EVERYBODY HAS A PLAN UNTIL THEY GET PUNCHED IN THE MOUTH
Of
all the famous quotations Mike Tyson has
spawned over the past quarter century, my favorite is this:
"Everybody
has a plan until they get punched in the mouth."
Tyson
explains the origins of the quote:
"People
were asking me [before a fight], 'What’s going to happen?,' " Tyson said.
"They were talking about his style. 'He's going to give you a lot of
lateral movement. He's going to move, he's going to dance. He's going to do
this, do that.' I said, "Everybody has a plan until they get hit. Then,
like a rat, they stop in fear and freeze.' "
Tyson agreed. "If you’re good and your plan is working, somewhere during
the duration of that, the outcome of that event you're involved in, you're
going to get the wrath, the bad end of the stick. Let's see how you deal with
it. Normally people don’t deal with it that well."
He
laughed. There's another way to spin his famous quote:
"How
much can you endure, buddy?" he said. "Most talkers, they can’t
handle it."
***
The
above was an extract of the news article, the link can be found here.
What relevance has this to do with Yiquan, you might ask. A great deal
actually.
In
the practice of Yiquan, we are trying to maintain our structural integrity. One
area where our practice may falter is not applying an active intent or
imagination about the opposing force trying to collapse or unbalance this structure.
We must always be in a state of preparedness and continuously imagine forces
trying to break the structural integrity during our Zhan Zhuang practice.
Unfortunately, it is all too easy to fail to apply this and maintain a relaxed
albeit peaceful stance. This does not help to increase our inner strength.
The
above quote is instructive because, no matter how good you think your
structural integrity is, you will NEVER know until you put it into practice. The
moment there is contact with another person, it is uncanny how natural it is that
all the Yiquan practice flies out the window. And we’re just talking about a
friendly touch by a fellow practioner. Not an actual sparring session.
Relaxed
state? Gone… replace by Tension
Relaxed
shoulder? Gone… replaced by a Hunched Shoulder
Not
using strength? Gone… replaced by ‘dead’ Strength existing in all parts of the
body
In
fact, all that’s learnt flies out the window. Does it mean that our practice is
useless? Not at all. It’s just that you must put your Yiquan practice to the
test and continuously focus your imagination and intent on the intensity and
direction of the forces trying to tear down your structural integrity. Only
then, in actual practice can you have a chance of using what you’ve learnt.