The pointlessness of traditional bag work for Taiji

Nei Jia: the Qigong and Taijiquan Forum Taijiquan and the Internal Martial Arts
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As I was watching my Taiji teacher demonstrate the difference to us between long and short energy it dawned on me how pointless bag work is for Taiji. In external martial arts you essentially throw your fist, foot whatever at the target. Once contact is made you tense up to make more of the impact. Bag work makes your anatomical weapons tougher to withstand their own impact into the target.

In internal the force of strike doesn’t come for a millisecond after the contact is made.
The inital contact is actually quite soft, which means that you don’t need the toughening of weapons developed in bag work.

When the force comes it feels like a electric shock because it is so fast and powerful like a pulse. This is what Taiji calls short or cold energy. It is a penetrating compression wave that can break bones and dislocate joints.

However, the opponent doesn’t move very much like when using long energy to off balance them. You see them jerk around but they are not “picked up” as with long energy. If we picture a wave, long energy is like low frequency smooth rolling wave. It picks up your opponent, uproots them and makes them vulnerable to off-balancing. The short energy is like a high frequency wave that penetrates into the opponent.

So you can practice long energy on bag to move it around but can you practice short energy? Will the bag even move much?

Furthermore, what is the point of conditioning anatomical weapons when this is besides the point for Taiji Quan?

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Furthermore, what is the point of conditioning anatomical weapons when this is besides the point for Taiji Quan?

My Answers:

1. Because then we find out how much it hurts to hit hard so we decide to ‘go internal’.

2. Because the bag won’t tell anybody how foolish we look as we try and work out the difference between ‘long’ and ‘short’ power.

3. Because we can only lift the bag up to hang it while we are still ‘external’, afterwards our muscles become like tofu from the chi of our internal practice and we can barely carry our training shoes to the park.

4. Because when you lack a sparring partner it may work to tie a blindfold round your eyes, hold your arms in a ‘peng’ posture, and slowly walk into the bag’s space, occuping it’s ‘center’. The bag should be ‘penged’ away. Now give it a ‘bounce’, let it swing back into you from some oblique angle, and just stand there, taking the ‘blow’ into your internal structure. 100# to 150# bags work well for this. The addition of the element of ‘blindness’ will give this drill an added element of tension, which of course, you Gotta Let Go!

5. Bags tend to outlast friends, teachers, students, even some marriges. They just ‘hang’ there, in line with gravity, ‘song, with the heavy side down’. I think they rock. :slight_smile:

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[QUOTE=spiralstair;710515]2. Because the bag won’t tell anybody how foolish we look as we try and work out the difference between ‘long’ and ‘short’ power.[/QUOTE]

We can draw a mocking face on a piece of paper and hang it on all sides of the bag, so we see it, no matter which way it spins.

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You guys are great!!!:smiley: :wink:

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[QUOTE=Fu-Pow;710505]As I was watching my Taiji teacher demonstrate the difference to us between long and short energy it dawned on me how pointless bag work is for Taiji.[/QUOTE]

Uh, yeah… :rolleyes:

In external martial arts you essentially throw your fist, foot whatever at the target.

Yeah, and it’s so much different in your magical Tie Chee. :rolleyes:

Once contact is made you tense up to make more of the impact. Bag work makes your anatomical weapons tougher to withstand their own impact into the target.

Shows the amount of bagwork you’ve done. I hit through the bag, staying relaxed through the impact (as it helps prevent tension from reducing the speed of the strike). And the “toughening” is two-fold - your striking surfaces are conditioned (because if they aren’t, and you hit with them, you’ll pull back an injured weapon) and your structural integrity is demonstrated (if your root is crap, the impact with the bag will uproot you; conversely, if your root is solid, the bag gets bounced).

In internal the force of strike doesn’t come for a millisecond after the contact is made.

Not much for the physics of Planet Earth, are you? Impact = delivery of power. There’s no such thing as making contact, waiting, and then “BOOM” the “hit” lands.

The inital contact is actually quite soft, which means that you don’t need the toughening of weapons developed in bag work.

Punch someone in the head. Then say you don’t need to condition your weapons.

When the force comes it feels like a electric shock because it is so fast and powerful like a pulse. This is what Taiji calls short or cold energy. It is a penetrating compression wave that can break bones and dislocate joints.

