Taijiquan

[wakinonioi]

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?

[DAYoung]

I could before I did tai chi.

Now I'd get owned.

[Omar]

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.

[dwhomp]

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.

[glad2bhere]

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

[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.

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.

[glad2bhere]

Points well taken. Thanks.

Best Wishes,

Bruce

[Bugeisha]

Your posts are right on the money, Omar.

[dwhomp]

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.

[Afrin]

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?