How do you explain internal vs external?

[David Jamieson]

the more it gets "studied" the more it becomes and even bigger crapfest than it was when it was first pondered or postulated.

Reply]
No, the more you study it the more it becomes clear there are distinct bio mechanical differences. It also becomes clear what those differences are.

pish posh bra. That's a load of hooey.

limbs are limbs, the body is a unit as a whole, it uses and converts and expels and evacuates and consumes etc etc.

you can increase mass, you can decrease mass, you can increase strength and power and you can increase force output with method and practice.

You have one body and it includes all the energies you use, the mind you use, it contains you as a person and your concious thought.

when your body is gone, that's it, you're done and all that's left is someone elses memories.

if we comprehend that, then there simply is no internal/external question and there never was.

[sanjuro_ronin]

External power = Beer belly
Internal power = Gas after Taco Bell

[mantis108]

First, I would ask him/her to do crunches and I would explain that he/she should try a couple dry couching as they are laying on the floor. I would ask them to remember the feeling of the abdominal muscles being activated. Then I would hit his/her belly when the do the crunches with the muscles activated.

Second, I would ask him/her to do a vocalization exercise as if singing in the opera. While he/she activated the vocal cord, I would gently squeeze, those activated muscles near the Adams apple. they will stop vocalizing or even gag once those muscles are grab.

Third, I would demonstrate a rear naked choke on him/her. He/she would feel the blood rushes and tap.

Four, I would ask him/her to put on the gloves, hit the heavy bag for 3 mins and then do a 5 mins round of kickboxing with medium strenght contact with me.

I would then ask then if he/she feels out of air, pain, panic and/or collapsing during all of the above demostrations? If the answer is yes to the all questions, then he/she understand what no Qi means in the martial sense.

Fifth, I would do a cool down sesssion with meditation with him/her. Then I would ask how him/her feels. If they feel great, relax and re-energized, then he/she knows what Qi means in the meditational sense.

So, there is my five-step Qi orientation plan.

Now, shall we focus on training?

Mantis108

[Sicilian Tofu M]

External & Internal is just like Yin & Yang, you can't seperate them. The soft styles have external in it and theirs internal in the hard styles. All styles are at their best in or near the middle of the road.

[cjurakpt]

I would explain to them that, as regards CMA, the whole internal / external thing was something that came into vogue somewhere around the time of Sun Lu Tang, as a way for so-called "internal" stylists to try and convince people that instead of doing aerobic conditioning and resistance training, if you worked on increasing kinesthetic awareness and efficient transfer of ground reaction force through the connective tissue matrix in concert with balanced agonist / antagonist neuromuscular interrelationships, then you would be not only a better fighter, but more importantly live to a ripe old age (as long as you didn't get into fights, LOL); this was based on integration of martial training with Taoist "internal" practice, meaning specific cultivation designed to activate certain autonomic nervous system phenomenon via breathing, body postures, etc., all ostensibly in the name of longevity / immortality

in other words, philosophical nit-picking to explain why what some people did was better than what other people did without actually having to go and prove it necessarily; and I think you can all agree, that it's almost exclusively the "internal" people who go into the long-winded justifications as to how and why it's better than what those unrefined, crass, boorish, superficial, short-sighted, brutish, deluded "external" guys do, "only" using muscle power; then they prove this by performing feats of skill that require only your pre-disposition to believe them and almost complete compliance to set-up and execute...

ultimately, when you step back for a moment and really think about it, the distinction is inherently artificial: the body is the body, depending on what you do with it you will get different results; and what we know is that a person can be a vicious and effective fighter without having ever done / heard about any of this stuff, and similarly can live a happy, healthy life to a ripe old age without any of it as well; the problem is that people get all "intellectual" about and start talking about how internal / external hit differently (superficial vs. deep; extremities vs. core), when none of these distinctions actually make sense or actually occur, or they resort to bizarre metaphors to describe the difference (external is like tying a cat to a tree and then chasing it around until it runs out of rope and bangs into the tree; internal is like taking the tree and chopping it into wood-chips, selling them to a farmer who uses them to fertilize a zucchini patch, and then feeding the zucchini to the cat; see?)

overall, it's a distraction, and serves only to satisfy our mind's neurotic need to categorize and organize in order to make "sense" out of the inherent chaos that is life;

the way to go about it, I believe, is to see clearly what one wants to do, and why, and go from there; if you want to increase awareness of one's own "inner" state, then there are many ways to do that - you can practice taiji, you can contemplate your navel, you can cultivate a garden, you could even (gasp) lift weights or box - it's not the what, it's the how: do you live your life paying attention to what you do / say / think, or do you just react habitually? you might be the greatest taiji player in the world who lectures his students about being in harmony with the taiji principles, and then go home and be an aszhole to your wife and kids - at least if you were a 'roid raging power lifter who was a schmu(k at the gym as well as at home, well, at least you aren't a phony...

use clarity; be simple; forget contrived distinctions - this is the key

[Steve Hamp]

I don't.

