The Shrine

<div style='font: 12pt Draconwick; text-align: left; '>Damn! Have to see "The One" with Jet Lee. Just saw a trailer for it... must see...</div>

<div style='font: 11pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light"; text-align: left; '>Looks like Jet Li with bullet time!</div>

<div style='font: 12pt Draconwick; text-align: left; '>It had him pick up a motercycle and use it as a weapon... and it looked real!</div>

<div style='font: 11pt arial; text-align: left; '>Any movie where Jet Li beats some guy's ass with a motorcycle is automatic gold</div>

<div style='font: 10pt Arial; text-align: left; '>I'll be first in line around here. I don't care how goofy it ends up being, Jet Li is a bad ass when he's all knocking over light posts and shit.</div>

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>There will be two main "styles" of kung fu portrayed in this movie. The good Li will use a style called <b>BaGua Zhang</b>, or "eight trigrams palm." This is an "internal style" similar to Tai Chi in it's utilization of energy (in fact all internal styles utilize energy in similar matters, hence classifying them as internal). It is characteristically circular and non-direct. Practitioners practice "circle walking" as a means to develop this circular energy. A <b>BaGua</b> practitioner seeks never to confront an opponent head on, but instead, "circle" around and attacking the weaker areas of an opponent's structure. This is not to say that a <b>BaGua</b> practitioner dances around his opponent like an idiot. It means that an opponent's incoming force is directed around the practitioner so that the practitioner is never in line with the force. The <b>BaGua</b> practitioner then attacks at will at the unguarded portion of the opponent's structure.

The evil Li practices another internal style called <b>XingYi Quan</b>, or "Form Mind Boxing." In contrast to <b>BaGua</b>, <b>XingYi</b> is linear. Practitioners seek to attack the opponent in the most direct manner possible, namely, a straight line. It meets the opponent head on, and seeks to overwhelm the opponent through internal power and efficiency of movement.

It should be quite obvious as to why Jet Li chose to have the good guy practice <b>BaGua</b> and the bad guy practice <b>XingYi</b>. This should make for a very interesting fight choreography for us martial arts enthusiasts. However, one should recognize a strict line between fantasy and reality. In reality, neither <b>BaGua</b> nor <b>XingYi</b> teaches its practitioners to kick down light posts or to bash people with motorcycles. There is evidently a lot of wire work and special effects in this movie, but at least we should see something resembling a fight between linearity and circularity.

Why should you care? Well screw you if you don't. I had fun writing it.

Zhuge Liang</div>

<div style='font: bold 10pt arial; text-align: left; '>Well, I mean "bullet time" like the Max Payne game.</div>

<div style='font: 11pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light"; text-align: left; '>I was thinking about joining a martial arts program sometime in the future, not primarly to learn martial arts, but more on a focus of the mind, and developing ki and concentration. As a side effect, it would be great exercise and good lessons in self defense. I thought of the more passive arts like Tai Chi, but I didn't realize that they actually catagorized the arts by mind vs body.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt Draconwick; text-align: left; '>Well... seeing that the whole premise of the movie is outside of reality (I think the main setting is in a computer) then the lightpost and motorcycle thing are better explained.</div>

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>...although it isn't really a strong distinction. Many external arts, at their highest level, become internalized. It's just that you start out using external "muscular" power. Actually, I'm pretty sure internal artists use muscular power too, but not in the normal sense. To many they consider this sort of power chi or ki.

I'm going to make a bastard attempt to summarize the differences between external and internal styles. According to the external philosophy, in order to hit someone harder, you must be stronger. So if you do a normal punch, what muscle groups do you use? Perhaps your wrist, triceps, shoulders, chest, and waist. So how do you become stronger? Get bigger/stronger muscles of course. IMO, it's sort of a "brute force" way to tackling the problem of hitting harder.

Internal stylists also want to hit harder. But instead of gaining more muscle to gain more strength, they prefer to maximize the use of the muscles they already have. The power behind their punches comes from the leg all the way up through to the fingers. It's a very coordinated use of all their muscles working as efficiently as possible to deliver a blow. Tai Chi practitioners sometimes refer to this as "chan shi jing", or silk reeling power. What they mean is that the energy starts from the ground, and propagates up through the body (from leg to hips to torso to arms to fingers) in a spiralic manner, so that they literally hit with the force of their entire bodies. This is why you have stories of small kung fu masters being able bounce off people much bigger than they. If you think about it, your legs will always be much stronger than your arms, so it makes more sense (to me at least) to utilize that energy rather than to just get bigger arm muscles. The upshot of this is that you develop "root." Because their power starts from their legs, internal stylists are very stable and it is not at all easy to off-balance them. As a result of their training, their upper body is connected to their lower body, so applying any sort of force on them is like applying force to the ground. You can try pushing the ground to see if it goes anywhere. External stylists, on the other hand, don't train to have that connection between the upper and lower body, so it's fairly easy to off balance them. It is extremely difficult for a Judo guy to throw a competant Tai Chi guy.

