Whats you Favorite Martial Art and Why, page 3

Stance – this is the dominating place power comes from. A good stance is immobile to force that is applied to the line the stance is on, in other words you can be in a stance that can’t be broken, but if one were to push you from another angle you are fully vulnerable to being knocked down. Every art and sport uses it to define the strength it takes to withstand the force of another. You can even use stances as an attack called a “check” by moving into someone stance and then tighten yours up and they go flying.

Most arts have stance exercises and thee are unlimited stances. There are stances that are even applied when you are on the ground. Some stances are so difficult you have to train the body for years before you can even find strength to withstand force while in it such as one legged stances. Kicks are a bad idea unless you have stance.

One of the primary methods of advancing a stance from hard to soft is called sinking, which also radically strengthens a hard stance. Imagine approaching a bathroom scale and using just one foot to try and exert pressure on the scale to see how much weight you can apply. When you put both feet on the scale and push down into the ground with both your feet, and the scale measures a higher weight, you are sinking.

By being able to do it consistently a 100 pound person can get on a scale and sink then hold it, and the scale will measure 110 pounds consistently (for instance). Someone good at sinking can stand in a normal posture with no stance, then sink and he is considerably harder to push over from any direction.

Palms – this is basically the posture the upper body is in while in a stance, striking or even in meditation. Some people confuse palm with the position of the hands, and yes that is part of it but the whole upper body is the palm. Iron palm and other hand training techniques are not palms although they contain palms. For instance in bagua there are 8 palms, each representing a certain posture. Each posture can be used in a yin or yang fashion and you can even use both, which is called the tai chi palm because it contains both yin and yang. Notice that Tai Chi Chuan is almost always using yin with one hand and yang with the other because this is the core of the system.

Boxing – also called the pugilistic arts, and it looks as if it is simply striking with the hands all the various ways you can imagine. It is more than that because it is the core of most of the holistic practices in the arts. Acupuncture, acupressure, and Dim Mak are good examples of what is employed via the pugilistic art. You can use an accupoint for hurting as well as healing. The pugilistic art is about the physics of a punch as well as the location and the desired effect. IMHO this is the most deadly part of the core principles as the rest are supportive. Hurting with accupoints is a yang practice while healing with them is a yin application. Professional boxing is mean, and it uses these principles in a controlled setting. Most people think martial arts and boxing are separate, but I disagree.
Kicking is also part of the pugilistic arts in application.

Chin Na – this is simply grappling, locking, and throwing. There is a chin na forms for every part of the body. Finger, wrist, forearm, elbow, shoulder, neck, head, back, waist, leg, feet, and some that involve the whole body. Each of these categories has many many different applications in chin na. Squeezes are also a part of chin na and are really mean, and the accupoints are used almost always. Grab a hold of your love handles and give it a good squeeze and you will see what I mean. It’s really painful.

Ukemi – the art of falling down and getting up. Good for any art, necessary in some. Drunken boxing and sage monkey kung fu are really good examples of Ukemi as a combat art. Aikido, Ju-Jitsu, and judo (and others) teach it because it is necessary to perform the art safely.

...continued below