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Penetrating defences | ||
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Drills
There are 10 principle 'penetrating defences'
entry methods in our syllabus:
Intercept early
Filing
Squeeze
Slipping
Pluck
Step-behind
Shen
Slanting peng
Separate foot
These drills train the body to
get in close when attacked.
They are not about yielding or withdrawing. They are about advancing.
Thus sages contrive
nothing,
and so spoil nothing.
They cling to nothing,
and so lose nothing.
(Lao Tzu)
Growing
Having made space, you must incapacitate your attacker. Yielding
is only half of the requirement.
Unless you neutralise the attacker, they will continue to assault you.
Advancing can incorporate a number of jing, but the most important one is
'growing'.
Growing is concerned with crowding the attacker, making them feel restricted
and awkward, vulnerable and compromised.
It is important not to oppose the incoming path of force. Move around it.
What is the point?
These drills do not initially make sense to a novice student.
However, to an experienced exponent - faced with an armed attacker - they
make total sense.
Penetrating defences increases your options whilst simultaneously
reducing those of the attacker.
Neutral state
Do not hurry, do not lose your composure.
Glide around the incoming force and assert yourself.
A calm, smooth action is a good demonstration of skill.
Mutual arising
Instead of taking turns, the attack and your counter take place at the same
time.
This is advantageous because it saves time and surprises the attacker.
Balance
So much of taijiquan appears to be concerned with yielding and
letting-go. Yet, if you simply yielded all the time, it would be unbalanced.
Yielding is balanced by penetration.
The training reflects this. It trains you to soften, relax, be
sensitive, use your body and escape.
The syllabus teaches you how to close in.
Stepping deep into your opponents centre is a necessary skill and must be
performed without hesitation or fear.
If you falter - you will fail.
Stepping closer
You cannot defeat an opponent using taijiquan at a distance.
Even our kicking involves getting closer than most other martial arts care
to operate.
Your stepping itself should feel loose and natural.
Centre
Step beneath your opponents centre of gravity.
Step through their vertical centre.
Focus your attention on your tan tien in order to intensify the effect.
Soft
Penetration needs to be gentle and smooth; dreamy.
Coarse, brutal application of force demonstrates no actual skill and
hurried
action shows inexperience.
You must find an opening in your partners defences and gently slide in.
They may not initially be aware of what you are doing, until the groundpath
is felt deep within.
Application
The drills teach the student how to step in close and then
follow-up in a wide variety of functional ways.
Each individual drill puts the student in a unique position relative to the
opponent.
The selection of targets and options are determined by the initial position.
in every case, there is an extremely diverse range logical follow-ups to be
explored.
Should any application be thwarted the student can flow between chin na, shuai jiao and
form applications with ease.
Page created
18 April 1995
Last updated
15 February 2020
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