Ok, I am not first, foremost, or mainly a tai chi guy, but I have seen actual human beings who trained nothing but taijiquan who could handle their **** in 'da street.'

Has anyone else had the same experience?

I could before I did tai chi.

Now I'd get owned.

Shifu is 100% badass and he mainly trains just Taiji.

The question is kind of a trick question. Who do you know with more than 40 years of experience....heck ten or more years of experience who has only trained anything. He says when he was younger he looked down on Taiji and only wanted to train Baji. Later on as he came to understand it, it has grown to be his core and the lens through which he evaluates everything else.

I don't think you need to use anything but Taiji but I also think that having never trained seriously in anything else puts you at a SERIOUS disadvantage in Taiji training because you tend to massively underestimate everything else and tend not to start off with a very realistic understanding of what other people are doing and therefore, no real way to intelligently consider how account for those things in your training.

So I've met people who only train Taiji who can truly fight but I have never met any one has only trained Taiji and can fight. They all had backgrounds in other stuff even if they abandoned those other arts completely.

So I've met people who only train Taiji who can truly fight but I have never met any one has only trained Taiji and can fight. They all had backgrounds in other stuff even if they abandoned those other arts completely.

Great caveat. I think that the fighting ideas of Tai Chi are too hard to use in practice without ability from somewhere else. I have been doing XY for quite some time and I have no desire at this point to move to TCC because of some of that very principals that I realize I would have to work too much at, and I am happy right where I am. I also am not good enough to undertake another one.


In essence, yes i have played with a few TCC folk that could school ya. However, they are so far and few between that TCC remains the Old Man's Art in the eyes of many martial artists.

It also makes a huge difference whether the TCC studied is of one kind or another. The development of Yang TCC and many of its successor arts sent TCC down the road towards being viewed for its health-giving benefits. The original Chen TCC is every bit a MA quite possibly descended from Gen Qi's Boxing Canon, Shaolin Long Fist or a combination of both. Most of the time folks who have trained in TCC are quite capable of taking care of themselves in S-D situations. Where I think a lot of folks have problems is that most accomplised TCC folks have no interest in participating in competition. My guess is that this probably irks people in the modern MA community who are constantly challenging and testing for "practicallity". Speaking for myself, I don't know that every single facet of every single art always comes back to fighting and combat worthiness. Chen TCC has been around since its inception in the middle of the 18th Century. What that tells me is that it has made it through a number of wars and disasters and continues to be a viable system. I'll settle for that. FWIW.

Best Wishes,

Bruce

A couple of misreadings of my post that I totally expected but figured there was nothing be done but wait for the comments and then clarify.


I think that the fighting ideas of Tai Chi are too hard to use in practice without ability from somewhere else.

Completely disagree. You can use stuff at whatever level you are at and I know people who do and who can use ONLY Taiji training techniques to produce fighters inside of a year using absolutely legitimate Taijiquan techniques. What I was refering too was NOT any kind of gongfu from elsewhere as you often WILL have to ABANDON completely the entire skill set you learned elsewhere if you want to make real progress. I am only talking about the understanding of what other people do. If you make the transition from a technique based approach to a "principle/energy" based approach but have no real understanding of how the techniques you are supposedly countering really work.....you are basically just engaging in mastrabatory LARPing fantasy. There's no need to be able to throw a vicious Thai round kick to be able to catch one and then throw the person who threw the kick but you DO need to have a realistic idea of how fast and powerfull and at what angle one comes in on along with a sense of how the kickers center of gravity changes and so on othewise you are like the guy in the Aikido school learning 1001 ways to defend against "grab my wrist" and the ever feared "overhead karate-chop at 12:00".

It's not necessarily a matter of needing to actuall train those other things so much as just needing REAL exposure combined with a talent for analysis.


The development of Yang TCC and many of its successor arts sent TCC down the road towards being viewed for its health-giving benefits. The original Chen TCC is every bit a MA quite possibly descended from Gen Qi's Boxing Canon, Shaolin Long Fist or a combination of both.

Spoken like someone with no real exposure to any quality yang style Taiji.

BTW, why is it I can name so many more Yang style fighters, I mean people with MMA or Sanda experience, than Chen? I mean, Chen is supposed to be all "original" and "martial" and all that bullshit? Did you realize that "Taijiquan" was invented by a Yang guy? He in turn learned from Chen family people but the name "Taijiquan" didn't even come into existence untill Yang Luchan started giving performances in the palace and no one would have even bothered being so interested in Chen if it wasn't for the fact that YANG Luchan went undefeated in his adult lifetime and got the gig teaching royalty.

The "Taijiforhealthification" started with Yang Chengfu and that was 2 generations AFTER Yang style and there are PLENTY of branches of Yang style not derived from the national standardized forms you allude to.

