Mack Truck vs. Black Belt

A lesson in Sihing class a few weeks ago has made a strong impact on my approach towards techniques, forms, and the last half of the six harmonies. I am nowhere near a solid understanding of it all but I feel I am heading in the right direction.

Sifu Brinker was teaching the class and we were working with the Triangle Stepping pattern. There was an explanation provided through comparative examples. This example was as follows; "If you are feeling like you have just been hit by a Mack truck, the application is misunderstood, if you don't feel anything and find yourself on the ground, that is the skill of a Black Belt" Sifu also touched on the second half of the six harmonies, the trajectory of energies, (which was the other direction to how it was percieved to me), grounded full circle power energy, and of course flow. The lower half of the body should be more of a focus than just simply charging ahead linear trying to go through your opponent, instead it begins with a simple deflection. A softening blow and wedging the opponent grounds you as the defender and completely disrupts your attackers six harmonies, increasing your options and their vulnerbilities. I also took away that rather than slamming them down and trying to imbed them into the floor, you are actually pulling them around. Really cool stuff that helped me a lot on how I should be applying all techniques.

Once this all started to come together and make sense, I learned a little more about the six harmoinies and how my energy would be far more effective and efficiant by changing my perspective and approach. I tend to practice my techniques more head on or linear with the intention of completely smashing and embedding my attacker into things. Sometimes yes this does work and can be highly effective, but I do understand now how vulnerable this leaves me and by applying that much strength incorrectly, someone that knows what they are doing, could probably take me out with my own energy, and very little of their own. This in turn would inflict some serious damage and remove my abilty to counter. I don't dig this at all. So this is where the inpiration and excitement came into play. It inspires me to be a much better martial artist and remove the vulnerbilty. There is the excititment of improving and applying your energies to be extremely powerful, yet smooth and in control of your sixharmonie. Really cool stuff.

 So I have been attempting to apply this knowledge to all my training. Not an easy task as I am quite grounded and content in catapillar mode, but I think now with the right trajectory and better comphrehension, and a whole pile of training, I can go into Black Belt mode.