blade extended without having to put the breaks on the sword to keep it from overswinging. If you were to put a cupcake (or a tea cup) on a table, you should be able to cut the cupcake without hitting the table. The extension should be without force and be a smooth motion. Do not pop the blade back up at the end of the swing, but let is stop at full extension.

 

I prefer to use the dian as the same two movements in opposite order. Beginning in your guard stance, lower the tip of your sword so that it is pointing at your intended target, then push the blade forward from your elbow until you reach full extension. This should allow you to drive the tip of your blade accurately into the target. Practice by hanging a small object from a string and poking it head on.

 

Spend as least one session where you do the cut 500 to 1000 times. Just be relaxed about the motion and to not muscle the blade so you can learn how to move it. After a while, you should be able to "swish" the air without effort--this will show that your movement is fast and clean.

Yang Jwing-Ming's Two Person Set

Tomorrow I'm going to begin learning a two-person set for gim to supplement my study of the Yang form. Going through the Yang form is proving very helpful in my understanding of the gim, but I suspect expanding my base of experience by learning a two-person set will improve my overall understanding of the gim.

 

By seeing more permutations of sword movements and especially sword vs. sword movements, I should get more context from which I can derive and understand fighting applications.

 

What I don't know is where this two-person form comes from. John found it in his research in the back of a book by Yang Jwing-Ming. The two possible drawbacks are that YJM seems to be primarily a Northern Shaolin practitioner of White Crane Kung Fu, and that this form might have been invented by YJM. If it was invented, it's ideas of applications for the gim might be incompatible with the principles of the Yang form. We'll see...

Sword vs. Sword: Is the Gim Worth It?

There are three big assumptions that I am making about Yang Tai Chi sword: that the originators of the form knew what they were doing, that the current form we are able to see today is mostly the same as it was three hundred years ago, and that the continued use of the gim was due to an evolution in the fighting techniques around it that kept it effective in the face of weapon advances such as steel, improved guards, and blade curves.

In the west, longswords gave way to the small sword, then to the rapier and sabre as metalurgy improved, armor became less common, and the design of the weapons evolved. I've heard that the Civil War cavalry sabre is often considered the pinnacle of one-handed sword design for it's guard and effective cutting curve. Many claim the katana to be the pinnacle of hand-and a half or two handed swords. Where does this leave the gim then? Is it a comparable weapon or is it an inferior weapon?

I think the answer might be both. The guard of modern gim is inferior to that of katana or sabres, exposing the hands to quick, disabling strikes. However, the gim is also a fighting tool with certain characteristics. It's probably at least as good at cutting as the sabre and katana given the sanmei or wumei composite steel construction of late gim, and there exist fighting styles that attempt to draw out the strengths of the weapon. Tai Chi is one of them. Taken in context as an extension of a martial art, the gim might be equivalent or better than these other weapons in a one-on-one fight.

Keep in mind these things and others when practicing gim:

1. The gim is primarily a one handed weapon. That suggests your other hand is free to do other things to work in concert with your sword hand, such as block, attack, and grapple.
2. In Tai Chi, a gim practitioner is generally already a skilled martial artist since you learn the empty hand techniques before learning the weapon skills. The gim practitioner can therefore move freely from sword fighting to hand fighting and more.
3. The gim has two edges, giving the weapon more attacking options than single-edged weapons.
   

Ready and Steady

Never trust a martial art that has no ready position for fighting. The ready position prepares your offense and defense for the engagement to come. Mine, as you can see from the previous article, is a centerline-based closed guard. That means my sword and backup hand are between me and my opponent. Furthermore, my blade lives in the space directly between me and my opponent, meaning I claim the shortest distance between us as mine, and they have to fight their way past that to get to me. My blade then also has the shortest distance to travel to hit them, minimizing the time they have to respond to my attack.

If you don't have a good ready position, you may not have a reliable tactical platform from which to mount offense and defense. Your weapon may be too far away or out of position, reducing the effectiveness of your offense and defense. If you're really good or really fast, you might be able to get away with this, but why take the risk? When I'm teaching martial arts, I often use all kinds of unorthodox guards to encourage my students to think through the situation. What is the gambit I'm trying to make? What are the tradeoffs of what I'm doing in terms of exposed targets, opportunities to strike, mobility, and blocking ability. Subtle differences in the turn of the hands, the placement of elbows, whether their weight is on the balls of their feet or flat also affect the possibilites that can extend from a fighter's ready position.