Like in the video games at the arcade, right? :rolleyes:

However, the opponent doesn’t move very much like when using long energy to off balance them. You see them jerk around but they are not “picked up” as with long energy. If we picture a wave, long energy is like low frequency smooth rolling wave. It picks up your opponent, uproots them and makes them vulnerable to off-balancing. The short energy is like a high frequency wave that penetrates into the opponent.

We talk about “force” and “shock” in our school, but neither of them are as mystical/magical as you describe. Shock is a faster moving form of kinetic energy that the body cannot adapt to quickly enough to defend against. Force is slower moving, and the body can adapt (e.g. compressing, bending away, etc.) to it.

So you can practice long energy on bag to move it around but can you practice short energy? Will the bag even move much?

Hit the bag right, the bag will shake, quake, and bounce. Hit the bag incorrectly, and it’ll swing all over.

Furthermore, what is the point of conditioning anatomical weapons when this is besides the point for Taiji Quan?

Still not sure how developing bodily weapons is contrary to Taijiquan training. Hitting is hitting. Hitting with soft, tender bits of meat doesn’t make any sense. Only those who don’t do any real hitting will say they don’t need to train their striking weapons. Those who have hit people, continue to hit people, and train to hit people (or get hit) will know the difference between hitting/being hit by a conditioned weapon and an unconditioned one.

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[QUOTE=YiLiQuan1;710589]
Shows the amount of bagwork you’ve done. I hit through the bag, staying relaxed through the impact (as it helps prevent tension from reducing the speed of the strike). And the “toughening” is two-fold - your striking surfaces are conditioned (because if they aren’t, and you hit with them, you’ll pull back an injured weapon) and your structural integrity is demonstrated (if your root is crap, the impact with the bag will uproot you; conversely, if your root is solid, the bag gets bounced).[/quote]

Yeah you’re right…for external martial arts. Choy Lay Fut pracitioner for 10 years and I can “fold” the bag with my Sau Chui so don’t doubt my experience. The point here is that “hard body” conditioning is useful for external MA and totally pointless for internal MA.

Not much for the physics of Planet Earth, are you? Impact = delivery of power. There’s no such thing as making contact, waiting, and then “BOOM” the “hit” lands.

Nice reading comprehension. I said “impact” in regards to external MA, not Taiji. In Taiji what looks like “impact” is actually more like a pulse delivered through a hydro-elastic structure. That’s the whole thesis here. Maybe I need to spell it out for you and use smaller words.

Punch someone in the head. Then say you don’t need to condition your weapons.

Have you ever hit somebody in “the head.” You would never hit somebody in the head with a fist unless you are looking to break your hand…a palm strike would be a much better option. Soft hits hard, hard hits soft…one of the key underlying principles of all martial arts. Maybe you missed that class.

We talk about “force” and “shock” in our school, but neither of them are as mystical/magical as you describe. Shock is a faster moving form of kinetic energy that the body cannot adapt to quickly enough to defend against. Force is slower moving, and the body can adapt (e.g. compressing, bending away, etc.) to it.

I know you have an IQ of less than 80 but try to stay with me here…I know for someone of your mental intelligence that “wave” and “frequency” must sound “mystical” but those were commonly used terms borrowed from physics for an analogy.

Hit the bag right, the bag will shake, quake, and bounce. Hit the bag incorrectly, and it’ll swing all over.

That’s good, did you figure that out all by yourself?

Still not sure how developing bodily weapons is contrary to Taijiquan training. Hitting is hitting. Hitting with soft, tender bits of meat doesn’t make any sense. Only those who don’t do any real hitting will say they don’t need to train their striking weapons. Those who have hit people, continue to hit people, and train to hit people (or get hit) will know the difference between hitting/being hit by a conditioned weapon and an unconditioned one.

You are an idiot…an insulting one at that…and as many insulting idiots have learned the quick way to fu-pow’s ignore list is by being insulting idiot. Flame wars are so 8th grade.

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a happy medium

A Happy medium

There is a happy medium here. Without defining Taijiquan because that is a big topic in itself. All agree that there some form of striking in Taijiquan.

