Importance of spinning hands?
 

Spinning hands is a key aspect of ILC, but one that has a pretty steep learning curve.

How is spinning hands integrated into your regular training? For example, is spinning hands a part of each and every class, or do you have separate classes devoted to spinning hands?

What would be a good balance in terms of time devoted to the 15 basic exercises and the time dedicated to spinning?

Peter

Our group here in Perth practices spinning hands (SH) every class. We do soft and hard, static and moving. We rotate members to get different feels with different members. We practice upper and lower control, add pushes and pulls etc. while we focus on absorb and project. Sometimes we do SH while sitting too which gives you a bit of a break with your structure in that you can just forget your lower body for a while.
When I'm on my own I pratice the 8 spins in the frontal and horizontal plane, I can only really find 4 practical spins in the sagital plane althought there are more. Then I do them with movement ie. footwork, big to small, close to far, that sort of thing and sprinkle them through a review of the 15 basics (see underlined). As in it's easy to see a connection between N, S, E and W and SH as well as concave and convex. Depending on how I feel this can keep me busy for 10 min to 2 hours if I have the time. I try to connect with some aspect of the 15 basics eveyday.

I'm only starting to learn this. Since our regular group is too new, we are only getting to 1st circle with the group.

With my regular training partner we are moving slightly ahead - 1st, 2nd and 5th circle so far.

Since we meet almost everyday for about 30-60 minutes, around one half of this time is devoted to spinning hands.

I hope to get to all the circles soon, and then will gradually start adding elements like movements, different distances, etc.

We had our first session last night that was completely dedicated to spinning. While spinning, the instructor also tested my stance integrity, pushing or pulling me off balance whenever he detected a weakness in my structure.

So spinning looks like a real starting-off point for learning how to deal with a person who wants to break through your defense in order to strike you and/or unbalance you.

I'm curious what other aspects of self-defense will come into play as I become more familiar with spinning - maybe chinna (joint-locks) and striking?

Peter

that's a double edge sword. there's so many skills contained within spinning hands that it can be hard for a beginner to develop when he or she is constantly being off balanced.

i usually save any off balancing for sticky hand and free play.

Ashe,

I do have some experience at spinning hands, and I wasn't constantly being off-balanced - just a gentle reminder here and there to encourage me to re-focus my attention on my structure. Are you planning to attend the Intensive in February?

Peter

Our group spends quite a bit of time just spinning trying to feel your partners force at the point of contact. No footwork just static. Although you can learn to lock a person up by capturing thier centre of mass, sooner or later, if it's self defence, you have to do something. So we do light taps to shoulders or the chest if our opponents projection and point of contact dissapears, something that seems very common in the south projection. Pulls are good, if your partner is pushing and loses their structure, and these naturally lead into chin na. Your JJ will come in handy Peter.
We try and avoid a free for all because you tend to lose the sensitivity. So it is good to have partners who can feed you a sensation, if that makes sence.

Yes, it makes sense. I think this is what Sifu refers to as "giving the proper energy". He also mentioned, IIRC, that being able to feed the proper energy to the partner is a necessary step toward developing ILC skills.

Peter

i'm all set. airfare is bought and i sent out my form and check a while ago, so i should be locked in. you coming over?

Yes, it will be the first intensive for me. I'm looking forward to it.

Peter

cool. looking forward to meeting in person.

I'd suggest that it's all about the spinning hands. It is a way of understanding the point of contact and how to keep it while it changes.
If you can keep the point then it's very difficult to be pushed/pulled, hit or kicked. Also when you're trying to bridge the gap, you mirror, which is in a sense spinning without contact.

Could you explain a little more about what you mean by bridging & mirroring? You're basically describing the moments just prior to establishing physical contact with the opponent/partner?

Peter

Hi Peter,

Yes. Master Sam has said that in effect you are already in contact and looking for the center of mass. So that when you land you immediately capture their center of mass.

Mirroring and bridging are terms used to describe strategy to unify yourself with your opponent.
Prior to the physical point of contact if you follow your opponent's movements in a mirror image it helps you to recognize your opponent's posture and usually leads to an opportunity to make physical contact while in the meantime you syncronise with their movements setting up the potential to take control.
Once you have a sense of your opponent's posture and limits etc. bridging is the process of closing the gap in order to make physical contact, at which point the objective is to control your opponent. There is a little bit on the subject in the System guide pg 21.
Shadow boxing is a form of mirroring but solo. It's very good for checking your own posture and structure. I've got a favorite park I go to to train at sun rise and use the first shadows against a wall to train postures. It gets a bit obsessive (:p) but with the lines in the brick work you can get a very good idea of your vertical and horizontal structure, limits of movement etc. I've found it is very good for checking yoga asanas as well.

Train well and best of the Season and regards to everyone on the Forum.
Chris

Ashe has posted some nice training clips on YouTube, and today I was inspired by a couple of his clips which explained how to combine spinning hands with stepping as partner exercises. For example, combining Bagua stepping with the 5th cycle of spinning, or combining side-stepping with the third and fourth spinning cycles.

Tonight we had our final class for the year, and I thought I'd like to try out some of the examples demoed by Ashe in the videos. The partner exercises which combined stepping and spinning actually worked out very well, and everybody was enthusiastic about the exercises and highly motivated to train the different combinations.

Thanks Ashe, for the inspiration!

Peter

well just keep in mind that i just barely started training moving step spinning hands so that video will probably date ut'self quite quickly. (i'm student level 5 training for 6)

We did 2 hours of spinning last night, and I'm pretty exhausted today. Having a variety of spinning partners seems pretty important, since each person has a different energy and seems to attack different weaknesses in one's own structure and technique.

On a side note, it's winter here in Vienna, and the training room can be rather chilly. By the middle of training, the guys were saying "turn off the heating!" and I noticed that all the mirrors had fogged up. That's never happened before.

We alternated the spinning with sticky hands training in order to have an occasional breather from the rigors of spinning hands.

Peter

that's what its like in the Sifus basement during the intensives.

getting close now! :clapping:

That's great Peter. Sounds like you are putting in the effort, good work:clapping:

When Franky (sikung's brother)came over here the first time, he got us to spin for an hour before training anything else. That style of training lasted a month and we trained 3/4 times a week. There is something in high reps that seem to help awareness and relax the shoulders, they get too sore to hold on to;)