Intro
First, let me say that I intend this to be a long unfolding work in progress. Sooner or later I'll put up the whole chapter structure, which, since we're using blogging software, means I have to put them all up at once and then go back and start filling in. Which is fine with me. I like the idea that I can work all around the whole canvas. I want to quite literally take Hogan's book and go through it point by point, using it to illustrate my ideas which I believe will somewhat diverge from the usual interpretation. I also hope to make copious use of the online videos available to us these days.
These first three videos will give you an idea of what this type of movement looks like... the movement which gives this blog its title. It's a new paradigm, because I dont think we in the West have anything quite like it. The Taoists have been developing this for thousands of years. In this blog I want to comment on Ben Hogan's classic text, from the perspective of these Taoist movement or martial arts, which use a type of training unfamiliar to us, by and large, in order to generate energy. Which energy can be used to strike, as well as for other purposes. I suppose the other purposes could be given the label spiritual. But that's debatable. Some would say spirit and body are all one anyhow. I guess it depends where you grew up, how you name it. As for me, I grew up in Philadelphia. So go figure.
This first video should give you a feel for what it's like to approach everything via circles and spirals. The Bagua was designed to fight multiple opponents simultaneously. One of its chief training methods is called circle walking. The old Taoists used circle walking for creating health and vitality, as well as incorporating it into this martial art. I dont know why I say old Taoists -they're still alive and kicking, having somehow survived Mao and his crew, and are now even once again in the official good graces of the lads in Beijing.
Now this guy is issuing fa jing. You dont want to get hit by this, I guarantee you. It's behind all those mystical things you see in the corny movies. Sometimes called vibration strikes. It has a different effect on the body than a heavyweight right. It messes stuff up on the inside.
This is one of the ways to train for what you see above. Not exactly, but close enough. I watch this little guy do his thing, and I just wish I could do it. Maybe you think I'm crazy. But I dont. I get the same feeling when I watch Hogan swing. And by the way, I'm not going to try to claim he was the greatest golfer who ever lived. I believe at that level of excellence it's silly to pick and choose. But it just so happens that Hogan's book put a stamp on all of us who grew up in that tv golf era of Palmer and Nicklaus. He was the icon. His book was the bible. Now that Tiger's on board, we have all this video which some say may be as much a curse as a blessing. Dont get me started down that road, at least not yet.
Here's a pretty good collection of Hogan swings. Soon I'll get myself some video editing software at which time I'll be able to hone in more precisely on these downloaded youtubers. But for now they'll do. I want to call your attention though to that noticeable so-called "slide" to the target which Hogan uses to transition into his downswing. I'll have some things to say about this move, how it's not a slide at all, and how it relates to the bracing of the right knee, which likewise is no bracing at all. Note: the included music is a little stirring if you're a Hogan fan and like me at age 10 had the book and the golf club in the living room night after night for better or for worse. If not, then it might be corny.
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Comments
If I may suggest, the inclusion of a video or two of Hogan (available on YouTube) might help people here who know nothing about golf, or Hogan, get what I'm guessing is an effort to touch on something sort of spiritual.
Is there actually a "movement" called Taoist golf? If so, I'd like to play the course.
Thinking of it only in terms of an infrastructure project, lots of people could be employed building golf courses in the deserts of the Middle East or the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Should be quite a few interesting runs possible there.
Golf, as a business, could help a lot of Afghanis re-train, and stop having to depend on the poppy crop.
And the oil money Iraqis will make sooner or later might better be spent right at home, on the home courses.
More than that, I think golf, in giving budding terrorists in that part of the world more to think about besides bombs, would help focus a lot of minds. Wonderfully.
I'm with ya, Dude.
Ben's the man.
As a way to help, it's important to offer anyone who stumbles into this area some teasers about Ben Hogan.
The video shows clips of his swing. People who know Hogan generally concede that he was the best ball-striker in the game, and that his work ethic in developing his swing was widely admired. Add to this his hard-scrabble Texas background and the thin rewards of the American pro tour in the 1930s and '40s, Hogan's story is the real deal in Horatio Alger terms.
Back to his swing, which is the template for the modern power game (even acknowledged by Tiger Woods), Hogan created it himself. He developed it, as he said, by digging it "out of the dirt," and grinding it out.
The other important, and heroic thing about Hogan of course is that he won most of his major professional tournaments after the horrific accident in 1949 when he and his wife, Valerie, while driving in a car in Texas, were hit head-on by a bus. Hogan threw himself across his wife's body, saving her. He also saved himself because, by covering her, he avoided the thrust of the steering wheel, which pierced the front seat and would have impaled him.
Hogan suffered a broken pelvis along with other severe fractures. Doctors at the time told him he'd be lucky to walk again, never mind play golf.
Ben Hogan returned to the pro tour within a year, and played at his highest level of accomplishment until he retired in the early Sixties.
He played in pain for the rest of his career.
For anyone not familiar with the difficulties of actually playing golf well, it is simply astounding that this man did what he did.
I am all over the meditative experience of the game. I particularly enjoyed "Golf in the Kingdom" by Michael Murphy. (There's a dvd but I'm not sure it has been released. Google it.) Based on this book is the Shivas Irons Society, a very small group with not much activity, but the spirit is there.
Another good reference I've heard about is "The Way of the Warrior" but when I Google it, I'm not sure which book it is...
The Taoist approach works for me, it's why I enjoy it so much.