Quote:
Originally Posted by jubaji
"How" is kind of a big question. There are an awful lot of techniques/moves/whatever in taijiquan that are based on 'unbalancing' if you will, setting up throws, trips, strikes and such. The white crane speads its wings, flash the back, Buddha's warrior attendant pounds mortar and all that sort of thing.
I'm certainly nobody's expert in taijiquan. I studied under Chen Quanzhong in Xi'an for a few years and I practice stuff on my own, but I'm a wrestler. I reckon I know just enough to know when someone is making fantastic, unrealistic, or exaggerated claims. On the other hand, I've seen folks who only trained in taijiquan, and nothing else, mixing it up in street violence and I certainly can't agree with any folks who say (and so many do) that tai chi is useless for real self defense, etc.
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Interesting take on it but you might want to remember that most people with 40 plus years in the Internal arts will tell you they're still newborns, so a couple of years training in the internal arts doesn't give you any insight into the art at all. The founders all said it took 45 years or until your beard turned white before you could garner enough understanding to be able to understand the art well enough for your opinion to be valued. I believe it was Musashi who said "until you understand something it doesn't exist in your world". It's been my experience that if you try to use a technique in a fight you will lose. Things like "The white crane speads its wings, flash the back, Buddha's warrior attendant pounds mortar" are not for fighting, they develop muscles and connections so that when you fight you can use non technique, that's perhaps one of the most commonly misunderstood aspects of the internal arts and common among beginners. If you want to grasp the true aspects you need a teacher for more than a few years.
Beginners ALWAYS rely too much on muscle and are incapable of understanding the power because of this, it takes many years to learn since as you learn to use less muscle the usage and abilities change drastically. You can't use power from connections you haven't created yet.
If you look at how long it takes to create a champion boxer, it should be evident it is going to take longer to train in art that uses more than 1 of the seven weapons available. I believe the average is 5-7 years for a pro boxer. I wouldn't expect someone with two years boxing to be able to comprehend all the subtleties and certainly someone with a couple of years of Tai Chi is doing a disservice by offering advice or claiming to comprehend it. That would explain your quite negative initial post about its usefulness. After all any art in which you've only scratched the surface of is only useful for an equally untrained opponent eh?
Quote:
Originally Posted by jubaji
I think with taijiquan ('cause I've seen it go down this way) if you are looking at some wild-eyed nut who is violent and willing but really hasn't much of a clue and is just going to lunge at you, then the off-balancing stuff gives an advantage for some throws, trips, and strikes of varying type.
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