Bollyball

Bollyball is a great game in which to practice  relaxation and root. The action is live: it's not just a stationary target such as a heavy bag. The game also provides an opportunity to practice balanced kicking and ambidextrous kicking and striking.

Simple rules to heighten the competition between unequal competitors? Retrieve on one, two or three bounces. The first serve must touch the front wall. After that, any wall counts. If you hit the ball and it bounces back into yourself, that's a lost point. If the other person hits you with the ball, that's a let. If the other person hits you with the ball, and it then hits the wall, the ball is still in play!. The games ends at 15.

Real handball is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fp3d5Sik_sQ&feature=g-hist

Of course, they only use one wall!

Biellmann Spin: rotation of the vertical center line.

The Biellman spin is a staple for ending performances in figure skating. In the bottom picture, a friend of my daughter's is doing a Biellman spin. She hasn't been on skates for a couple of years, but you can see how the rotation of the centreline must be precise or she quickly spins off to a calamitous ending! She is playing on three Lazy Suzans, 16 inch ballbearing spinners sandwiched between a couple of plywood circles. By stepping from one Lazy Susan to the other, you will perfect your vertical rotational balance and make more precise your walking The spinning practice will strengthen the ankle, hip and waist muscles, which in turn will improve your push hands practice. 

The dance with the umbrella adds a top-weighted resistance to play with. The base of the umbrella handle rotates 360 degrees so the umbrella can always spin against the push of the wind. Again, it's a superlative balance exercise. 

repetitive separation kick exercise

Ideally, chasing the ball is unnecessary. If you don't stay in your three foot circle and maintain  constant rebound height (and placement), what usually happens is what you see in the video. You chase the ball!

Despite the chase, this practice tests balance and rooting. On a good strike, sense the pointed toe of the kicking foot, formally named the separation kick. On a good strike, sense the relaxation in the body. The shoulders sit in their girdle; the weighted foot stands immoveable. The hands could move to any position to connect with another's opposing arms. While the groin muscles and the hamstrings stretch, the quads continually contract.  This is a great exercise that comes in handy if in push hands you both agree to use the feet.

Hacky sack next?

Find me: blind walking and connectivity

Here's an exercise by Frank Doss from Shizenden Ryu Matsukaze Dojo  at http://matsukazedojo.blogspot.ca/

Eyes closed: This is an exercise to practice balanced walking, and of course, listening. Your partner is walking you backward, forward and in circles in attempt to confuse your rooted walking patterns. Always keep your space intact. Always follow her movement pattern. Do not in this exercise attempt to redirect her movement. Follow.... and then she drops the second contact hand. Find me!

Receiving, connecting and imparting.

The hardness of the receiving arm determines the amount of bounce: the harder the arm, the more bounce and the less connectivity. Push hands is about connectivity, balance, relaxation and root. The ball is a great practice toy, similar but unlike a real person's arm attempting to penetrate your personal space.

 The great benefit to t'ai chi is we  can apply its principles to any activity...especially one that is as much fun as wall boxing with sort of squash rules!

THE ART OF TAIJI BOXING (TAIJI QUAN SHU)

An  excellent translator of material on tai chi, bagua and xingye is the material by Brennan:

http://brennantranslation.wordpress.com/2012/03/21/the-art-of-taiji-boxing-taiji-quan-shu/

