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How to Drop a Big Guy

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In my opinion, the trained martial artist is always going to be able to beat an untrained street fighter.
-Horrible kick boxer I briefly sparred with in college.

A common mistake that martial artists make (and is unfortunately propagated in schools) is to envision easily defeatable attackers. Usually this imaginary attacker is about your height and weight and buckles under the onslaught of your counter attack.

You’ve met this guy, right? You see him when you are working your stuff solo.

If you are an average sized person (ie people don’t consistently talk about how big and tall you are) then preparing for an attacker your size is… risky. What if an attacker is bigger and taller than you?

Something that people don’t often consider is that a person who has a significant weight advantage (think 50 lbs and over) can usually weather hits from a smaller person pretty well. Their mass eats up a lot of the force. If you don’t believe me, go find a big guy and start punching him. You’ll see what I mean.

The gist is, even if you are fit and strong, sometimes it’s just not possible to generate the force needed to take out a big guy like this. The big guy, however, does not have the same problem with you.

What to do?

You need to go internal.

There are a variety of tools and skills you can build that will help generate the power to even the field between weight classes. One such skill is to put your whole body weight into every hit. This requires you to line up your joints so that when a hit is delivered, your body weight transfers through the strike.

To get an idea of what effect this has on the other person, consider the following:

You weigh 155 lbs. If you lift weights, that’s a bar with a 45 lb and a 10 lb weight on each side. Imagine picking up that bar and throwing it at a big guy like a spear. How many people do you think are going to shake off that kind of impact?

The difference between you and the bar is that when the bar hits, all the weight is transferred. When you hit, because you are mostly water and human architecture is more complex is more complex than a steel rod, not all the weight goes through. Lining up your structure for a hit gives you an effect similar to throwing the bar at the person. When it hits all together, it hits hard. If you can transfer your weight through your hit, you can penetrate the larger person’s mass and have serious impact.

The Knockout Striking Package is a five DVD set that will give you exercises to help train your structure so you can deliver whole body power with every shot. It also has tons of information on how to train your hit for maximum impact to give you an edge in a serious attack. Many applications and drills are taught so that you can easily see how to apply these skills.

How to Build Explosive Power & Tendon Strength.

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You hear a lot about how kung fu styles, both internal and external, focus on building tendon power.

We find that while many practitioners talk about tendon power and have some concept of how to build the tendons, the idea continues to be vague and unclear (especially when it’s being taught). The result is that the practitioner’s development and execution of tendon power is less that what it could be.

Like so many concepts, clarity is key.

In order to safely and effectively use tendon power, you have to build and condition the tendons. Ideally this kind of work goes through the whole body and not just the arms and legs.

The basic idea for accomplishing this is to create a twist (also called a spiral) that runs through the whole body. You can see this twist idea in arts like wing chun, shaolin, xing yi, and bagua.

Picture the basic stance for these arts (and basically any kung fu). You’ll notice that the position has a wrapped, torqued twist running through the body. This is the tendon work. Holding these stances and positions is a basic way to build tendon strength.

So why work the tendons so much? What’s the power advantage tendon strength has over large muscles?

Picture a soaking wet bath towel. If you were to pick up this towel and wring out the water by twisting it, you’ll notice there is a point at which you can’t continue to twist. That’s because the twisting has condensed the towel to a point of maximum density.

This is the same idea as what happens in the body with tendon work. When the body has this twist running through it, the body becomes very condensed and hard. This is one way that, let’s say a xing yi practitioner, can feel like steel. The body becomes extremely dense from the wrapping of the tendons. This twist has to be trained throughout the whole body however. Just like tension in a tai chi practitioner, any place where the twist isn’t happening will be a weak spot.

There’s another major benefit to tendons though, and that is that they explode.

Picture that you were wringing out a really thick bungee cord the same way you would a towel. What happens when you release the twist?

The cord violently explodes out of its position.

See where this is going?

If you’ve ever watched internal masters explode with a strike and wondered how they were getting this quality, explosion through releasing wrapped tendons is one answer.

Here is one example of how this tendon building and these principles of spiral are used in Wing Chun.

Kuntao Silat and the other arts we practice use these principles in much more dynamic ways and take them to much more advanced places.

If you’re interested in developing this explosive tendon power, Clear Knockout Striking package has training that will show you how to develop this skill. You will learn how to correctly position yourself and create this tendon spiral throughout the body so that you can explode into your strikes (along with lots of other fantastic power principles for generating serious power).

The Knockout Striking Package will be on sale May 24th – 26th.

Take your time when working on building your tendons the same way you if you started serious jogging or weight lifting. Just like anything else, they will need some time to adjust to the work you’re putting them through.

Be Here Now

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Distractions can be wonderful.

They can relieve you from boredom, help pass the time, and take your mind off of life stressors.

A distraction is basically anything that takes your mind off of something undesirable that’s happening right now and puts it on something more desirable and far removed.

If there’s one thing modern humans have become masters of, it is self-distraction.

Our favorite tool for distracting ourselves is, of course, smartphones. These handy-dandy devices help us to take our minds off of what is undesirable and immediate to what is desirable and distant.

They are the perfect distraction tool.

While this isn’t awful in and of itself, there are problems with doing this all the time.

What can happen is that the brain can become trained to be somewhere else… on something else… far away from what is happening right now… constantly.

We can become pathologically distracted.