It's a crap theory that shouldn't exist.

As a human, you are both and cannot escape either, ergo my statement above.

I couldn't agree with this statement more. As I have been taught, both do both. You develop both internally and externally by training.

People have said that "external" styles will harden the exterior of ones body. While "internal" styles build up the internal.

Don't they all?? My Teacher said that the internal styles were taught (once upon a time) to the rich, the upper class, ect... and the external styles were taught to the masses.

There is no such thing as Internal and External. And I know people will post the fact that Tai Chi, Hsing-I and Pa Kua are the three "internal" styles. If that is the case (which I'm not disputing that) are they then any better than Shuai Chiao, Preying Mantis, Hung Ga, ect...??

Of course not. David, is abosolutly correct when he stated that "it's a bunch of crap". Just train, and search for more, keep learning, and stop "blindly" following a "teacher" as if he or she has ALL of the answers.

--Steve

[RD'S Alias - 1A]

Ok, lets ULTRA simplify this for those that are not getting it.

EXTERNAL: The majority of the power is limb Generated, Limb Focused, Limb derived. Core body only transfers power (Like when A Boxer twists his hips on the power strike)

INTERNAL is focused on generating power with the core body/ Torso with an expansion, contraction motion NOT seen in external movement. This is ADDED to the limb actions seen in the external movement.


Or even MORE simple:
INTERNAL is an added dimension of movement during power generation that is focused on the Core body expansion/ contraction action not seen in external motion.

External does not have this added core body focused power generation.

[David Jamieson]

Ok, lets ULTRA simplify this for those that are not getting it.

EXTERNAL: The majority of the power is limb Generated, Limb Focused, Limb derived. Core body only transfers power (Like when A Boxer twists his hips on the power strike)

INTERNAL is focused on generating power with the core body/ Torso with an expansion, contraction motion NOT seen in external movement. This is ADDED to the limb actions seen in the external movement.


Or even MORE simple:
INTERNAL is an added dimension of movement during power generation that is focused on the Core body expansion/ contraction action not seen in external motion.

External does not have this added core body focused power generation.

someone is feeding you a line. all too vague? expansion and contraction of the torso? what are you going on about. you cannot move your body in any direction whatsoever without muscular contraction and arterial expansion! :-)

[Sicilian Tofu M]

What does this fall under, when power starts at the feet, goes up the legs to the wast up the back through the shoulder and arm and out the fist, all parts adding to the power, EXTERNAL or INTERNAL?

[David Jamieson]

it's the posterior chain. the linkage of our skeletal structure and the muscles that move it about is there whether we regard it as internal or external.

people who say things like you have said "power starting at the feet"

what exactly do you mean by that? you have capacitors in your feet that shoot energy up your body and out your hands in the form of blue balls of energy?

or are we talking about kinetic energy..which has well documented and studied understandings of what it is and what it isn't.

[Lucas]

What does this fall under, when power starts at the feet, goes up the legs to the wast up the back through the shoulder and arm and out the fist, all parts adding to the power, EXTERNAL or INTERNAL?

A good punch?

[Rockwood]

Don't speak, hit. That should clarify things.

-JessO

[cjurakpt]

What does this fall under, when power starts at the feet, goes up the legs to the wast up the back through the shoulder and arm and out the fist, all parts adding to the power, EXTERNAL or INTERNAL?

neither - it's called efficient biomechanics...

[Sicilian Tofu M]

it's the posterior chain. the linkage of our skeletal structure and the muscles that move it about is there whether we regard it as internal or external.

people who say things like you have said "power starting at the feet"

what exactly do you mean by that? you have capacitors in your feet that shoot energy up your body and out your hands in the form of blue balls of energy?

or are we talking about kinetic energy..which has well documented and studied understandings of what it is and what it isn't.

Power from going into your stance, aka footwork. Is it EXTERNAL or INTERNAL?

[cjurakpt]

Ok, lets ULTRA simplify this for those that are not getting it.

EXTERNAL: The majority of the power is limb Generated, Limb Focused, Limb derived. Core body only transfers power (Like when A Boxer twists his hips on the power strike)

INTERNAL is focused on generating power with the core body/ Torso with an expansion, contraction motion NOT seen in external movement. This is ADDED to the limb actions seen in the external movement.


Or even MORE simple:
INTERNAL is an added dimension of movement during power generation that is focused on the Core body expansion/ contraction action not seen in external motion.

External does not have this added core body focused power generation.

Uechi Ryu, done well, has exactly that torso quality to it (being derived from southern mantis / dragon / bok mei / whatever) - but wait a bit: that's crotty, which can't possibly be considered internal...