Maximizing Your Skills with Freestyle Practice
Updated: 2 days ago
Freestyle practice was a new concept for me when I began training with Master Fung. Until then, my training had focused on fixed forms and exercises (kata) or choreographed self-defense techniques (waza). We would mix things up during sparring & grappling, but most of our focus was on performing form and technique 'the right way.'
The WAY of INTENT takes a different approach. As you will see, the bulk of our training is what I like to think of as 'pre-technique.' We focus on developing qualities that can potentially elevate all techniques.
For example, consider the Internal Orbit. One procedure we use to activate this feeling state is to align our frame with the flow of gravity, release excess and localized tension, and allow our autonomic balance system to kick in. When this happens, we can experience balance as constant change, with the frame dynamically correcting to center equilibrium. I refer to this feeling as the Internal Orbit because it feels like a ball bearing circling the inside perimeter of a spheroid, essentially orbiting the center.
We then use permutations and combinations of shape, stance, and step to experience the Internal Orbit in various positions, becoming more consciously aware of how the frame can move while maintaining balance. The result is an integrated structure that can move without breaking that integration. This awareness and conscious control of the Internal Orbit is not a technique, yet it can be applied to or expressed through almost any self-defense technique. Think of it as updating the firmware so the software runs better.
If you enjoy math, you can run some calculations. Add up the basic variations in the major categories of shape, stance, and step. How many permutations can be made from those variations? How many combinations? You will quickly find that the number grows rapidly, and as your practice expands and you become aware of even more variations, the number becomes astronomical.
Enter Freestyle Practice. Rather than enslave ourselves to the endless extrapolation of variations, we use those extrapolations to reach a point where we can maintain the Integrated State in any variation. For a while, we relax our calculus, forget the rules, and let go, allowing the feeling state to take over.
At first, this transition can be difficult because the rules and procedures were what induced the Integrated Feeling in the first place. They can be hard to let go of. In fact, those rules, shapes, and patterns can even be mistaken for the art itself.
You guessed it, it's time for a reframe.
Freedom Through Discipline
Until I began training under Master Fung, my skill was based on coordinated strength. A basic example is a karate-style punch. I learned to coordinate the punch from the upper body with the step in the lower body to achieve a magnified effect. This method works, and over time, the punch becomes more powerful and effective.
From the very first moment I observed Master Fung leading his class, I could tell he was doing something different. He moved like an amoeba, literally flowing through the space with strength shimmering just beneath the surface. Back and forth across the floor, he would repeat the same gesture over and over, yet each repetition seemed unique in a way I couldn't quite pinpoint.
Through his teachings, I came to understand the idea of achieving 'Freedom Through Discipline.' Learning the rules is the first step. If well-articulated, they will save you countless hours of work and steer you away from many red herrings. However, you must do the work to understand what they mean.
Next, you must be able to apply the rules. Initially, we use the simplest stances and most basic shapes to make it easier. Over time, however, we explore many variations to continually challenge our ability to apply Integrated Strength to different conditions.
The last step is the most difficult. It's about letting go of the rules and experiencing and experimenting with the Integrated State they helped you induce directly, without relying on the technique, trick, or hack that got you there. Paradoxically, the rules of Integrated Strength get broken, but the Integrated Strength itself does not.
Introducing Freestyle Training to Your Personal Practice
Your formal practice is the discipline that will unlock the ability to practice freely. The process works as follows:
Use Feelizations to induce and develop the Integrated State.
Memory Bank the feeling of the Integrated State and practice recalling it directly without the Feelization.
Challenge Yourself by staying in the Integrated State with increasingly complex permutations and combinations of fundamental variations.
Once you have mastered these steps, you are ready to begin experimenting with Freestyle Practice.
Make sure to invest properly in your formal practice before introducing freestyle into your routine. You need an integrated feeling state to externalize; randomly changing from shape to shape is not effective. Within each shape, you must recall the Integrated State, maintain it, amend it, and reconstitute it when it breaks.
KiSS: Keep it Simple, Stupid
"Keep it Simple, Stupid" is a good guideline for personal practice, especially when introducing Freestyle Practice. Choose a Route of Strength that you are confident with and induce or recall the Integrated State within it. Perform the exercise as you normally would, but keep your attention on that integrated feeling and seek to maintain it throughout the expression of the route. If you feel it slipping, amend it, recall it, or reinduce it as needed.
Be clever about how you grow your Freestyle Practice. Place useful constraints on what you are freestyling. For example, you may choose to practice a single gesture or route by freestyling the stepping. Conversely, you may use a fixed stepping pattern and freestyle the gesture or route. Experiment and play with the constraints in a way that gradually opens up more freedom in your freestyle expressions of Integrated Strength.
Single & Continuous Movements
Starting with single movement practice can be very useful. Single movement practice requires you to activate, engage, store, and release in each cycle. This means each move involves activating Integrated Strength, connecting that feeling to the 'opponent,' gathering force in the elastic tissue of the frame, and releasing that force through the connection into and through the opponent.
