Compression Model

you can thank Cerebro for this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UHS883_P60

How this translates to the human body takes a little explaining, which I am working on and will begin laying out shortly.

The difficulty with the internal arts is understanding the basic 'energy that is being used.

Everybody just start stretching. Especially your hips.

The first thing to do is identify the balls.


the large ball is the lower body. specifically the legs and hip joint.

the small ball is the upper body, driven, or compressed by the opponent's force or weight. so the small ball is your upper body+his momentum

stripping it all the way down, what happens is that you align your body correctly, and relax enough, and the opponents force will drive you into the ground, at which point he will be rebounded or otherwise affected by the reflection, because the ground will not move. this is what is meant by 'grounding'.

when you are aligned properly (via posture points) and RELAXED, your lower body will act somewhat like a pogo stick.

by your lineup, and lack of resistance, you guide the force into one leg or the other, generally. if the leg is structured well ( KNEE PRESSES HEEL, MARSHMALLOW FEET), and the hip joint is relaxed, the force will compress your legs, and it will 'bounce' back.

now, this is a VERY simple explanation, with a few less than stellar analogies, but it should help you to orientate yourself to the mechanism as it relates the video I posted earlier.

add to this the consideration that all the joints, and vertebral spaces, as well as the muscle tissue, fascia, and whatever else holds us together contributes to this effect.

compression is an exploitable capability of intrinsic strength.

I think this a good time to point out something subjective here. Compression is not, ultimately, something that you feel. so its not like you are trying to cultivate a sensation of any kind, as it relates to 'power' in the compressive or intrinsic sense. the 'ballooning' or 'pogo stick' effect, when WELL DONE is actually completely empty of feeling, or sensation, or any other indicator, or metric of 'output'.

once you start doing compressive techniques, you will find that there are degrees of success, just like anything else. and you can knock off a really good uproot, and fail to repeat it for some time. the frequency and quality comes and goes, as your mentality and therefore degree of alignment and relaxation varies.

there is a fundamental point about the nature of 'intrinsic strength' that make elude most people, especially at first. Being as it's intrinsic, it is not something that can be developed. Everyone has the inherent capability, barring physical trauma, to employ this technique. you already have everything that you need to do it.

It does require training, but that is primarily mental. what's really required is that you STOP doing certain things. Once you stop doing these things, like expanding, then you can 'find' compression.

Learning compression is like carving a sculpture. You REMOVE material to create the art...you don't build it. And so the ability is revealed to you, once you make the appropriate adjustments.

to put this another way...

expansion is about building up strength, adding speed, mastering more technique, developing intention, and so on.

compression works through gravitational alignment with a relaxed body. this is a product of mental states, and is not reliant on external factors.

not that you can just stand around and think about it, you have to train, and the exercises that loosen the body are not to be taken lightly.