Speaking of feet, I've chosen what is effectively a fencing stance for my ready position. If you don't know fencing, imagine it like a Bow stance where your weight distribution is 50-50 and your foot spacing is roughly shoulder width. It's also comparable to the stance you might use during Push Hands practice. The reason I like this stance is because it's very mobile and has a narrower base than a full Bow or Horse stance. In an art where a cut to the knee, shin or ankle is not only possible but expected if your opponent is trying to disable you, not sticking your leg out there in a wide stance seems like a good idea.

But There are 13 Cuts...

Some of you may be confused why there are only eight deadly techniques in the Yang 13 Sword form. A brief amount of research will show you numerous lists that show that Yang sword is built on 13 fundamental cuts. Here's the thing: traditionalists have been very literal in their importation of the Chinese martial arts to the New World. While the literal translation of the names is 13 cuts, as we would understand it in English, these are not actually 13 ways to hurt your opponent. Of these, roughly four are what westerners would call blocks or parries. Of the remaining nine, one is a follow-on technique, much like a wind or transfer in western swordsmanship would follow a parry. That leaves eight actual attacks.

1. Dian
2. Chi
3. Pi
4. Chou
5. Ge
6. Ji
7. Jie
8. Jiao
9. Dai (parry)
10. Ti (parry)
11. Beng (parry)
12. Ya (parry)
13. Xi (follow-on technique)

I call the moves techniques instead of cuts because the word technique is a little more flexible for the way I intend to use it when I break down the moves that I learn. I hope this keeps things clear!

Hadley: The Eight Deadly Techniques

At the end of the day of training in Hadley, they opened the floor to free sparring. Having travelled all the way in pursuit of martial knowledge, how could I pass up the chance to cross steel (or wooden wasters in this case) with other swordsmanship enthusiasts?

 

I won. Well, we weren't actually fighting to win anything, but I was decisively better than my opponents, scoring two to three times for every hit I took. I found that I was much more mobile, that I was faster, and when I chose to be, much, much more aggressive. Part of my advantage could be attributed to years of Wing Chun, where you had to be aggressive to close the distance with opponents who will generally have longer reach, and part is probably thanks to existing fencing experience where the rules favor the aggressor.

 

Having the hitting advantage really opened my eyes to a problem Saturday: not all hits are equal. In fencing they are, but with Tai Chi sword my assumption is that we should be fighting from the perspective of life and death to truly appreciate the art. A slash across the bicep is not the same as one on the inside of the wrist. One will impair you, the other will disable you, and both are pretty easy to deliver to an opponent if you're merely fast enough.

 

I think our future study of Tai Chi sword will have to be accompanied by a gruesome study of deadly cuts and tactics. Choice ligaments, organs and gambits to create opportunities to hit those high-value targets will have to be worked into our analysis of the sword techniques of the gim. Instead of eight ways to touch your opponent as you might frame the fight in sport terms, we must think of eight deadly techniques of warfare and survival...

Back from Hadley

This weekend's trip to Hadley was as much of a success as last week's ambitious attempt to learn the whole Yang form in a day was a failure. It turns out even that attempting to learn the whole Yang form last weekend was invaluable, since it allowed us to have a common language with all of the Tai Chi people in Hadley when discussing moves. We practiced a group of fundamental moves really hard with many different partners, we got to ask a lot of questions that affirmed that we were on solid ground in our development, and at the end I got to duel with a couple of the students who study with Scott Rodell around Washington.

I have a particular guard that I use when fighting with gim. It is my base position, from which I extend all of my moves and to which I return. I keep my non-sword hand in what is called the "sword fingers" or "sword talisman" shape and keep my fingers close to or touching my wrist. I use this guard for four reasons.

1. It is a great tool for maintaining structure--by always returning to this guard, I am pretty much guaranteed that my non-sword hand isn't flopping around in some strange place.
   
