Traditional Martial Arts - PART 4 - Kung Fu Report  

This series is pure gold Adam, by far one of the best TMA in modern context breakdowns with demonstrations on the web hands down! External applications seem to be often added to internal martial arts by outside observers as opposed to inside practitioners, and rightfully so by design, a very practical means of hiding your true combat mechanics in plain sight. I also long suspected that the transition from any external combat style to a more internal style is just the natural progression of any and every good fighter across all styles as your fight I.Q. grows, but your athletic prowess diminishes by sheer force of age, allowing one to maintain a long-term sustainable degree of fighting ability. First learn to fight well, then learn to fight less. Plus the importance of the right mindset married to the right technique, weapon, etc. is highly undervalued. The Jian and the Katana are designed around two wholly different mindsets, the Jian; agile shiftiness makes it its most effective, a radical mindset of non over commitment, a ghost, versus the katana; where very little shiftiness meshed with fast burst of over commitment with very little concern for defense or personal safety, a Kamikaze, I believe literally makes this weapon its most effective. Both swords seem designed and formatted around their appropriate combat/cultural mind frames.

Adam, thanks for another video. I really like your movement, but I'm iffy on the internal vs external demos. Having done both kinds of systems pretty extensively, in the end I find it's all just refined mechanics, sensitivity and reaction - and that's for practitioners who actually where able to develop any kind of true skill. Many don't even arrive at that. Having been "on the inside" for allot of these things I also can't see the point of trying to prove something by performing a demo, when any real proof needs to be felt in order to be realized/understood.

I'm looking forward to seeing the next episode !

I love your explanation they're very precise and to the point that's exactly how my Shifu taught me

Thanks Adam excellence and the simple beauty of kung Fu. Tremendous history lesson, thanks again and be well.

Very interesting information! You are very much speaking from facts, you have a lot to teach! Real martial arts talk

Thank you for the history. the most important thing to me when it comes to martial arts is history and your wisdom knows no bounds. Side note: body count means something different than you think it does 😂

Great! Thank Very much for the subtitles

HI respect to your martial art...could u ten us Wat the mind set of dao methods are please???

There are almost no surviving Wudang internal lineages. I know of one Wudang lineage and I’ve seen another that is almost certainly one. Samyama is the basis for substantial skill development in these arts. As in all skills, some people have an inborn talent that makes Samyama unnecessary, but those are relatively rare, and from what I’ve seen, those individuals tend to have little interest in martial arts. Basically, Samyama leads to the dissolution of duality, and duality is the basis for conflict, someone born with a Samyama like state will tend to not perceive conflict as an innate aspect of their experience of life. Among other things, Samyama helps establish a particular energetic integration with the physical. This integration results in a very distinct movement signature. The most similar among arts with a significant number of practitioners is 縱鶴拳 (Zòng hè quán). The Wudang arts also have a distinct naming convention. Also noteworthy is the applications are relatively simple and direct. There’s no grasping and essentially no body to body contact. Any striking combinations tend to be simple 1-2 affairs. The general flow tends towards: enter/receive, na (without grabbing or compressing), then strike. The strikes do not require iron skills training. Proper iron hand training (the type well suited for medical tuina) can be helpful, but is not necessary. Hard hand conditioning like striking a Makiwara makes training more difficult. Striking that requires leaving an external bruise to be effective is incorrect. For Wudang sword play, the best surviving samples are in the San Cai Jian of Li Jin Ling and Sun’s Taijiquan Sword, with the Sun Taijiquan sword being more internal. Li Jin Ling was trained by a Wudang sword practitioner and Sun went to mount Wudang (he taught his Baguazhang there in exchange for other teachings. Being the first to teach Baguazhang at Wudang, his Baguazhang effectively became Wudang Baguazhang). Sun and Li collaborated in the creation of their respective interpretations of Wudang sword. Sun Jianyun produced a video disc which teaches the sword in reasonable detail. The most common application flow in practice is: enter/receive, na through the sword to sword contact point, lead while turning and walking, then cut. If you haven’t acquired the skill of na without grasping or compressing, the applications of Sun Taijiquan Jian will not work. Li Jin Lings San Cai Jian will work since it’s not reliant on na.

This is what Bruce Lee was talking about when he described water. Water is internal energy from a kungfu. The teapot / any shape analogy is based on whatever shape you or your opponent has and it doesn't effect the outcome of success because internal power is shapeless/minimal movement to generate power.

Adam. You've been on my radar since Core Self Defense. I used your website PragmaticMartialArts as a template for my first web design class. I've been interested in internal styles as I get older, and I've been avoiding you for a long time. In this video you said it doesn't matter what style you teach you "always implant internal mechanics in there." Also I've been doing a sort of 'Last Airbender' mixing of martial arts including long fist, hakka, and tai chi and you're teaching 2 of them on the site. I'm about to be like "just take my money already!!!"

