Back in college, I ran into a couple of fellows teaching at the local recreation center. One of them was teaching Muay Thai while the other was teaching Shootfighting. They were basically competing in the fighting circuit and therefore were always on the lookout for training partners. What’s a better way to get training partners than to offer free instruction?

After my cousin trained with them for a bit, I decided to join in on the fun. The Muay Thai class basically consisted of A LOT, and I mean A LOT of conditioning training. We jumped quite a bit of rope barefoot (not fun when you whip yourself in the foot!) and did a lot of kicking drills against the Thai pads. To practice knee strikes, one person would hold a thai pad against their chest while the attacker did a neck clench and proceeded to alternate knee strikes repeatedly. Pretty fun if you’re the attacker, but not so fun being on the receiving end!

I recall often coming home with purple shins and ankles. I’d be somewhat crippled for a couple of days and often applied a ton of tiger balm and other bad smelling ointments to my body.  One night while looking at my bruised body, I asked myself: Why am I beating myself up?? I couldn’t help but to think about the same quote from one of my favorite taiji movies:

“There must be some d*mn thing wrong with you.. You’re torturing yourself. No one hits you, so you want to hit yourself!”

– Tai Chi Master/Puppeteer on Drunken Tai Chi

It’s strange to recall, but this was the time in which I decided to begin taiji. I realized I missed doing forms and I wanted to cultivate my mind and body instead of beat it up.  Such fond memories came rushing back after I saw the tai chi lesson training clip from the movie on Youtube

URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoIVqCnS944

I first started formally learning taiji through a university setting. As such, the program was provided as a ‘physical education elective’ with a high emphasis on doing taiji for health. The class primarily focused on learning the forms. You learned the 24 form, then proceeded to the 48 form, eventually learning the 32 sword. Some times, I would stick around after class and ask the instructor about various applications and how they applied, and he would show some high level ones. Not too much formal training in applications but a little taste.

During this time, I would often head back to my hometown over summers to train with my wushu instructor. He tried to teach me taiji before, but I wouldn’t have it as I felt it was too boring compared to all the wushu stuff I was learning. But this summer, it was different as he knew I was training in taiji.

In between class, my wushu instructor saw I was working on the last section of the 48 form. He came over and said, “Not bad, now punch.” So I proceeded to punch him. Let me sidetrack a bit, in my wushu training, my instructor believed we would not truly learn to block unless we knew we could get hurt. So when he said punch, this really meant to punch. Of course, I don’t attack with 100% power but probably around 65% or so, enough that if you get hit, you’re gonna feel it. Ok.. so I punched and then he said, “attack, again, again”. Basically, he was telling me to just attack him with whatever I felt was good at the time, whether it be a kick, punch, backfist, whatever.

This went on for a bit until I realized he was doing the movements from the third section of the 48 form to counter my attacks! Since I knew the form, I tried to attack in such a way that it would be impossible for him to get off the next move, but for some reason, it didn’t work! I knew ‘snake creeps down’ was often done as a sweep under to someone kicks so I punched when I knew that move was next. He just stepped to the side and did a shoulder bump, still following the sequence of the movement!  Later, during the formal taiji class, he had us work on various applications for part wild horses mane. He showed how it could be used as an arm bar, shoulder bump, striking attack, etc etc.

Fast forward a bit and I’m at a new school. This new school offered various styles of instruction (taiji, xingyi, bagua, liuhebafa, mantis, etc).  After some time at the new school, I noticed one thing in common. After learning the choreography of the form, they would then break each form down and train the apps via 2-person drills! The taiji style had a whole separate class for push hands training and 2 person sanshou form.

For example, in the liuhebafa class, each student would learn the choreography to the 12 animals of liuhebafa. After that, each animal would then be trained with their applications. Perhaps a class spent on the application for each animal. We’d try to see how the application worked given the choreography of the form. This was quite an eye opener as it really demonstrated where various ‘sinking’ energies were required and the role of unified body movement came into play to effectively pull off the app. For example, in the Dragon form, there’s a downward sinking action done. If the application for this movement was attempted using isolated arm movement, it was almost impossible to pull off on a semi-resistant opponent. However, if the whole body sunk in conjunction with the ‘closing’ of the back, this was quite easy to do and required very little effort in terms of arm movement.

