A Journey Through the Jins – Plucking, Seizing, and Splitting

Plucking (Cai or Tsai Jin)

Pluck is an unfortunate term that conjures up thoughts of various painful practices, not least involving ill-fated poultry. Perhaps ‘pull’ would be a better word, though that would be over-simplistic as a description of Cai Jin.

In some ways, a pluck might seem similar to a roll back, since you are responding to an incoming force by intercepting it, drawing it in and using your hands to control the arm, but there the similarity ends. Rather than melting away and rolling them off to the side, your objective is to trap and straighten the arm (apply an arm bar) so that you can seize it (Na jin) pull on it (arm drag) or, if you have it lined up through their centre line, you might even push along the length of it so that their force is reversed and directed into their body through their shoulder to knock them over

The latter might sound as if you are meeting force with force but there is actually a yield to it as you intercept it, stick to it and apply forces in two directions to control the wrist and elbow and trap the arm into a locked-out position, allowing you to direct it downwards, sideways, upwards or right back at them.

As soon as you sense any rigidity in an opponent’s arm, you might seize the opportunity to apply pluck. While you can take control of the arm by applying force horizontally below and above the elbow, as in play guitar/lute/pippa or lift hands, you might even apply it vertically by using downwards pressure on their forearm and upwards pressure under their upper arm. This action can act like a lever to lift them off the floor, though it can cause damage to their shoulder and is not recommended in a friendly competition.

Applying force in two opposite directions, is also known as splitting (Lie Jin), as it splits the single line of their attack two ways.

Splitting (Lie Jin)

Splitting a force into two new directions not only applies to the inwards directions, as when trapping a limb during pluck, it can also be used to take the opponent’s force outwards in unexpected directions.

The human brain likes things to be symmetrical, which means that if someone’s hands are heading for your neck and you just try to prize them apart, you are unlikely to succeed if they are stronger than you. If, however, you split their force diagonally, as in White Crane Spreads Wings, it can be confusing enough to buy you a tiny window of time in which to do something else. If your waist is also turning, that’s a whole three-dimensional bit of confusion for them to deal with, by which time your waist has looped around to bring your upper hand into contact with their face or neck, to slap, chop, punch, poke or palm strike, as befits the situation. Your weight is in your back leg so your front leg may be available to kick, knee or trip, as appropriate, or just step out of the way and “leg it.

Other examples of splitting can be found in moves such as Diagonal Flying or Part the Wild Horse’s Mane, where you might have the opponent’s wrist in one hand to pull them diagonally downwards as your other arm rises to the opposite diagonal, either above their arm to strike to the neck, or underneath their arm so that your upper arm feels their incoming weight and, by using your thighs to rise up against them as you turn your waist, you can use your whole body to lift them off the floor and send them flying diagonally backwards away from you. This is especially effective if your front leg prevents them from stepping backwards so they end up falling over it as well as having their less-than-friendly intentions thwarted.

In these examples, the shouldering energy of Kao may be used, and you can even use an elbow strike (Zhou), if necessary, so these are the Jins we will discuss next.