We are no longer able to experience the present moment.

At best, this pathology takes us away from quality reflective and social time.

At worst, it can cause us to miss small, significant details that can change our lives. (like a person creeping up behind us as we walk home at night)

Distractions take our mind off of the present where we are able to produce an effect…

And puts our mind on something distant where we are powerless to produce an effect.

So how do we regain the capability to be present and have influence over what’s happening right now?

It’s really not that complicated.

All that needs to happen is for you to focus in on something that is happening right now. Then you need to train this ability until you can do it whenever you want.

This ability is often referred to as “Be Here Now.” Tai Chi has some fantastic training for helping you overcome your pathological inability to experience the present moment.

This training, however, comes with additional martial perks that you don’t normally get with some of the more common Be Here Now training.

It’s also very important in building the advanced healing skills we teach at the Fa Kung Healing workshops.

If you missed the one at the end of April, look for the next Fa Kung Healing workshop coming in November (stay tuned for details.)

Here’s Sigung Clear showing some of the “Be Here Now” training we do in Tai Chi Level 2:

New videos from Sigung Clear’s intermediate Tai Chi classes are posted every Friday, but we don’t always have room to talk about them in this newsletter.

Subscribe to the Clear’s Internal Combat Arts Youtube channel so you don’t miss any.

https://www.youtube.com/user/kuntaosilat

Stay safe,
Jared Voelker

Which Meditation Method is the Best?

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I once attended a free introductory seminar to a meditation technique. The speaker described the meditation you’ve all heard of where you stare at a candle flame. “This is not meditation,” he said. He went on to describe the approach to meditation he had been taught.

Really? That’s not meditation?

A separate encounter I had with a professor.

“You practice meditation?”

“Yes.”

“Which meditation have you found to be the best?”

Both of these situations illustrate a common misunderstanding regarding meditation.

They both have, as an assumption, that there is a single optimum meditation that is “the one,” all others being pale imitations of the real thing…

This is not how it works.

Think of meditation like physical exercise. Which exercise is “the one?” Which one gives you the optimum benefits?

Good luck picking just one.

Just like exercises, different meditations offer you different benefits. The reality is that in order to have a well rounded set of benefits, you’ll need several different meditations.

The best answer for my professor’s question would be (and was) “It depends on what you want to develop.”

Are you trying to build energy? Develop a soft flexible mind? Train your mind intent into a laser that you aim at your opponent (like in Xing Yi)? Build sensitivity to another person’s mind intent (like in Tai Chi)?

Try picking one single meditation that will simultaneously and equally build all qualities (and all other benefits you might gain from other meditations). As far as we know, it doesn’t exist.
So, similar to when you exercise, keep in mind that different meditations will give you different benefits and qualities. Try to notice the overall benefits for each one. This helps you fine tune and accelerate your training, to be in control of your progress.

Clear Tai Chi Online course contains a multitude of meditations, both still and moving with a Tai Chi set, that will help you develop a variety of abilities and perceptions like the ones listed above.

These meditations will help you build energetic power (Nei Gung meditations), a calm perceptive mind (Be Here Now), and the ability to listen inside another person’s body (Ting Jing).

Best of all?

Clear, concise explanation and instruction for each meditation.

If you’re interested in checking out this online program, the first 14 days is only $5. This gives you a chance to explore the curriculum and get an idea for just how much material is contained in the online course (there’s a lot).

https://www.clearmartialarts.com/clears-tai-chi-online/

Stay safe,
Jared Voelker

How Sparring Can Fail You (and what to do about it.)

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A lot of times kung fu practitioners catch flak from other stylists who claim that the sparring methods we use aren’t practical.

To fully address this, we have to look at what sparring is.

First, sparring is not fighting. Nothing that we as practitioners do is fighting (unless we’re fighting).

I hope this makes sense.

We have families for goodness’ sake. If we actually fought, as Kuntao practitioners, we would draw blades and end up killing each other.

Unless you’re Musashi, you’re chances of developing skill with this method are slim.

Everything we do from forms, to techniques, to games, and sparring are all isolated pieces of actual fighting. We break down skills and abilities into compartments called drills (or sparring) so that we can build fighting skill without having to actually fight. If you’ve trained all the pieces for fighting, even if in separate compartments, you can put everything together and have serious fighting ability.

The problem is that many stylists (including kung fu practitioners) don’t train all the pieces. These folks sometimes enter exchanges with serious fighters and just can’t hang with them. This results in suspicion regarding kung fu training practices (as it should).

This doesn’t mean that you have to resort to full power bare-knuckle fighting, you just have to plug in the holes in your approach.

Sticky hands is a good example. If all you train is close range sticky hands, there is probably a hole in your ability to navigate a decent entry for someone who is keeping distance and being cagey. It doesn’t mean your sticky hands won’t work, there just might be a hole you need to plug up to round everything out.

Having a complete, well rounded approach to sparring is vital for transferring the skills you practice into real life application.

Complete sparring methods that impart ALL the qualities a practitioner needs to transfer what they do in the school to the street can be difficult to find. That’s why Master Clear developed The Art of Sparring for Self Defense. The two disc set is loaded with information and method for how to adequately pressure test your art for live attack situations.

…and it’s just one of the videos in the Clear Defense Instructor Package that contains everything you need to become a Clear’s Silat Instructor (except the hard work. You have to supply that yourself.)

Stay safe,
Jared Voelker