From: david_yeh@MACMAIL.MED.NYU.EDU ("David Yeh")
Newsgroups: rec.martial-arts
Subject: Attitudes (wasRe- Silent or
Date: 4 Sep 92 11:51:07 GMT


                      Attitudes (wasRe: Silent or vocal sparring?)
carbon@bnrmtl.bnr.ca (Peter Carbon) writes:

>So what do you people think? Is it better to fight silently, thereby
>conserving energy, or to use kiais to perhaps disconcert your opponent
>and add more emphasis to a strike?

I can't say much about making noise during sparring except what I personally
do.  Heh.

I remember back in undergrad when I was taking this "generic" shaolinchuan
kungfu that we were required (well, encouraged) to make certain sounds (Hoo!
Ha! Hai!) when we were doing forms...  And yes, me with the beans-for-endurance
did get exhausted quite easily, so I stopped doing it, and merely mouthed it,
and let everyone else's voices drown out my silent sounds... :)

But what I especially remember, though, was when we were sparring, I didn't
make the Hoo! Ha! Kia! sounds.  HOWEVER, every time I'd tag an opponent, I'd
whisper out "boom!" "wham!" "pow!"  or something.  It had a definite
disconcerting effect on my classmate/opponents after I'd consistently do that
for a while, I guess that was my little way of signalling "That wasn't an
accidental tap on you, it was deliberate; had I *really* wanted to hit you, I'd
have actually put some strength behind it!"  :)  No, seriously, my
classmate/opponents DID get disconcerted, but I think the real reason was that,
though I was serious about training, I was playing and having a heck of a good
time when I was sparring.  And despite my teacher's good-humored teaching
style, I found that, especially among the more tense 4.0 students who were used
to sparring other tense students, a loose, flexible style seemed especially
effective in that environment.  Everyone else was yang and I put in a lot of
yin :)  And making sparring more of a cartoon by putting in sound effects kept
me in the "playful" mentality which actually did wonders for my self-control,
while at the same time produced an unfamiliar atmosphere for my
classmate/opponents that worked to my advantage :)  As one other poster noted,
it's probably spooky sparring someone with a smile.  I wouldn't know, since I
was usually the one who was smiling :)  Made quite a few friends, making them
eventually laugh this way...

Heh, memories... remind me to tell you how I use egos to my advantage while
sparring... :)

But this does bring up an important topic, one of attutides in sparring, for
which making sounds seem to be a big part... for instance, when I face an
obviously good fighter, I take it as a challenging situation.  I love
challenging situations :)  Puzzles, etc.  But I think for some of the more
tense students, their attitude was more of "There's the enemy, do or die,
KIAAA!!!" It's been said on this newsgroup that everything should be done in
the right spirit.  I think one of the Bruce Lee movies (don't ask me which,
it's been a while) mentioned "No emotional content. Try again."   So I think
one prevailing attitude in sparring is to treat it as if your life depended on
it.  Which may or may not be true in the future.  But for me, it seems that if
I apply this "as if my life depended on it" to a lot of other things (passing
tests, finances, relationships, etc) it seems to create a lot of unneeded
stress that seems more to distract me rather than focus me.  A challenging
puzzle focuses me and makes me more "efficient" or "productive," or whatever. 
Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching says something about unlearning and going back to being
a child.  Or something.  And I'm rambling.  Playing, tee hee :)

-DavID

Another note, about making noise: when I push hands in Tai Chi, we're taught to
breath *in* when we fa jing (long story...) so it's kind of hard to kiai while
pushing.  However, sometimes when I'm "overstretched" I have to let some air go
when pushing, and occasionally let slip a little "Ha!"