Continuous movement begins the same way: by activating, engaging the target, and storing force in the frame. However, any release of force is folded or cycled back into storage, then partially released iteratively without ever breaking the Integrated State. Continuous movements are linked in this way, one flowing into the next until there is no differentiation between beginning and end.
Of course, the 'opponent' in solo practice is imaginary, which is why it is more effective to start with single movement practice. The steps of activating and intentionally connecting are easy to forget, and if forgotten, they diminish much of the value in the exercise. In single movement practice, we ingrain the habit of establishing that connection, of engaging with our imaginary opponent with every move. Having this experience will help you accomplish the same in continuous practice.
On a side note, the idea of creating an intentional connection may seem abstract, but it is quite simple. Anyone who has aimed a gun, pointed an enthusiastic finger, or waved excitedly at someone knows the feeling of reaching out, expanding, and extending the sense of self to that target, object, or person. When something grabs your attention, you subconsciously connect to it, much like a rapt audience is to the drama performed on stage.
You can even sense these intentional connections coming from someone to you. Think of the times when you have been minding your own business only to look up at someone glaring at you. What triggered that glance? With my teacher, it's clear as day when he target locks you. You know he has you, and every instinct is to get away. The point is, whether you are freestyling single movement or continuous movement practice, make sure you are doing it with an activated frame that is targeting an imaginary opponent.
Get Ridiculous
Treat your Freestyle Practice like the exploration it truly is. Integrated Strength training is often taken too seriously, with an atmosphere of silence, reverence, and seriousness that can feel almost like a church service.
In reality, the exercises and practices we use are similar to children blowing raspberries, crossing their eyes, spinning around in circles until they fall down, and other forms of playful experimentation. It's not so serious; it's about exploration and discovery.
Adopt this innocent perspective in your own training. Freestyle Practice, in particular, gives you the opportunity to first find and then expand your boundaries. Let's use an example to illustrate this point.
Suppose you have been working on the Leaping Route of Strength in your formal practice and are ready to incorporate it into Freestyle Practice. Start with the KiSS principle, gradually increasing the amount of variation until you can step in almost any direction and execute the route without breaking. What now?
Now you externalize. Take the characteristics of the leaping route and exaggerate them. Reach further, reach wider, step longer, stand deeper. Find the limits of your integrated range of motion and push them out bit by bit. Try going as fast as you can, as slow as you can, change angles, change directions—literally play with the route to see what you can do with it.
At some point in this process, likely during a moment of self-reflection (literally, if you have a mirror on the wall), you will feel absolutely ridiculous—a grown man or woman waving their arms around like a crazy person. Congratulations, you have found your box.
That ridiculous feeling is you leaving your culturally inspired comfort zone and operating in new territory. It tries to pull you back into the comfort zone and away from challenging your subconscious decisions about the 'right' way to train. Give yourself permission to feel ridiculous when expanding your Freestyle Practice, as there is much to gain.
Don't Forget the Music
When focusing on Freestyle Practice, I find music to be very useful. Formal Practice can get kind of bland, and that's okay—the fewer distractions, the better. In Freestyle Practice, however, we want to let what we've conjured up loose and give it a whirl. Music is conducive to that. Moreover, the varying beats and timings inspire variety in the timing of your movements and often add some pep to training.
While I'm no expert on the topic, my understanding is that the human body and music are based on the same 'sacred' geometry. If this is true, it explains why our movements choreograph so well to a beat and a melody.
The type of music you use is, of course, up to you. In my experience, it's not only different strokes for different folks but also about matching the genre to the type of practice you are planning. Explosive strength training, circle walking, and Standing the State all have different playlists.
Another useful sound trick is to load up a metronome app on your mobile device and listen to it during Freestyle Practice. Because it's an app, you can call up a wide range of beats and patterns. Various types of stepping-focused practices are interesting to pair with a metronome.
Freestyle Practice Benefits
Freestyle Practice helps bring your work on permutations and combinations of variations to fruition. The effort was never about collecting a bunch of techniques; rather, it was about making the Integrated State independent of any particular shape, stance, or step.
My teacher often demonstrates this concept by freestyling in the Integrated State until someone says "stop," at which point he freezes in place. You can place a hand almost anywhere on his body, and he will effortlessly bounce you away with hardly any movement. This shows that his integrated frame no longer relies on any specific shape, stance, or step; he has transcended the need for those "crutches" to express his Integrated Strength.
Getting ridiculous in your Freestyle Practice can also help elongate and strengthen connective tissues and muscles more thoroughly. If you have ever needed to defend yourself from an attack, you know that things seldom go as planned. You might find yourself in an awkward position you never expected and certainly never trained in. Ridiculous Freestyle Practice helps prepare you for this kind of spontaneity, both mentally and physically.
Freestyle Practice also helps you imprint our Fundamental Routes of Strength in a non-standard way. The Leaping Route, which we used as an example previously, can be Memory Banked with a tremendous number of variations while still being one Route of Strength. This Memory Banked feeling of the Leaping Route is very useful when internalizing it, as we will explore later in this article.
