Anthony
You wrote: <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote
So in other words, I should stop trying get deep penetration on my arms and use the exercise to get a feel for balance.
I need to be careful here. One must realize that the simplest exercises in our system have many, many different lessons and applications embedded within them. I probably shouldn't have
totally excluded the notion that we are stimulating the forearm muscles, but I personally view it as a minor benefit of the arm-rubbing exercise. Rick (above) gave another good application that I didn't even mention. It teaches you how to "slip" a technique and apply the simultaneous block/attack. But no matter
what you are doing, the balance/centering/grounding issue is out there. So is the gaze. So is the back posture. So is the breathing......
Rick
I took a look in the dictionary after seeing your use of
sheering as opposed to
shearing. Interesting. Even terms we are all familiar with are ambiguous and murky in the modern dictionary.
Mike
The use of badly-translated terms and concepts in martial arts reminds me of the mumbo jumbo you get from translating old and/or, foreign language versions of the bible to contemporary English. And I believe many martial artists cloak themselves in the mystique of such language the way Catholics used to cloak themselves in the mistique of the Latin mass.
Also....Perhaps your ice skating analogy wasn't a good one. There is very little variability expected in the execution of an ice skating move. Perhaps a better analogy might be throwing a baseball pitch. The goal is to get the batter to miss the pitch, or get him to hit it where you want him to hit it. However there are many, many types of pitches. Even throwing heat has variability from pitcher to pitcher. Some use their upper body (shoulder, tricep, wrist) strength more. Some pitchers get more body rotation and drive off the mound very aggressively. Some use more simultaneous, whole-body contraction, whereas others use a wave-like motion from legs to wrist that take more advantage of neuromuscular reflexes. And then you get into the many, many different kinds of pitches. Ever seen a submarine pitch? You'd swear it wasn't legal if you ever saw it. My dad used to really mess people up with the pitch when he played in college because most had never seen it and didn't know how to hit it.
But.....what we need is to throw away the laguage of the mystics and charletans. I suggest that folks go to the fields of physics, physiology, anatomy, and kinesiology for better language. To do otherwise is - in my opinion - sheer laziness. My yet-to-be-disproven assertion is that if it can't be expressed there, it doesn't exist. And to the cretins of the world, threatening or ridiculing people doesn't prove a point. Not very original either!
Bill
[This message has been edited by Bill Glasheen (edited 04-07-99).]