2. In its position in front of my body, on center and just behind my sword hand, it is perfectly placed to go into action should I need it for a combined action. For example, I could parry an attack then grab or check the opponent's sword hand as I continue in with a counterattack, preventing the opponent from parrying with their sword.
   
3. If I were still holding my scabbard in my lower hand, it would be well placed to use as a parrying device along my forearm much like a tonfa.
   
4. If my sword hand gets tired during a fight, I can put my extended fingers on the pommel of my sword to increase my point control.

The value of this guard became apparent as I was duelling at the end of the day because I could see the other students register my guard and mimic it as they were fighting me. It was satisfying validation for a self-taught fencer!

Off to Hadley

I am becoming more convinced that the scabbard should be a parrying device in Tai Chi sword. While practicing Sparrow Skims the Water, it occured to me that a low and wide attack like that would expose you to getting stabbed in the face. The sword hand would certainly not protect you well from that, but if you were still holding your scabbard, you could clear your way and cover yourself as you made your upward cut!

...

Tomorrow we get up at 6AM to drive to Hadley, MA for a seminar in Tai Chi Sword. My group figured that if a master was teaching something nearby, especially one of the authors we are studying from, we should go check it out. Scott Rodell is a long-time Tai Chi practitioner and researcher of applied Tai Chi sword techniques. He's pretty much the only person as far as we can tell who is known for practicing fighting Tai Chi sword.

My main concern for Hadley is that we will be brainwashed. In martial arts, there's a tendency to treat martial dogma like religious commandments. Any statement handed down from the Pope/master must be taken as the word of God and obeyed without question. I hope we will have the wisdom to learn from the seminar and the conviction in our own ideas to stick with our interpretations where appropriate.

Upgrade your punch now... new model available

Last night we celebrated the solstice with a cookout. City folk like us often lose touch with the pleasures of the outdoors and the slow pace of cooking food with fire instead of electromagnetic radiation. After the steak tips, after the cold drinks, after the ice cream sandwiches and gentle conversation, Leland told me an interesting story. The Native Americans did not know how to punch until they met the Europeans. They knew how to hit, but in fights they struck with their open hands. This story reminds us that fighting is a kind of technology. There are certain elements that are common around the world because they are the commodities of fighting, but there are some things that are peculiar to certain cultures or certain practitioners that make their art something more.

The story of the Indian punch reminds us that if there’s a move I learn in the form that doesn’t make sense, it might not be because the sources are doing it wrong, but because it’s just a bad move, or because the true application of the move is too cryptic for my humble skill to comprehend.

I’m lucky I’m just trying to learn how to fight with the Tai Chi sword. If I was trying to learn how to historically recreate the fighting techniques of the ancients, I would have a lot harder time because I’d have to verify the historical possibilities. Since I’m not though, if I want to say “Cat Pounces on Rat” should be done like a Fleche because it seems best that way, I can, and hopefully we will benefit from the idea even if it’s not historical.

The Matrix of Swordsmanship

When I was a kid, and because I'm such a nerd, I loved the Transformers. In particular I loved the Transformers Movie, which I proudly owned on VHS and audio casette, and now on DVD and CD. In the movie they had this device called the Matrix of Leadership--the sum of all wisdom from all Autobot leaders who had ever carried it. If someone was picked to be the new Autobot leader, he was given the Matrix and it made him wise and buff.

Martial arts forms have a little of that in them. The form is a physical collection of fighting ideas, much like a living, moving book. Some forms stay fixed over time, with students rigidly trying to preserve the old ways, and some forms evolve over time as each new master revises the set of moves. Some however slowly sink into decrepitude, losing their history, focus, and meaning with each generation. I suspect that much of the fighting lore of the Yang sword forms has been lost through its years of being used as a strictly meditative art.

John and I saw this amazing thing when we were learning the form Sunday. There's this move that happens three times in the form. It's first instance is called something like "Cat Pounces on Rat." It's this kick, step, hop and stab bit. It's pretty dainty looking. Now, John and I know western fencing, and as we looked at the series of steps, it occured to us that the footwork pattern matched a fencing move called the Fleche. If you know the Fleche, then you know that it is possibly the most aggressive move in fencing. It can be rediculously fast, and covers a truly upsetting amount of ground from the point of view of the defender.