I’ve been using a bag for years and believe the bag should be used. Although. Peng and An jing are hell on a bags and one will probably use and abuse bags on a regular basis. ( I found only expensive bags have the stitching to hold up to the riggers of daily Taijiquan bag work, chains and the hardware snapping and popping are also an issue about every six months or so)

Bag work builds tools. Bag work also conditions. Granted most Taijiquan styles use a lot of anatomical weapons like the back of wrist, forearms, elbows, palms and shoulders etc to strike…those anatomical weapons require different conditioning …none the less Bag work does a lot of stuff. If nothing work a bag for speed and rythem/sense of timing.

Problem is people don’t do Taijiquan on a bag, most just box, which is ok, just not Taijiquan. (There are people who will have issue with my statements saying that “to do Taijiquan training you need a partner” I would say they are correct also..

Again there is a happy medium

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With the heavy bag, I see a very limited amount of usefulness for IMA. Great for EMA, but not so much IMA. You can use it for your hand-eye coordination for strikes from different angles. Heavy bags aren’t gonna move much with using fa-jing, which is what you want. You want them to more shake than sway, but the majority of the usefullness I’ve found with them is more for hand-eye coordination in light practice, though you can do the same thing with a much smaller and lighter bag.

The thing with IMA is that the more you advance, the stronger an EMA style punch can be. All the muscles get stronger. I still find it annoying that when I go to lightly push a door closed when I come inside, it will slam shut without me knowing and it’ll do so so loudly, that it’ll surprised me, like someone else did it and I wasn’t watching. I scratched an itch on top of my foot that I thought was with a light touch, but I actually dug deep into it, so deep, it seemed like it was something I had gotten during a street fight and someone dug their nails in deep to get me to loosen a grip or something. This includes blood showing up. Thankfully, part of the rebuild of my whole body includes healing, so my foot’s okay.

So, aside from hand-eye coordination, any use of bag work (heavy or not) is mostly gonna be limited to getting used to you controlling how much pressure you apply to things to get the same result, as you advance. The more you advance, the less apparent pressure is necssary to do the same work. Eyeballing it or video taping it can help you in realizing you need to lessen what you preceive to be the same force over time to move the bag (or anything else) the same distance when you weren’t as strong.

I’m really not sure about the long term benefits of using a bag to strengthen the tissues of the arms and legs because of the increase in energetic development in its role in strengthening body parts. It can be used to make sure the cells are used, so some of the energy is used in those parts so they don’t get wasted away, but usage of the cells can still kept from withering because of the movements in the forms. Even the weapons forms or holding weapons while doing the solo forms can be used to keep the cells from withering.

Looking at the people with super strength in the comics that can easily lift thousands of tons with a pinkie makes me cringe just how they gotta be when they want to open a door without tearing down the whole bulding, much less just the wall.

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Greetings..

The heavy bag is quite useful by my experience.. it is great for developing rooting skills, for developing understandings of alignment processes, for developing expressions of power.. it doesnt get tired or let its ego ruin the experience.. it is a constant training partner..

The heavy bag will be whatever the student believes it will be.. if you think it is useless, it will be useless.. if you find value in its use, it will add value to your experience.. it is we that determine what works or doesn’t, Taiji begins in the spirit/mind..

There have been several good descriptions of heavy bag use, like occupying its space and learning to control its position relative to ours.. learning the difference between bounce and push.. realizing the appropriate use of force.. developing structural and alignment awarenesses.. Force is force, learning to control the force of a 100 lb. bag that is pushed and held out at 45° is directly applicable to working with a live partner, we have honed our sensitivity to force vectors and energetic responses..

Striking is a last resort, for me.. but, the heavy bag is a great feed-back tool.. my son holds the bag as i strike or kick, sometimes i move both of them with power (not my intention).. other times, i “pop” him off the bag as the bag remains relatively still (intended).. different uses of force and great feedback.. at his age (22) he is learning much faster and with an amazing depth, i wish i had started at his age :o

I think there is no “standard” other than what we determine works for for us personally.. that it is counter-productive to argue one way or the other on this issue.. there are many ways to develop internal “power”, if the heavy bag doesn’t work for someone, so what.. something else will.. the real issue is continued progress, regardless of its source..

Be well…

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[QUOTE=Fu-Pow;710505]So you can practice long energy on bag to move it around but can you practice short energy? Will the bag even move much? [/QUOTE]

If you can’t affect the bag with your short power, is it really fair to blame the bag?