Hard and Soft

[Xue Sheng]

Old CMA saying.

External (hard) goes to Internal (soft) and Internal goes to External. Basically it means that if done right they end up in the same place with time.

 

[DaveB]

The only question I have with the distinction of yielding and opposing is that soft styles strike too. So how do you yield as you send your fist into the opponent's gut?

 

[Xue Sheng]

It is not yielding it is all about relaxation and where the power comes from

 

[K-man]

In okinawan naha-te systems there is a hardness and a softness in your body at the same time. Certain muscles will have dynamic tension in them while other muscles will remain soft and pliable. Somtimes there are both attributes in the same area of the body, fluctuating between the two conditions.

I had never felt soft until I started Aikido. When I changed my karate to the Okinawan style I found that the softness was intrinsic to the Goju training. However, I disagree that hard and soft is present at the same time.

 

[Kung Fu Wang]

When your opponent throws a low roundhouse kick at your lower leg, you can apply

- "hard metal strategy" by turning your shin bone to meet his shin bone. It's like "knife cut into wood".
- "soft water strategy" by bending your leg at your knee joint and let his leg to pass under it. It's like "water jump up from disturbing".

Both can be used to set up counter attacks.

 

[DaveB]

The diversity of responseses is interesting.

I think of hard and soft technique as how we direct our own force: soft technique is continuous while hard technique is staccato in nature.

My kungfu teacher would differentiate between a punch and a thrust, where one would deposit it's energy into the target and the other would send it's energy beyond the end of the fist to infinity.

To complete my answer, continuous force (soft technique) manifested mostly in my karate training through aiki applications, I.e applying minimal force in circular patterns to deflect and redirect the opponent. In my kungfu it came in different forms of striking as mentioned, and in yielding defensive techniques from contact (chi sau).

Taekwondo though presented the most interesting application of soft technique. Though I never mastered it, the art presented the potential for a unique internal martial art. Weird I know.

We used a method of fighting whereby we would switch feet and spin to deceive the opponent. Defense was almost entirely evasion and the beauty of it was that every movement was a kick (or a punch) if I wanted it to be, if the opponent was in range.

I fought a senior at my kungfu school with it once. A very arrogant, "kungfu beats everything" guy. He thought he could just spike the kicks with his punches. He found out that he has to commit to a punch in a way I don't have to with a kick so every time he tried I just snapped my kick to a different location. Good times.

I can't kick for toffee now. :-(

Anyway, I found out some years later that inbetween all that chi excrement, the defining point of the internal martial arts is the conservation of momentum through rebounding (tai chi), spinning (bagua) and drop stepping (xing yi). Combine the spinning taekwondo with some aiki hand work from Hapkido and your on your way to the first Korean IMA.

Anyway, to finish, in self defense I don't use soft techniques except deflections through contact sensitivity. I feel hard technique is less committed and therefore safer. And yes this is entirely based on my own lack of skill to apply the concepts reliably.

 

[Buka]

What do you understand by the terms hard and soft, in relation to martial arts technique?

How do these concepts manifest in your training and your sparring?

Do you apply these elements in self defense and how?

Those are some damn good questions, Dave.

 

[Zero]

In okinawan naha-te systems there is a hardness and a softness in your body at the same time. Certain muscles will have dynamic tension in them while other muscles will remain soft and pliable. Somtimes there are both attributes in the same area of the body, fluctuating between the two conditions.

This is nicely put.

 

[Zero]

What do you understand by the terms hard and soft, in relation to martial arts technique?

How do these concepts manifest in your training and your sparring?

Do you apply these elements in self defense and how?

Good points and it can be on various levels.

In our Okinawan goju ryu on a simple and external level we see the soft as the grappling and take-downs we use while fighting (the tuite waza, as Limasogobudo put it) and the hard as the strikes to the body. The soft and hard applications are certainly not put into and limited to attacking or defensive categories respectively.