In 1909, I began to hear about Taiji Boxing, thanks to Zhang Lishi and Li Binfu. For more than eight years, Chen Weiming learned from Yang Chengfu of Guangping, and he repeatedly invited me to take part but nothing came of it. Then not longafter, Yang Chengfu travelled south, but Chen Weiming also knew Sun Lutang. I felt I was too old and it would be too difficult to learn, and Sun told me: “Don’t worry. When it comes to internal styles of boxing, if you can breathe you can learn.” My motivation was greatly roused, and I and Chen went to consult Yang Shaohou. A few months later, Shaohou’s younger brother, Chengfu, returned from the south, and we switched to learn from him.
     Now more than six years later, I have seen students come and go, some who have work at it, others who have given up, but Chen and I have promised each other that we will never interrupt our training. During the winters the training has made us too warm to wear our coats and in the summers our pores have poured, but we have never felt a sense of hardship. We have suffered injury from sparring and repeatedly succumbed to inefficient rigidity during the exercises, but we have never felt disgraced.
     The solo set is the foundation and the pushing hands is the function. In the beginning, you will follow along with the movements, precisely imitating them, and that is all. After a long time you will develop the ability to never disconnect from your opponent, then after a further time to be able to keep yourself from using resistance against him. Between operating as a whole and as many parts, gradually you will function in an organized way.
     What is especially difficult is for partners to stick to each other. Then they must work at positioning. Positioning is a matter of making distinction between smooth and coarse, moving with and moving against, and strength and weakness. With positioning grasped, they must work at direction, be it up or down, direct or at an angle. When you get it, it is like shooting a bullet. When you miss it, it is like shaking a tree. With direction grasped, they must work at timing. If I am early, my posture will not finish. If I am late, he will sense what I am doing and adjust. If you obtain all three of these things, then also your movement will achieve subtlety, your issuing will achieve suddenness, and your drawing in will achieve extending him. While I can know this in my heart and declare it with my mouth, I am still unable to be skillful with my hands. I see so many who practice it but they are all unable to be a match for Yang Chengfu, and yet he still talks of himself in comparison with his uncles, father, grandfather, and how there are certainly things he has not yet grasped, then sighs at how deep and broad the art is. When I consider what this art means to myself, it has two purposes:
     1. Everyone nowadays is aware that it is a means for nourishing the body. Mr. Xu of the Ministry of Communications is sixty this year, he had a hacking cough and was short of breath, but then he practiced this art and now he walks as if he is flying. A young man by the name of Du was an emaciate asthmatic but then he learned this art from his uncle and he is now an athletic boy. Others who have learned a mere section of it or even just one of its postures have been affected by it. I cannot say enough about it. This exercise is a case of pros without cons, and therefore it is something that would be wise to look into.
     2. What people nowadays are not yet very aware of is that it is a means for nourishing the emotions. Our problem is that we are superficial and in a hurry, and so we rely on strength and get lost in our emotions. The key to Taiji Boxing is: “energy sinking to the elixir field” and “mind calm and spirit concentrated”.
     The student first trains body, then mind, then spirit. The one with depth of skill reads the one with shallow skill, the one who is still controls the one who moves, and the one who is soft defeats the one who is hard. At its best, it can deal with a situation, and at its least, it can keep you from getting hurt. Therefore it makes no difference as to young or old, civil or martial, man or woman, all can learn, and all should learn. Each student will get from it what suits them, and even if they do not get what they expect, they are sure to get something useful out of it, and this is why I am overjoyed to talk about it. Yang Chengfu selected me as one to say something knowledgeable about the theory, to write a preface to The Art of Taiji Boxing and the mix of its ideas as I have stated above.
     – sincerely written by Xu Siyun of Wujin, summer, 1925

ARTICLE CONTINTUES........

tai chi push hands: connecting through the blind fold

It's a practice well compared between with and without free vision. With the blindfold, feetwork can get sloppy. The ball 'disappears' suddenly from beneath our fingertips. We lose our balance. Reactivity replaces responsiveness.

Tai chi Push hands: making the connection with your partner

Make a continuous connection to the fence through the ball. When you do your form, sense that you are pushing the ball against the fence in the same manner as you would sense that you were working with an opponent.

speed boxing against the fence

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ix4JwOWMz8k&feature=channel&list=UL

Reflexes, foot placement, spacing and intent all help to determine the speed of the ball returning from the fence....all this and it's a great aerobic exercise which is a necessary addition to any tai chi chuan practice.

Chan Master Guo Jun Fashi, and tai chi

One of the things I've done since attending a Master Guo Jun (Chan/Zen) retreat at the Hermitage on Denman Island is to change the format of the tai chi class. There is still the  two person practice of push hands  but for teaching the form, I've started a 'counting the breath/counting the movement' practice. So rather than 'single whip’, the name of the form transforms to a mindful routine of 1012-1013-1014-1015, the number sequence evident if all the movements were numbered from the first movement of raising the arms in the first form and where each movement is a movement breakdown of the term 'single whip'. 

