XingYi: Hitting bodies and Beng Chuan

When working on Beng Chuan (one of the three fundamental attacking energies of XingYi) the main way of learning is by being hit, and hitting your training buddy, with it. One thing that practitioners of other styles find curious when they start XingYi (at least with me), is the amount of being hit that's involved. It's all a matter of perspective though: If you compare XingYi to kick boxing training, for example, I imagine there's a lot less 'being hit' going on in general, but if you compare it to the average Tai Chi Chuan class, there's a lot more. I've had quite a few people ask "Why not hit a pad instead?" Good question, so let's answer it.

Yes, you can hit a pad if you like - there's nothing wrong with that at all - but cold inanimate pads and warm fleshy bodies are different things and react differently. They 'give' (or don't) in different ways - just try it (warning - willing training partner needed for this!) There's no need to kill each other doing it, so you can can exercise some restraint, but a little bit of hurt isn't a bad thing - I've heard that the 'bitter' taste it gives you is actually good for your health! The simple fact that bodies and pads react differently is the main reason for doing it. But I can think of two other supplementary reasons why hitting bodies is useful:

1. Hitting others: There's also a different emotional reaction to hitting a person as opposed to hitting a pad. It's very different. Most people doing martial arts for the first time have a natural resistance to punching people, unless they're psychopaths of course. You can often see a kind of mental battle going on behind their eyes as they have to get over their natural reaction to stop themselves when hitting you. It can take a while to get that out of your system.

2. Being hit: Then on the receiving end there's a lot to learn about being hit. Again, people don't like it. After all we spend most of our lives trying to get out of the way of danger, so it takes some resolve to just stand there as somebody hits you. Most martial arts have their own techniques for dealing with blows. XingYi has its own too, and the answer is not to go all tense. Being hit provides you with an opportunity to work on this and also to get used to being hit. You also get a sense of what it's like to be hit by the technique - the feel of it. When dealing with something difficult and subtle like Beng Chuan I don't know how you'd really be able to do it if you've never felt a good one.

So much for the theory. Let's have a look at some of it going on. Here's an off-the-cuff video we shot last week working on Beng Chuan. It's nothing special, but shows some of the training involved. If you put headphones on and turn the volume up you can just about hear what I'm saying. There's an awful lot of principles going on in that clip that don't get a mention. I could pontificate for hours over them all, but that would be very, very boring. Beng is a tricky beast to master. And like everything there's degrees of mastery after you get beyond a basic level of proficiency. I'm still working on it, like everybody else.

I was thinking about something today: In stupidly-general terms you could say there are only two ways to hit anything. Let's call them "Long power" and "Short power", but with a million style-specific variations thereof. The type of Beng Chuan I'm doing in that clip is Hebei XingYi's version of long power - heavy and penetrating but not done by tensing up (I've also seen it done like this - in terms of feel, not so much the look, in Yi Quani). Other styles of martial arts, and indeed other styles of XingYi will do it differently. It's said that XingYi, historically, developed from military spear usage, and has been adapted to barefist usage over the centuries. However, you can still see the ghost of an ancient spear-weilding Chinese soldier in the movements. if you look at the last few Bengs I throw at the end of the clip you'll see how they strike right through the opponent. If you wanted to skewer somebody with a spear, rather than just cut at them, that's how you'd do it. You'd need that kind of 'displacing energy' to do it, especially if they had armour on, since you'd need to penetrate through the armour as well. In barehand XingYi the fist becomes the spear tip.