I've spent a lot of years doing both "internal" and "external" arts.
Even though I've always 'known better', I've still been tossed on my ass more than a handful of times by a soft arts practitioner, once or twice by a guy who was almost 80 years old.
It's an interesting thing, you can get tossed around for a couple of reasons:
One, you can be a subconsciously willing partner - even if you don't realize it, you want your partner to succeed because it validates what you're spending your time doing.
And two, your partner cheats and uses force in a sly way.
Taiji, Xingyi and Bagua guys are absolute masters at body mechanics. After lots of years spent practicing, they know as much about body leverage as a lot of judo guys. It can be shocking, and your body often won't realize what's happened because it encounters an overload - there's a foot and two hands touching you all of the sudden, and your brain doesn't know what to make of the sudden stimulus when you're already in a mentally stressed state. I honestly don't think that a lot of the practitioners even realize it, hence the devotion to "chi flow".
I've spent many many years studying kinetics as it relates to power generation, and the internal artists are amazingly good at it; it's just not immediately obvious what they are doing.
Even though I've always 'known better', I've still been tossed on my ass more than a handful of times by a soft arts practitioner, once or twice by a guy who was almost 80 years old.
It's an interesting thing, you can get tossed around for a couple of reasons:
One, you can be a subconsciously willing partner - even if you don't realize it, you want your partner to succeed because it validates what you're spending your time doing.
And two, your partner cheats and uses force in a sly way.
Taiji, Xingyi and Bagua guys are absolute masters at body mechanics. After lots of years spent practicing, they know as much about body leverage as a lot of judo guys. It can be shocking, and your body often won't realize what's happened because it encounters an overload - there's a foot and two hands touching you all of the sudden, and your brain doesn't know what to make of the sudden stimulus when you're already in a mentally stressed state. I honestly don't think that a lot of the practitioners even realize it, hence the devotion to "chi flow".
I've spent many many years studying kinetics as it relates to power generation, and the internal artists are amazingly good at it; it's just not immediately obvious what they are doing.