It all sounds nice, but there's a catch. It's much easier said than done to train your body to work this way. While anyone can throw a punch, not everyone can coordinate their bodies so that they utilize all their strength from ground up. It takes a lot of practice. Whereas a Muay Thai guy can become a decent fighter in as little as one or two years, it takes a Tai Chi guy up to ten or more years or more to <i>really</i> be able to use "internal" force. The learning curve is ridiculously high. A lot of it has to do with training your body not to work against itself, which it naturally does. That's why the "mind" in trained. But don't fret. While you train, you get all the health benefits that come with this sort of training. Training to be calm, to be relaxed, to be coordinated, to have balance, etc. will do wonders for your health. Because you utilize every part of your body, you exercise every part of your body. The advertised health benefits of Tai Chi are very real. Also, unlike external stylists, internal force doesn't really diminish with age. Whereas a Muay Thai guy is in his prime in his 20's and 30's, a Tai Chi guy is in his prime in his late 50's, 60's, and 70's. That is not to say you have to be 50 years old to be able to use Tai Chi, it just means that you can't really "max out" your training. Wang Xiang Zai, founder of the internal style of "YiQuan" (Intention Boxing), pretty much kicked everyone's as before he was 20. As he got older, he only got better. There was never really threat of a younger, stronger, faster, upstart beating him.

Anyway, I rambled long enough, and I've got work to do. It should be obvious that I'm fairly biased towards internal styles. I use to train Hapkido, which is considered external, and now I train in Wing Chun, which is internal, from the way my teacher teaches it. I also did a little bit of Tai Chi a few months back. But there are benefits to external styles, and I wouldn't recommend internal styles absolutely. For instance, if your goal is self defense, and you need/want to learn it fast, I suggest you go with boxing, Muay Thai, or Brazilian Jujitsu. If you want to lose weight, you should also go external (although it would probably be cheaper to just jog your fat ass around the block). If you want any advice (not that I'm qualified, but I have done a fair amount of research so my opinions <i>might</I> have some merit) regarding martial arts, don't hesitate to ask. As you can tell, I like to talk about martial arts. A lot.

Zhuge Liang</div>

<div style='font: 11pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light"; text-align: left; '>Hey, explain away. I find the subject very intriguing. What kind of mental tests do they train you on?</div>

<div style='font: 11pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light"; text-align: left; '>You pretty much have to be inside a computer to have a good action movie nowadays.</div>

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>it's a matter of training your body to move and to apply force without using muscular energy. It's a matter to totally relaxing your body. It's also a lot harder than it sounds. If you don't believe me, try to have someone (preferably someone bigger than you) stand firm in front of you. Your task is to push this person so that he steps back. If you feel any sort of tension or strain any where in your body, you've done it wrong. If you lean into him, you've done it wrong. If you so much as breath more heavily than normal, you've done it wrong. When you can connect your entire body (and the only way to do this is through total relaxation, among other things), you should be able to just walk through the person and the person won't be able to resist you.

How do you train your body like that? Again, the key is total relaxation. For instance, a large part of Tai Chi training is simply just standing. You stand in a particular posture for 30 minutes to half an hour at a time, and train yourself to relax. The more you do this, the more you will be aware of the subtle energies in your body and the more you'll be able to relax. This is the "mind training" that you mentioned. It's very much internal development. You learn "be one" with your mind and body.

It sounds very spiritual, I'm sure, but I'm not talking about religion. It's more like a process to understand yourself and your own body.

Zhuge Liang</div>

<div style='font: 11pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light"; text-align: left; '>Hmmm...train me, oh sensei! :)</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>I think this stuff is pretty facinating too. Got any website references that I can check out?</div>

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>more than you can shake a stick at. do you have a specific interest?</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>Guess I'll need more sticks. First I'd heard any distinction this specific. Since the discussion started with Tai Chi, can you post some references on that then?</div>

<div style='font: 14pt "Sans Serif"; text-align: justify; padding: 0% 15% 0% 15%; '>So I take it that crushing opponents with a motorcycle is BaGua Zhang style? :P</div>