A similar thing was done in the Swimming Dragon Bagua class. After learning the form, each movement would be trained with their martial applications. We were exposed to all the qinna and throws found within the form. Again, quite eye opening and very enlightening.

Even to this day, when I practice the sets where I trained the apps, I notice a distinctly different ‘vibe’ while doing the form. We’ve often heard that when doing the form we should imagine and opponent, yet when fighting we should imagine we’re playing the form. How is this possible if a simple application is not shown for a particular movement?

Perhaps we should just ignore applications all together an just train the energies, right?  I’ve been doing this method for a bit of time and I admit there are still some movements in the form that I have no idea what they are for. I just kinda do the movement thinking about my qi path. Is this building the correct intention?

For me, I happen to believe there’s something special about the forms. They were developed in a particular ordering and sequence for a reason. They are not just one-off applications here or there that just-so-happen to flow into this next move that may or may not having a ‘linking’ application.

This idea of linking applications is what really impressed me when I first saw form application clips provided by Chen Zhonghua. It impressed me enough that I tested it out and was able to successfully pull off the application with little to no effort (Experience with 6 Sealings 4 Closing Application)!  I noticed a similar coverage of linking applications in my review of the Yang Long Form DVD.  This coverage of linking applications within forms gives me hope and belief about the ‘genius’ of the set. Much thought went into the development of the set, not just from an aesthetic, beautiful choreography perspective but from a martial effectiveness mindset. After all, we’ve all read stories about how taiji was developed after observing a fight between a snake and a crane.

Another legend states that Zhang Sanfeng watched a crane fighting a snake. Even though the crane tried to spear the snake with its beak, the snake was so flexible that it could not be speared. From this, Zhang realized that softness and flexibility can overcome strength and created a martial art.

– Source: http://members.fortunecity.com/chentaiji8/history.html

Also, in Hong Junsheng’s book, he notes Chen Fake telling him that all movements in the form serve a purpose and no movement is wasted.  If we consider taiji to be a martial art, I would expect each movement to have a martial function and relevance. Is this asking for too much?

Over the weekend, I showed my wife a video I captured of myself doing taiji.  In this video, I do the first 5 moves of yang and then the first 5 moves of chen. Her first reaction when seeing my yang was, “If this isn’t ‘old man’ taiji, I don’t know what is..”, but then she noted that I was very smooth and appeared quite calm and relaxed in my execution. She also noted I appeared quite ‘connected’ in regards to the upper/lower parts of my body.

She then watched my portion of chen.  At first, she noted how chen looked kinda weird (this was in the transition to buddha warrior). Then she made some comments about my feet shifting around a bit and how the height fluctuated slightly during transition movements. She noted I need to work on more leg strength to even out the chen.  In addition, my upper and lower halves appeared disconnected compared to the yang.

In the end she said, “You do Yang better than Chen”. One of the peculiar things about my wife is that she has been consistently able to spot things in my taiji at a very early stage. She told me, very early on, that when I started chen, my intentions were off. My mind was not in a correct state as I appeared very ‘vain’ and that it looked like I wanted to kick someone’s butt in my execution of chen. This correction later exposed itself to me, as outlined in my Removing Chen Creep post.

Almost by fate, Formosa Neijia wrote a post titled, Beginning Shen training and Chen Style. In it, he notes:

This topic is interesting because it shows a weakness in the focus of most Chen styles. The majority of the time, Chen people focus on body movement at the jing level. (In the qi paradigm there are three levels: shen, qi, jing.) This emphasis can go on for too long, with the qi and shen levels being practically ignored in some schools.

This is something I’ve been thinking about for a very long time. At this point, I’ve actually been teetering on 3 different paths.