But as also put, there are ways of performing strikes, so that they themselves can be "hard" or "soft" or deflective in nature. Also nothing feels "soft" when you get a nasty joint lock put on your wrist...

Then there are the internal and external components of the art, which are also referred to as the hard and soft applications by some. This is not my field, the internal that is, so I'll shy away from that...

We certainly apply both the soft and hard to a self defence setting, whatever application works best or is most readily available in that given scenario...and kind of along the lines as Hoshin said, both can be done at the same time, a wrist trap or lock against your torso is often done at the same time as a strike to the face.

 

[marques]

I hardly accept one 'hard' martial art as a marital art. To me, it is more a sort of fitness.
I smoothly accept as martial arts all the trickeries, invisible, subtle and fast (because short) moves of someone that easily feel the opponent weaknesses and touch there intelligently.

 

[Kung Fu Wang]

we see the soft as the grappling and take-downs we use while fighting (the tuite waza, as Limasogobudo put it) and the hard as the strikes to the body.

Agree! When you

- "strike", you want to create a head on collision (hard).
- "throw", you want to create a rear end collision (soft).

 

[Seizan]

In UechiRyu, practitioners often hear the term "Pangainun" as either a Chinese name for the system, or a manner of fighting, and are given a meaning of "half-hard, half-soft".

From this spring many personal interpretations of just what is "hard" and what is "soft" in the technique.

The system originates from the Fuzhou vicinity of Fukien. I asked a correspondent there what the term meant (and included the kanji for him to review). He said:

"Well, that which is half-hard is tough. That which is half-soft is flexible. This term means 'tough and flexible'. Like kid leather gloves. Not external or internal, 50/50 hard-style/soft-style, or so on. It's a training challenge -- a physical attribute to be sought by the practitioner in learning the style. A tough, well-conditioned body that has flexibility to effectively deliver the techniques."

This is not "mainstream" UechiRyu thinking, though it certainly applies to the practice and performance style of our group.

Best,

Seizan

 

[Xue Sheng]

In UechiRyu, practitioners often hear the term "Pangainun" as either a Chinese name for the system, or a manner of fighting, and are given a meaning of "half-hard, half-soft".

From this spring many personal interpretations of just what is "hard" and what is "soft" in the technique.

The system originates from the Fuzhou vicinity of Fukien. I asked a correspondent there what the term meant (and included the kanji for him to review). He said:

"Well, that which is half-hard is tough. That which is half-soft is flexible. This term means 'tough and flexible'. Like kid leather gloves. Not external or internal, 50/50 hard-style/soft-style, or so on. It's a training challenge -- a physical attribute to be sought by the practitioner in learning the style. A tough, well-conditioned body that has flexibility to effectively deliver the techniques."

This is not "mainstream" UechiRyu thinking, though it certainly applies to the practice and performance style of our group.

Best,

Seizan

Had to look Pangainun up, Chinese it is 半硬软 in pinyin it is bàn yìng ruǎn. English translation is basically "Semi-hard and soft"

 

[DaveB]

In UechiRyu, practitioners often hear the term "Pangainun" as either a Chinese name for the system, or a manner of fighting, and are given a meaning of "half-hard, half-soft".

From this spring many personal interpretations of just what is "hard" and what is "soft" in the technique.

The system originates from the Fuzhou vicinity of Fukien. I asked a correspondent there what the term meant (and included the kanji for him to review). He said:

"Well, that which is half-hard is tough. That which is half-soft is flexible. This term means 'tough and flexible'. Like kid leather gloves. Not external or internal, 50/50 hard-style/soft-style, or so on. It's a training challenge -- a physical attribute to be sought by the practitioner in learning the style. A tough, well-conditioned body that has flexibility to effectively deliver the techniques."

This is not "mainstream" UechiRyu thinking, though it certainly applies to the practice and performance style of our group.

Best,

Seizan

This fits with the Fujianese kungfu I did: Sanchin (saan zhan or something) breathing was in no small part for Iron body training and their was a fair amount of body conditioning, but the bulk of the fighting style was employing soft technique.