Imagine: you set in your en garde, blade at the ready, making your plan. Your opponent is well into the grande distance, too far away to hit you even with a advance and a lunge. you prepare to advance, and suddenly your opponent is in the air, shooting at you like an arrow, crossing 6... 8... no 10 feet in an instant to strike you!

Link it back to "Cat Pounces on Rat," and you have the makings of a deadly technique...

But wait, I was talking about the Transformers. Thing is, you can't practice the fleche slow. It's got to be done fast. Yet the Yang form isn't done fast. If you were to break the move down and do it slow, it might, might look like you're prancing. If a fleche-like attack was the original intent of this move, was it forgotten over time? Only by cross-referencing the form with the same form done by other masters and techniques from totally different systems can we reassemble a fully-functioning combat form from what may have become a fuzzy memory of a fighting past. (Dedicated to Wiley)

'Til All Are One!

Like a new and mysterious toy

What's great about learning a martial art without an instructor is guessing what each move might be used for, what the original intent of the creator was, and what the subtle mechanics are that will make what on the surface looks like an insane or impractical move work like magic.

Take boxing for example. In boxing there's a move called a slip. When your opponent throws a punch at your face, don't block or back away, but duck into it. Crazy, right? Why would you like to move your perfectly serviceable face at something very clearly intended to dent it? The magic is, if you are fast enough, astute enough, and gutsy enough, you can use a slip to dodge while closing distance. Their attack slips harmlessly past your ear and before they know it you're denting them. I did it to this big bruiser friend of mine who laughs to this day about the fight where he repeatedly rammed his face onto the front of my punch.

With Tai Chi sword, we're still very far from finding that magic, but as we were going through the form on Sunday, we couldn't help but stop here and there to appreciate some of the possibilities of what we were trying to understand. Take John doing "Little Dipper" here. What might at first pass seem like a showoff pose appears to burst with possibilities after you've done it a few times. Is it a a parry? Is it a cut upwards? Is it a bind? What can you do with your hand there? Maybe you can clear the opponent's sword and give them a good poke in the eye, or maybe you can use that other hand to control the opponent's sword if you've got on a glove or are still holding your scabbard. Delicious, isn't it?

One Small Step for Swordsman...

Well, that was a failure! John and I got together to try to cram the whole Yang Sword form into our brains in one day. First, it was 95 degrees out, and of course I had the poor forsight to schedule it on Fathers Day. In the way I suppose Chinese might forget or overlook Yom Kippur, I tend to forget about Father's Day since my dad passed away when I was young. These days, Father's day is a fuzzy space in my schedule where the family gathers for dinner to honor parents and grandparents in a quasi-confucian style.

I used to have this theory that Confucianism was part of the reason Chinese don't organize very well on large scales. In my limited understanding of the philosophy, I reasoned that there was such an emphasis on honor, respect, and obedience to the family and elders that anyone outside of the "clan" was fair game for cheating and stealing. It was a convenience way to explain the politics and corruption in Chinatown. These days, I'm a little more inclined to believe that clannish thinking if more of a human trait than just a Chinese one.

We spent three hours to learn the first quarter of the 54-stance Yang form today. We started by stepping through the whole form three times, following the moves on our source video as best we could to get the form into our heads in the most general sense, and then we began stepping though the moves stance by stance. We moved briskly from "Unite with Sword" to "Big Dipper," stopping along the way to see the "Swallow Skimming the Water" and the "Wasp Entering the Hive." We were dazzled by the "Phoenix Spreading Its Right Wing," and came to rest with the "Little Dipper."

Suprizingly, it wasn't very hard. The names of all the stances and our abuldant source material made the whole process mostly staightforward. It just took so long to cross-reference each move with the video and sometimes our notes that we found ourselves out of time before we knew it! Thre great thing is we learned so much that we're definitely going to give it a few more goes. It was fun!

Delight Your Enemies, then Slay Them

One of the interesting things about Asian martial arts is the the tendency to give artistic names to moves. Is "Great Star of the Big Dipper" a cryptic clue to to the shape and kinesthetics of the move or is it just the product of a really, really bored master who had nothing else to do between classes? For example, Yip Man pared the Wing Chun wooden man practice set from something like 143 moves down to 108. Was that really necessary? Were there really 35 superfluous moves in the set? And is it just a coincidence that 108 is an auspicious and lucky number in China? Yip Man was just hanging out one day and said to himself "my students will be a lot luckier if they practice 108 moves each day." The theorum would therefore be lucky=standing at end of fight.

