You can look at this from a couple of different
perspectives, but with the hard and soft distinction
you are mainly looking at the state of the body. With
an internal system, you have to be constantly relaxed
and moving from a relaxed state. This causes several
things to occur. First by being in a constant state of
relaxedness, you can not use your muscles to force
things, because as soon as you do that you become
tense and are no longer relaxed. This means that we
are not relying on the force of our muscle, meaning
that we have to find other ways to defeat the
opponent. We do this by a number of ways, some based
on the fact that we are relaxed, and others could be
done even if we are not relaxed. First off is by
moving on the angles, getting ourselves out of the
way, which means we do not have to use muscle force on
the opponent to block his attack, and putting
ourselves in the best position. Secondly, our attacks
are intended to greatly weaken the opponent by
destroying his balance and we make use of the inherent
structural weaknesses of the body and the various
vital points to do so.
By being relaxed we can make use of a lot of things
that would not be available to use otherwise. To be
relaxed, your body has to be in the correct alignment,
so that if someone where to be pressing against your
fist, your fist would have a direct connection to the
ground. Being relaxed allows your body to move faster,
since it is not fighting itself and allows for a much
greater degree of coordination because your body is
not being isolated by tense muscles. Your movements
will be much more fluid and the power that you
generate will be able to flow since the power that you
generate will be based on your movements and momentum
instead of just flexing your arms muscles, which is
much slower. The muscles that are being used to
generate the majority of the body are in your core, so
getting those muscles to coordinate together will
greatly increase your strenght, while at the same time
allowing them to be relaxed as possible. Your arm
muscles will not be used to generate force, but rather
to just guide it, which requires less effort, keeping
them relaxed. Think of a whip, this is something that
is supple and does not work well being stiff. That is
alot of what our power is like. Alot of whip type
striking, that can only be accomplished if we are
relaxed.

We this is used on another person, from there
perspective they are not able to feel much force,
since we have a limited ability to perceive it, and
mainly do so through our pressure receptors in our
skin. But if you are relaxed and are touching someone,
that person will not feel as much since you are
relaxed, and we do not directly oppose the force,
presented by the other person, always going at on
angle, or turning/rotating which does not create alot
of pressure on the skin. Then if we are striking
something, generally the target is weaker, and by the
way we generate force, our force is large.

To sum it up:internal is relaxed, external is
generally more tense.
Although that is only one way to look at it, you can
take other views which make the distinction, but this
should be more then enough now.

-Ross

--- Troy Simizon <tsimizon@...> wrote:

> I was talking to a friend a few days ago about our
> system and he
> asked, "is it an internal or external system". Not
> knowing how to
> answer I told him, "yes it is."
>
> I believe it is a common perception that external
> systems are "hard"
> and internal systems are "soft". If anyone has any
> opinions on what
> is the difference between internal and external
> martial arts I would
> greatly appreciate it.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Troy
>
>
>
>
>


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