Where Ancient Kungfu Meets Modern Tricking: 'Hard' and 'Soft'，Internal & External.

Introduction and Myself

Welcome to My Site, please use the CONTENTS PAGE below this item to navigate on the topic of discussions. Thanks.

My aim of this blog is to educate the general public on martial arts in general with more emphasis on clearing doubts and misconception on chinese martial arts in a healthy and educative manner on this blog.

I also hope to share my knowledge and skills in tricking to wushu or tricking enthusiasts out there regardless of race or nationality through upcoming videos or tutorial videos.

This blog also serves as a discussion on any other issues that are non-marital art in nature that is happening in the world or my homeland, Singapore.

Finally, it is to introduce my homeland, Singapore to friends from the rest of the world!!!

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

'Hard' and 'Soft'，Internal & External.

People who came across martial arts would have heard about the word 'hard' 刚 and 'soft' 柔, internal 内 or external 外.

So what is this all about? In the chinese martial arts, based on the nature of the techniques, the different clans or forms of chinese martial arts are categorised into two types: Internal Boxing and External Boxing.

Internal Boxing or 内家拳 is fundamentally refering to chinese martials that emphasise internal energy or qi flow over external strength. Emphasising internal energy does not mean neglecting the external strengthening and conditioning, just that majority of the techniques are derived or applied with strong focus on qi flow. However, internal boxing is not a distinct clan on its own; it only refers to the category of the 'softer' form of chinese martial arts. The three main types are Taiji, Xinyi, and Bagua.

External Boxing or 外家拳 is refering to chinese martial arts that is characterised by agility, speed, and strength. Emphasis of external arts primarily focus on a lot of strength training, bone, ligament, and muscle development, and reflexes training. External arts also has focus on some softer training to do with breathing or qi and mental training or shen. This training helps to supplement the explosive and powerful moves. As the saying goes, form without qi is like an empty shell, qi without form is like a bodyless soul. Only when form combines with qi, that is the true chinese kungfu. One famous form of external arts is Shaolin.

Ultimately in chinese martial arts, there is neither 100% soft art nor 100% hard art. The Northern style is about 30% hard, 70% soft, while the Southern style is about 50% soft, 50% hard. Softness refers to breathing and relaxation of muscles to flow or withdraw in the an attack, while hardness refer to the stiffening of the muscles and use of explosive power in an attack. Soft also refers to cyclic moves that are intended at redirecting the strikes away with minimal force while hard refers to linear moves that intercept strikes directly.