Developing "Down" force - Wujifa Methods

Ho... I have been sitting on this post for a while. It's time to talk about some really cool exercises for developing down force (and internal strength in general) in a flexible way.

picture standing with arms relaxed on suspended bag

What you see in the first picture here is me with my hands on a punching bag which is hanging from a bungee cord. Notice that the posture is very similar to basic standing posture as we practice it in Wujifa. The difference here is that my arms are supported by the springiness of the setup we have going. What we were doing was keeping the arms relaxed in this position, and then "sitting down" more to accomplish a pulling down of the punching bag while maintaining this relaxation through the arms.

picture after "sitting down"

Notice that the bungee cord has become more stretched, which has been accomplished through a sinking of the body. Pay special attention to how the hip area moves here.



So in the video here, you see how my arms are staying relaxed, allowing the bag to bounce when pushed by my school brother as I sink my body, pulling the bag downward. Now, the upper part of my body is still fairly still here, optimally, the sinking movement would be evident everywhere. As we say in Wujifa, you are where you are and that's where you start, and methods are employed based on where the student is to serve as a bridge to "something more".

Continuing to look at this critically, you can also see how I'm using a lot of leaning with my body, and how at times it appears that if the ball were to disappear, I would fall over. You can also see where some good movement through my hips is showing up, and how at times the movement starts to look a little more connected throughout. A senior school brother also pointed out that I'm doing something weird with my lower back, but I'm not noticing that in the video... maybe a bit of a blind spot for me.

We always talk about how important the "feeling" is. For me, it was cool just realizing how relaxed my arms could be while still effecting a downward movement upon the bag. Cool stuff, and I can't wait to keep exploring how relax fits in to internal strength. Actually, a school brother of mine has been putting a lot of good posts on feeling and relax up on Internal Gong Fu, which are totally worth checking out if you haven't already.

I'll leave the post with this question from my practice:
Practicing Wujifa Dancing today - (Internal martial power probably generates a different kinesthetic feedback for a "strong" push... how can I find the new feedback for "strength" so that I can use it to guide my practice?)