And rather than teach the left side then the right side form, I now teach a sequence movement to the left, back to center, then a mirror movement sequence to the right. It is kind of fun to practice…and extremely disconcerting when the thousand-and fortieth movement on the right does is not the same as the thousand-and-forty-first movement as the initial left side movement. Hmmm? What movement did I add? Where about in the sequence did I lose my mindfulness? Also the breathing attached to the movement is a return to earlier teachers' methods in tai chi where the breath and the movement are synchronized. 

Now the breath, the movement and the mind will be sequenced.

The principle that now underpins the form will now be in Master Guo Jun’s words, “relax, return and reconcile”.

In added weeks, as a complement to tai chi form and push hands, there will be more specific lessons in relaxation techniques. Still too many of us are chest breathers rather than belly breathers; too many of us are carrying the physical/emotional barriers of previous moments and still all of us need to reflect and then act upon the connection between our body, our mind and the practice of tai chi.

How do we move from the conceptual demand to “JUST RELAX” to a real embodied relaxed body and mind, and after much, much, much more practice, the resting state, a state of profound relaxation described by both Tibetan and Chan Buddhists?

Well, that’s why we’re here at Lewis Park, to just practice.

So Welcome. And you can check out a Chan Master Guo Jun Fashi talk at 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlAdShz6XbU&feature=relmfu

tai chi and wall boxing with a gymnastics ball

Boxing against the fence?  There is no distance bounce to the ball so it must be up close and it turns out to be very fast in order to keep the ball at a chest to waist height. Above the head is no good and below the waist allows action of the feet. Essentially this is an up and close in encounter with lots of aerobic action. Always pay attention to relaxation in the upper half of the body and 'rootedness' in the legs. It's a good idea to experiment with lots of foot placement and notice how it affects the upper body and the distribution of hits. Always avoid double weighting in the feet.

tai chi wall boxing

This game can get right silly with two people. Imagine a squash court.

tai chi wall boxing: feet and hands

Timing, balance and the ball always comes back if it's centred on the hit. Otherwise, it flies too high or too wide and if continued, there occurs a double weighted conundrum. "Oh oh" can't move to get the ball in time.

More push hands

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T16uJ-Rnux4&feature=plcp

There are several videos on Youtube that

Shizenden Ryu Matsukaze Dojo

has posted. Other martial art stylists are starting to discover benefits and difficulties that their own style presents in working with push hands as a vehicle of learning. Email me at adrian2@shaw.ca. We usually meet Friday mornings 10:15 or 12:15 at the tennis courts, Lewis Park; under the shelter or in one of the gyms. No charge. 

freestyle push hands

June 8, 2012

Joe and frank test out their philosophies and learnings about push hands.

Just enough pressure on the ball against the fence to allow movement...sticking...a useful practice for push hands.....

absorption practice: no turning off, no deflecting

absorption practice, no turning, no deflecting...

absorption practice, no turning off, no deflecting...

loosening exercise

In these videos, the focus is not upon power hitting but correctly lining up behind the centre of the moving ball and spiralling the contact point (the fist, the fingers, the forearm, the feet, knees, elbows etc) toward the centre of the ball. Hit it indirectly, and the ball goes off to the side, up high, too low. Hit it incorrectly using force and the impact sounds superficial as compared to a low resounding THUD and the impact resonates up through the appendage (arm) to ricochet back and forth in the joint proximal to the hitting surface. OUCH! Rotation of the relaxed body (sung in chinese)  transmits the power, rather than muscular force. The skill is to allow the integrity of the completely relaxed structure of the body to power the ball forward. The impact never, never, never hurts then and both feet stay flat to the floor (unless of course it's a kick.)

The other skill that the ball practice develops is timing. The ball returns from the wall at a height and at a distance that is never quite right if you are setting the body up in advance to hit the ball. So when it would be advantageous to hit the ball with the fist, sometimes the knee or a kick is the only method to return the ball with power because the ball is the wrong height. 

What really tests the skills of this exercise is another person returning the ball. A squash court is the perfect place to play. And we can practically use the same rules, except when one person is in front, it's quite all right to send the ball careening into the other person. It never hurts because the ball is so huge, and it tests the 'rootedness' of the player being hit.