Kelley came up from Tucson the other day to drop his family off at the Science Museum in Downtown Phoenix so we decided to meet up and take the opportunity to get some training in for our next cert (student level six). Since the Science Museum is pretty close to the Phoenix Public Library we just met up there to get some training in and shot some video of a few of the exercises (just to post for fun and discussion).

One thing that never stops amazing me about this art is the depth that's hidden within the deceptively short and simple looking curriculum.

For instance, it took me about two years to go from my level four cert to my level five (stationary spinning hands).  When you look at the ILC syllabus (which my Sifu often calls "the road map to understanding the system"), each stop along the way (i.e. student level) has a single principle that covers the training, and for level five that's to recognize the "changing point of contact", but it took me nearly the FULL two years to recognize the "mechanism of body movement" (like opening and closing at N,E,S,W, and "circle to center" etc.) as well as the importance of timing within the spins (like alternating capturing the upper and lower mass to recognize when it's safe to drop your hand and when not).

So I guess it shouldn't be surprising that it's taken me another two years to really figure out that level six isn't just about spinning with stepping and kicking, but that a major factor of the level six training is recognizing range, section and distance.  This realization was hammered home during the recent intensive retreat while I was working with Alex and Dasha and they showed my things like how the "Ba Gua" stepping should involve moving into your opponents space and retreating steps to maintain your ideal distance.

Spinning Hands with Ba Gua Stepping

If you want to compare, I have three similar clips on this on my youtube channel. The first is just a simple rundown of the very basic stepping pattern of the Ba Gua (Pa Kua) steps.

The second is way cool clip of my Sifu doing some moving step spinning hands with his cousin for a demo for Russian TV. You can see looking at our clip (right) that the harmonization of distance during the steps is a lot more rough

The last is a clip of my Sifu working with me here in Arizona last April during our Spring Workshop.

This particular drill was one of the key things still not up to standard for my cert.

Kicking while spinning is also another major weakness I need to polish before I can get my level six (mainly learning to kick without needing to shift the weight to the post leg), and I actually feel this is the worst of the three things Sifu told me to work on so I didn't even bother trying to catch any video of Kelley and I working on that.

Range and Section

This second clip shows a little bit of a drill I worked a lot on with Alex the day before I left the retreat.

It involves a lot of opening and closing to change range and section (i.e. moving from wrist contact, to elbow and body contact and back). 

This one is a ton of fun to train, as you can just spin and "slice" to change section or you can add an element of sticky hand in that when opponent isn't full you can slap the body or leg and they can use open and close to nuetralize.  You can also train to grab the joints themselves as you grab.  The hard part is to stay within the drill (spinning) and not start playing sticky hands.

I've got sort of a wave going on in my body in this clip at times when I try to nuetralize Kelley's slicing which I think shows a good coordination of all the joints, but is also something that is part of the level six cert, which is knowing when to "break off a joint". 

In other words, up to here we focus a lot on "meeting" the opponents force and using the power of the structure (skeleton), but here we now have to learn to relax a section and "break it off" from the structure without collapsing or losing fullness.

About Ashe

Ashe currently trains and teaches the Chinese martial art of I Liq
Chuan as well as martial arts based fitness in the Phoenix and Tempe
region of Arizona. If you'd like to get in touch with him, you can contact him here or call 602-751-7003.