Condolences to the South Korean People over the MV Sewol Tragedy.

Death by drowning is a horrible thing, and even more so when it snuffs the lives of such bright prospects. I hope that things will become better for those whose lives have been forever changed by the tragedy.

As is the case with these disasters the crisis can take lives well after the fact; please rest in peace, Mr. Kang Min-kyu. It's the captain going down with the ship, though in this case it's the wrong captain.

Truth be told, I've a problem with the whole concept. Those who are noble enough to go down for those in their charge, are the very people we need to be keeping alive. But, how else do we establish their heroism?

Pensive thoughts today.

 

Yes indeed.

Working on pushing hands

By Jakub Hlavaty from Plzen, Czech Republic (Pushing hands (tui shou)) [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

The martial school I am part of practices push hands fairly regularly. We are familiar with the pushing hands conventions for taiji, bagua, liuhebafa, and weng chun. But the most advanced form is freestyle, where we help each other come out with the techniques we learned in the form. It's not fighting, but it's a useful drill to develop sensitivity and good sense when it comes to body placement.

I personally try to get ideas about how to move in push hands from a lot of sources. As far as I'm concerned it's all the same so long as I keep to the basic foundations of my school. I've got books and articles on taiji, and I use my previous experience with xingyi to add some surprises to my repertoire. I've found that with this kind of work getting a different point of view on the thing can open me up to big insights. 

Right now I'm learning a lot from boxing. I'd earlier posted about stuff I found regarding Mayweather's defensive tricks; recently I also found Jack Slack's Fightland articles and one really stood out to me: the one about Manny Pacquiao's offensive mind games. I am really seeing parallels with xingyi and I am most certainly going to use the material on my next session with my teacher.

The "I'm Offended" Attacker

I just found the gem below. It really put things into perspective for me. I think anyone who has gone through office politics should give this article a look.

Post by Marc MacYoung.

I wanted to learn the sax when I was younger. Now I remember why after watching :)