1. Focus on Yang
2. Focus on Chen Village Method
3. Focus on Hong Junsheng Practical Method

By focusing on Yang, I don’t have to worry too much about the body method and I can start focusing on the qi/shen phases of the qi paradigm. This is almost like heading down the mind/mental path as opposed to the body path.

By focusing on the Chen Village method, I’d have quite a ways to go in regards to the body method. But I’ve at least headed down this path a bit so I’m a little ways along, but I could definitely see plenty of more time being spent on the body requirements of chen. One of my main hesitations on this path is that I no longer do chen in low stances and fear much of my future corrections will emphasize on going lower (not my goal). I would much rather focus on things like silk reeling and qi pathways, etc.

The final thought was to switch all-together and focus on the Hong Junsheng Practical Method. However, doing this would basically entail throwing out everything I’ve basically learned and start over from the beginning. While this is not so bad, there would be an inordinate amount of focus put upon the body method.

One question I’ve been asking myself is, why the desire to learn the Hong Practical Method? The main reason is because it’s practical. It ties together the martial elements with the physical movements for each and every movement of the form. The martial artist in me needs this association. I need to know what I am doing has martial value and not just waving my arms about.

But then it dawned on me, in my review of the Yang Family Long Form DVD by Yang Jun, he also outlines applications for each and every posture of the form, including the transition applications! I actually already had access to what I wanted, application examples for the postures of the form. So if I really wanted to, I could focus not only on the practical aspects of yang but also delve deeper into the mind/intent work of the yang set. How could I have overlooked this??

I remember the first time I saw someone perform Wu Style, I found it rather peculiar. It appeared ‘a lot’ like Yang style, but with some slight differences. Most notably was the ‘slight forward lean’ that’s characteristic of the style. Then, when I saw the ‘taiji roboto‘ video I was even more intrigued. The idea of breaking the form down into a ‘square form’ so that everyone learns the EXACT movements before smoothing it out in the ’round form’ is awesome! Talk about a great path/route to learning!

Then I came along a forum thread titled The Differences between Yang and Wu, where forum poster, wuyizidi, outlined the following:

Standard step means when you step forward or backward, the space between the steps is one foot (your own foot) wide and one foot long. This is the distance a practitioners with good basics can comfortably cover while supporting all his weight on one foot.

This is harder then it sounds. You can test yourself by putting all your weight on one leg, bend it as low as you can while your nose, knee, and big toe is on one line, then move your free leg forward as far as you can in xu bu, or backward in gong bu. For that free foot, the entire foot should touch the group, not just the heel or the ball. See if the difference is at least one foot squared.

This is for training. In real fighting, how big your step is is entirely dictated by the situation. The most important thing is that when you move, you can be agile and stable at the same time. In Wu Style, the standard step is used to develop these qualities: forcing all the weight onto one foot at all times develops root, while at the same time giving the other foot maximum freedom of movement.

Hmm… What is the effect upon agility in lower stances? I remember a couple years back I was showing a coworker with a background in aikido and krav maga some chen taiji. I did a demo using quite a low chen side horse stance. He then asked me what would happen if someone tried to sweep my front foot. I told him to go ahead and try. So he did, but since I was quite ‘rooted’ in my stance, I was able to absorb the attempted sweep and apply a little push with my hands knocking him back. Looking back, was this taiji?

Furthermore, I’ve noted more than a couple of times where I’ve broken structure, especially during transitions. Not only is breaking the knee to toe alignment bad from a taiji perspective, but it’s doubly bad from a ‘healthy knee’ perspective. Hmm.. maybe there is some merit in this notion of Standard Stepping…. I’ve tried the exercise described above and I admit, it’s not easy! It was rather eye opening and mind boggling (doh!! can’t believe I used the word ‘boggle’.. I know who to blame for that! )

For some videos demonstrating Wu Style standard stepping, check out WuSytleDotCom on Youtube. They feature some video clips of 5th Generation Wu Style representative, Eddie Wu Kwong Yu.