Let's give the masters some credit though. Let's approach the techniques as if their names are more than just fancy. I've seen pictures from different masters performing this move, and it seems like Big Dipper might refer to the shape of the stance. It's this thing where you're on one leg with sword above your head and free hand out in front of you. What might the Great Star part refer to then? If it refers to Polaris, the north star, then as the cup of the Big Dipper circles from the handle around the bowl, if you follow the line up and past the top of the cup, it points at the North Start. Does that mean your sword should be arced high and the tip should point at somewhere on your opponent? It could imply that this stance is a setup for Zha (downward pointing) a high stabbing attack from Tai Chi.

Only practice may tell...

Muscle Memory and Martial Arts

A friend asked if trying to learn the Yang form in one day undercut the value of muscle memory in martial arts. The idea of course is that muscle memory helps you execute the moves with greater speed, power and precision than if you were untrained in the art.

Yes. Muscle memory is great, but in my opinion, only if you've understood the applications of the moves you're practicing. Without knowing the goal of a punch, how can one make an "informed" movement? It'd be like giving an alien a hammer and asking them to learn how to use it but never informing them what the hammer is used for... Is it art? Is it a weapon? Is it a shifter for a car transmission?

What complicates things even more is that my interpretations of some of the moves I've been studying in books and videos are already diverging from the prescribed uses from the masters. What does this mean? Are the masters wrong? Am I just totally ignorant at this point, or will my hypothesis hold true that few people really know what they're practicing when they practice their Tai Chi Sword forms?

I'm no genius, but I am skeptical...

The Yang 13 Sword Form

In two weeks I'm going to attend a seminar by Scott Rodell, a Tai Chi teacher who teaches practical Tai Chi Sword. To prepare, I've decided to learn the whole form this weekend so I have some context to learn from during the seminar.

Last night I popped in a DVD of the Yang form I have and plan to watch the whole form every morning and evening to get a feel for it before the weekend when I try to physicaly learn it.

Getting my head around the Yang form is tough. It's really, really long. Depending on how you count it, it might be around 60 stances, but each of those stances might have two or three steps in them. Comparatively, the Mantis form I know is about 35 moves, and the Wing Chun wooden man form I know is like 150. It took a year and a half of classes to learn the whole wooden man form, and now I'm going to try to learn the whole Yang sword form in one day.

Ack.

100 Days of Swordsmanship Starts Here

Welcome to 100 Days of Swordsmanship, a blog about learning how to fight with the Chinese straight sword, or Gim (Jian if you're a Mandarin speaker). The gim is a classical weapon seen in many kung fu movies. Chow Yun Fat wields one called the Green Destiny in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Jet Li has a cool one with a hole in it in Hero, and Zhang Ziyi has one in House of Flying Daggers. It's a one-handed, double-edged sword with a small, stylized guard and sometimes a silk tassle hanging from the end of the pommel. Traditionally the tassle was silk and the blade was layered steel, but today we see more nylon and floppy spring steel because those are cheaper and look cooler when you're practicing for tournaments.

I have recently begun self-directed study of the gim, having been a kung fu enthusiast for many years and having recently learned western fencing. What I began to suspect in my research is that while there are perhaps millions of people who practice using the gim as part of their Tai Chi, I'm not sure there are very many people who actually know how they might fight with it if say, nuclear war or global warming made it necessary to slay our way to the supermarket or protect our dwindling supplies of Chef Boy Ardee from raiders.

So, as my contribution to the martial arts community and possibly all humanity in the case of nuclear war, I'm going to attempt to build a working knowledge of how to fight with the gim. I will attempt, with the aid of friends and masters willing to attach themselves to what very well may be a hair-brained scheme enough rational, reasonable, and practical content to publish a... something by the end of the summer. Right now it's just a bit before the beginning of summer, so my project is going to be called (as you have already read) 100 Days of Swordsmanship.

Stay tuned! Updated, uh, frequently I hope.