April 13, 2008 by george.

Well, we’ve been working on ma xing - the horse form - in Xingyiquan for about 4 months now. We’ve taken it apart in many different ways and have worked on power, timing, variations on stepping, performing it with smooth and cross steps, worked with fists, elbows and shoulders, and discussed control, sticking, setting things up, distance, and much more. Its been a wonderful thing for me to explore in this depth. I understood the concept and could use it on an intuitive level, as it was in my body. But… to use a metaphor my teacher uses often, my horse form was still in the “zipped” form alike a computer file. I had not logically dissected it, broken it apart, taken each piece out and shown it clearly in teaching. So the process of teaching this form, in this amount of depth, has been a great experience for me as well. I just wanted to say thanks to all of you who have been with me on the ride. (And if you’ve been skipping out of these classes - you missed a ton!)

Yesterday (Saturday) we spent quite a bit of time working on a certain aspect of application and principle. We talked a bit about having seen this idea before in other arts and I mentioned having seen Chuck Liddell using and teaching something similar. A student also mentioned seeing Rocky Marciano using the technique as well.

Here’s a video I found on youtube with Chuck Liddell teaching his version of this concept: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqf42bsTXnY

And, for what it’s worth, you’ll also see this concept in our bagua houtian later.

Hope you all are enjoying this and getting a lot out of it!

Best, George

Posted in Xingyiquan | 2 Comments »

April 9, 2008 by george.

Here’s a video that a school brother of mine put up on youtube with Luo laoshi’s five elements.

Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ld3ek8i9pT4

Posted in Xingyiquan | 2 Comments »