Points well taken. Thanks.

Best Wishes,

Bruce

Your posts are right on the money, Omar.

A couple of misreadings of my post that I totally expected but figured there was nothing be done but wait for the comments and then clarify.



Completely disagree. You can use stuff at whatever level you are at and I know people who do and who can use ONLY Taiji training techniques to produce fighters inside of a year using absolutely legitimate Taijiquan techniques.

Let me rephrase. In my opinion (or maybe just because it is my experience) I think that someone would have an easier time from another art to Tai Chi fighting then vice versa. But even with that said, this opinion may hold no water in that I have never seen a TCC sole player from the start of their training before. And truth be told my TCC experience is limited at a couple years and I have not actively practiced TCC in at least 6 years.

Omar, do you have any comments regarding the Sun style relative to the Yang and Chen styles? I've read it's an amalgmation of bagua, but mainly hsing yi with tiaji. Are there any fighters that utilize this style?

Never met any but I've hardly met any Sun players period. My impression from the outside is "why bother". Why not just learn Xingyi since that's what Sun Lutang was really good at and his Taiji is kind of Xingyi mechanics with Taiji moves.

The only "fighter" I know of using Sun Style is probably Tim Cartmell.

I am not a fan of the Chen style. I have my prejudices and basically it boils down to the fact that I haven't seen anything in Chen that I don't get with Baji. LOT's of people have noted over the years that Baji is basically Chen style's second form "er-lu". Yang Luchan's most essential innovation was to completely remove any external expressions of various jin that he could and basically make things more a matter of intent and by doing so, both hide the intent of the moves better and speed up the changes. Wu did the same thing following in Yang Luchan's footsteps even to the point of going back to the Chen village to get the "original material" to work with. So I can see Yang and Wu as being logical extensions or further evolutions of the ideas that make Taijiquan so unique.

I see Sun as an unessecary or at least not completely successful synthesis and most (not all) Chen as a step backwards.

The "problem" is just that there is this whole Yang Chengfu line which is definately a step backwards although, I have to admit that the removal of such a large percentage of the technical arsenal has, ironically, produced more fighters than you see in most lines. What has tended to happen is that deprived of a really good set of techniques, a lot of YCF people chant the mantra "principles....principles....principles..." and then rely on simple (aka "high percentage") moves and don't even know what they are missing. They end up focusing on just simple relaxed movement and fight more intuitively. You can go a long way with that. Taijiquan is both technique AND principles. You can kind of get by on either one but I think being forced to only rely on one has made people...well....specialize, and sometimes with quite positive effects.

Thank you for your thoughtful reply Omar

This is all good. There is still the matter, though, of just how much what passes for YANG TCC differs from its CHEN TCC precedent. For instance, we know that YANG trimmed down much of what he may have picked-up from the CHEN family. However, did he keep the same terminology or nomenclature? Was Pats-High-(The)-Horse identified and executed in the same way for both traditions? Without examining this aspect are we not in danger of painting all TCC with too broad a brush? Thoughts?

Best Wishes,

Bruce

Never met any but I've hardly met any Sun players period. My impression from the outside is "why bother". Why not just learn Xingyi since that's what Sun Lutang was really good at and his Taiji is kind of Xingyi mechanics with Taiji moves. Interesting I thought I only had that impression.


I am not a fan of the Chen style. I have my prejudices and basically it boils down to the fact that I haven't seen anything in Chen that I don't get with Baji. LOT's of people have noted over the years that Baji is basically Chen style's second form "er-lu". Yang Luchan's most essential innovation was to completely remove any external expressions of various jin that he could and basically make things more a matter of intent and by doing so, both hide the intent of the moves better and speed up the changes. Wu did the same thing following in Yang Luchan's footsteps even to the point of going back to the Chen village to get the "original material" to work with. So I can see Yang and Wu as being logical extensions or further evolutions of the ideas that make Taijiquan so unique.
Then what do you say to the books that state Yang is a watered down version of Chen? That Yang was a revolutionary that took many of the stronger(high percentage) tech out, to spite the emperor.

I went to a (health) taiji class for a semester, at college. Barely had the time to do one form, and I can't remember how it's stringed and what it's called.

While this was health taiji, I can't help but notice how many of the movements I learned in my taiji form, I can actually use with great effect in my kung fu classes. Especially since we do an exercise that is very similar in nature to taiji push hands (we call it push body; our push hands is something else more related to Wing Chun chi sao).

If even limited exposure to health taiji could be of use...

If even limited exposure to health taiji could be of use...No. Not at all.


If you want to discuss this, I'll start another thread with you as the topic starter.