Thank you Adam and Chris.

11:36 THIS is what make kung fu so awesome to me. Just a question- you pronoubnce it "bagua" ? I always heard it as "pakua" because of the pinyin transcription

The translations (terms) of taiji, Internal, and external related to levels of execution, and training (the execution of techniques). These are ancient terms (meaning they predate the styles - taichi, ..., Shoalin). And they had noting to do with Buddhism, Daoism, or Confusus. They were methods discovered by soldiers to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their techniques. They are levels .. The basic understanding was as follows: as a beginner you trained/relied on your major muscle groups (This was the external method) to excect techniques; as an intermediate you relied on body mechanics to ... (this was the internal method); and lastly you trained so much that your techques were effortless / well beyon that of the average soldier (this was the grand ultimate, the taiji). All this had nothing to do with either relgion, including Daoism.

Seen a lot of taichi, with lots of spoken about yin and yang. Only the yin and yang is not visible in the actual taichi movements. I think you have something when you said they took the daoist internal and left out the mindset. Like in some taichi books they mention daoyin and tuna (breathing) and later versions, nothing🤔

I'm mainly interested in the system of Chen Man Ching, the 37 movement short form. Also to the blind friend, in Spanish is "Viva Cuba Socialista" so you are, also wrong, in the way you express your sentiment😀. The cultural revolution was terrible. Cheers

So Aikikai is just 1 and there are 128 OTHER ones. No 127, and counting still..... And this is not even going into Uruguyan Palladin Arts and then other Slayer Art Forms.

If you won A segment B part and what about The C Class.

Please define an ""internal mechanic" and what makes it different from an external mechanic....

I don't have an issue with it personally, except almost every one outside has to go Instinct in 2-5 minutes.

Thunderbolt Bf109

A martial art that legit came from Wudang is Tai Yi Wu Xing Quan.

Thank you very interesting😀 People should appreciate that there is a union between mind and body. Also there is a blindness to the effects of socialism-communism that I fail to understand. Venezuela was the richest country in Latin America, now is fighting for the first place in poverty thanks to socialism, amazing😫. Any opinions on Tai Chi after Yang Cheng Fu? 🙄 Cheers

How can you be so quick to dismiss the legend as fiction? Maybe the logical explanation was set in place to protect the myth in The legend and it's truth?

"Communist" in name only, as Nazi's were socialist in name only. Sorry, a bit off topic. Everything else I very much agree with. Unfortunately, the terms "external" and "internal" have been deluded and frequently misunderstood as something other than positioning and physics.

Adam, "the communists" didn't kill 56 million people in the cultural revolution, though you may be thinking of a famine that was largely caused by the "great leap forward", in which over 30 million, perhaps many more, people died as a result of foolish agrarian policy, but they were not killed intentionally. The Chinese communists were trying to build up the economy, not starve their own constituents. When Mao and the leadership understood what was happening, they changed policies and actually eliminated a lot of diseases, trained doctors for the poor, and also finally ended famine for good after hundreds of famines in imperial chinese history. I am not a Mao fan, but it's not a black and white record: life expectancy nearly doubled under Mao, and by the end of his tenure (36 to 66) . Meanwhile, education, the economy and infrastructure grew each year except for the 3 around the GLF. The communists introduced at least some pockets of self rule, land reform, and bits of (flawed ) democracy into a country that didn't have any before then. In fact, some persecutions of this time were the poor farmer majority calling for "justice" for centuries of abuse, with the communists following their lead just as much as vice versa. Killing monks and artists was surely wrong and horrible, but it's also the case that many clergy/temples were not neutral and had taken a side in war and revolution. Even long before the war, there were whole temples that were bandits or worked with local tyrants, corrupt landowners and warlords (again this is no excuse for collective punishment for the crimes of the few, the point is to illustrate how such issues could blow up into tragedy once the majority had a say). Speaking of fictional histories, the grey and messy reality of historical change and cold war conflict is better than cold war mythology from either side. As a point of reference, the british caused the deaths of up to 165 million people in india in one 40 year block, while life expectancy slipped to 21. Unlke in China, this was not from tragically messy attempts at building indian democracy or independence or for anything good, and they didn't try to reverse to course. That doesn't mean saying "the liberals/the british" were just mass murderers is the truth either. There is more to their legacy and contribution to the world that demonizing them obscures from view. People in China generally like Mao for a reason, and it isn't just brainwashing - the rival faction to the Maoists (his enemies) have been running the country for 40 years, they call the cultural revolution a blunder and yet he is still popular. Why? Because despite plenty of bad actions, the communists also accomplished things . The Chinese nationalists who had lost the war, were not exactly angels in comparison. Good video as always, thank you.

It is silly to talk about internal energy vs external energy. If we believe in the concept of YinYang then there is no such thing as Yin and Yang. Yin cannot exists without Yang and vise versa.