Hardness and Softness

This week Sifu Maury touched on the subject of hardness and softness and specifically the ability to understand the strength, or hardness, behind an opponents move. When an opponent makes a powerful attack such as a straight punch there is no point meeting this with your own hardness such as a powerful block. The opposite is needed, hardness needs to be met with softness - so a guiding and controlling block rather than one in direct opposition. This is described as 'using the opponents momentum against them' commonly seen in styles such as aikedo. At some point the punch ends and in this transition period as the punch is withdrawn there is softness and at this point you meet it with hardness in your own powerful (counter)-attack.

Another example is if someone is grabbing you, the natural expectation is for your to resist, but if you were to move with the pull and turn it into an attack the moment of hesitation caused by the unexpected response can be the sufficient time to take control of the situation. This is a theory to aim for, reading strength and energy in someone else's movement takes years to achieve and also to have your body to be able to react in response. Exercises such as the 'sticky hands' technique which made such an impact on me is ideal training for understanding the energy flow between you and your opponent moving between the hard (yang) movements and the softer (yin) movements.


Nick
Yellow sash