everybody loves to believe in chi power this mysterious life force that allows martial artists to do supernatural feats like in my experience qi is actually a widely misunderstood term for something that is really basic and simple that everyone can understand and use because it's all about physics check it out [Music] in the western martial arts world a lot of grand masters like to use chi to make themselves sound more important than mysterious than they actually are but in the eastern martial arts world it's actually nothing special i remember when i lived in japan and studied
japanese at university and one of the first phrases i learned was genki desuka see that key in there this phrase translates to how are you but that's actually not the literal translation it really means is your key centered because ki is the japanese pronunciation of chi which is chinese but that still doesn't explain what she actually is and the reason is shockingly simple if i asked you how a windmill produces electricity could you explain that or if i asked you how an energy bar can make you move would you be able to explain that or
if i can ask you why heat produces fire could you explain that i don't think so because all of those examples prove one thing we have a really hard time explaining energy and that's exactly what she is you see i've trained with a lot of old grandmasters in okinawa china and japan and whenever i ask them about chi they start sweating nervously they become red in the face and they start stuttering because they can't explain it they can only show it and i can't blame them because i can't explain energy either and it wasn't until
i realized that she is actually just energy that it all started making sense to prove my point let's look at how the actual term is written in chinese originally the upper right side means steam and the lower left part means rice when combined together they represent the steam coming out of freshly made rice what is that steam it is thermal energy that's all chi is an old way of saying energy but people started misusing qi to get away with all kinds of hocus pocus because they would never have gotten away with all of that if
they just use the term energy which is what the greatest martial artists on the planet know how to use that's why great martial artists have great qi because when they do something with great effect and it looks effortless then they're using their energy in an economic manner it is efficient and impressive but there is nothing magical about it it is just physics and biomechanics and optimal use of energy nothing less nothing more and definitely nothing magical bullshit and if you thought the truth about chi was interesting i suggest you check out some of my other
videos to learn more about martial arts in general and karate specifically thank you so much for watching train hard good luck have fun and keep it real