Another cool aspect of Freestyle Practice is that it inspires variations in angles, timing, stepping, shape, and more that you would never come up with using the permutation and combination approach. The more real you make your imaginary opponent, the more fluid and subtle your variations will become in response. Like a cat playing with a ball of yarn, become joyfully engrossed in playing with the Integrated State. When elevated to this level, Freestyle Practice is known as "The Healthy Dance."
From Externalization to Internalization
In future articles, I’ll explore the internalization process in greater depth, but I’d like to conclude this piece by offering a glimpse in that direction.
Beyond externalizing our Leaping Route to an extreme degree, as discussed above, we will also focus on internalizing it—or more precisely, internalizing the feeling it creates. The key is to maintain the full-body joint articulation that is relatively easy to achieve when externalizing the route. To do this, it’s essential to have a strong, memory-banked sensation of the route you’re working to internalize. Without this, the crucial joint articulation—where every part moves in harmony—can easily diminish as the route becomes more compact.
The goal is to separate the Route of Strength from its outward shape, allowing it to be expressed through any form. In our WAY of INTENT Guided Practice sessions, I often lead you through practicing a Fundamental Route of Strength in various shapes and stances—Shape 1, Shape 2, Stance 1, Stance 2, Step 1, Step 2, and so on. This process imprints the pattern into your ‘muscle memory,’ making it easily accessible when needed.
Internalizing the feeling means condensing all joint articulation into smaller and smaller movements, until there is almost no visible external motion. This brings me back to my first experience with Master Fung, when I observed him teaching a class.
At the time, I didn’t realize it, but he was guiding the class through a practice called ‘friction stepping’ using the Leaping Route. Sometimes he would take a half-step, other times a full step, and often he would express the Leaping Circle without stepping at all. His arm movements varied as well—sometimes subtle, sometimes pronounced.
The practice itself was simple: a few steps forward, a few steps back. Yet, each step was unique, as if custom-designed for the imaginary opponents his intense gaze seemed to confront. Looking back, I now understand that I was witnessing Freestyle Play within Formal Practice. Not only had he internalized the Leaping Route, but he was also free to express it however he wished—externalized, internalized, and every combination in between.
The Practice Pyramid
Freestyle Practice sits between Formal Practice and Integrated Practice, serving as a bridge that helps you transition from relying on specific shapes, stances, and steps to simply activating the Integrated State itself.
As mentioned earlier, Freestyle Practice transforms Formal Practice by allowing us to discover freedom within structure. It also enhances Integrated Training by fostering spontaneous flexibility in how we move. Whether you’re hiking a rocky trail, navigating challenging moguls, or defending yourself, you want conscious intent to determine what you do (climb, slide, stop) and subconscious intelligence to determine how you do it.
Think of Freestyle Practice as a gradient between Formal and Integrated Practice. It should gradually become a larger part of your Formal Practice and an essential element of your Integrated Practice.
Many people who seek my guidance with their Personal Practice feel frustrated because, in my view, they are stuck in Formal Practice. This often happens due to a common mistake—one I’ve made myself—of confusing practice methods with the Art itself.
The WAY of INTENT is a movement art rooted in Integrated Strength. When you move in the Integrated State and express strength in an integrated way, the Art comes alive. Without Integrated Strength, there is no Art. Simply standing in a tree-hugging posture does not make it Yi Chuan, just as wearing silk pajamas does not make it Tai Chi.
Freestyle Practice helps you break free from this misidentification. You’ll realize there is no single “right” way to perform your form—the model you’re chasing is an illusion. Improving your form will no longer be about copying your teacher or obsessing over technical corrections. Instead, your form will naturally improve as you develop the Integrated State. Practice will shift from being a bitter tea you must endure to a sweet one you savor. You’ll stop worrying about uniforms, rank, or titles within your tradition, and you’ll no longer seek validation from others for your progress.
Integrated Practice
In my next article, we’ll explore Integrated Practice in detail, just as we have with Formal and Freestyle Practice. I define Integrated Practice as applying the principles of Integrated Strength to activities that are not traditionally considered practice. These can include everyday tasks like standing in line, walking the dog, pushing a grocery cart, or working at the computer. They can also be more invigorating activities such as hiking a mountain trail, riding a bike or board, practicing yoga, or any other activity you enjoy.
Incorporating these activities into your Integrated Strength practice offers several benefits. First, it greatly increases your training time without interfering with your other obligations. Second, it brings the qualities and benefits of Integrated Strength—such as better posture, smoother movement, and improved balance and coordination—into your daily life. Third, it helps make Integrated Strength an unconscious, automatic response rather than something you have to think about. Fourth, it can significantly enhance both your performance and enjoyment of these activities. And there are many more advantages.
Stay tuned for more on Integrated Practice in an upcoming article. In the meantime, let me know how your practice is going, and feel free to book a check-in or evaluation with me to help you build a better practice.
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