Tai Chi

[Siegfried]

I heard that it takes at least ten years to become a truely skillful Tai Chi practicioner. Is this true? Also, is tai chi more for health rejuvenation, or combat? I am just trying to get some information about it before I get involved in it.

[chris davis 200]

check out the tread on tai chi in the mixed MA section.

Some information from me on their.

cheers
Chris

[Siegfried]

Thanks

[Sean J]

No matter if you train Tai Chi in a combative or non combative way it is worth its while. Look at the latest obituaries in Inside Kung Fu. Should give you a hint why.

For combat I would not stick to Tai Chi only, although Bruce Lee even claimed that there is a distance wher it can even be superior to Wing Chun

[Siegfried]

Unfortunately I don't get Inside Kung Fu magazine, who died? So what your saying is that if those people would have been practicing tai chi they probably would have had a better chance at living?

[Sean J]

It was not anyone I had ever heard of but obviously they were both very famous in their respective fields.

One, a Tai Chi Master, died at the age of 102 and the other one, a master of a more obvious combat style died at the age of 60. (Cause: something with diabetes).

Of course this may be coincidence, but when you read a lot of biographies of various martial arts masters many of those from the harder styles die of the same causes and at the same ages as everybody else. Masters of internal styles often live a lot longer - and probably most important - often stay healthy till shortly before they seem to decide they have had enough of this world.

Two fine exceptions from the more combative styles are Gogen Yamaguchi (Goju Ryu) and Ueshiba (Founder of Aikido - used to be a pretty tough way of combat). What we got to ask ourselves is why. In Goju there are lots of hard elements (Oyama also trained Goju) but there are also many elements that are more like you know them from the internal styles. Oyama (founder of Kyukushinkai did not seem to care shit about internal styles. He was not doing well the last years of his life and did not live for an extremely long time. Yamaguchi was training actively till a few days before he died at the age of 89.

So whatever you do I can only recommend you to combine it with a soft style, if you main combat style does not have enough soft elements. And don't forget to look to the west also. Not only Asians have good stuff.

[Lost Ronin]

Most Tai Chi styles are more of a moving meditation therapy than anything else. Some styles seem to be geared towards combat, but my respectful opinion is that they are as useful as Yoga when it comes to real fighting. You need to study simple styles so that you can learn fighting skills quickly, in this world you should have learned martial art skills yesterday, not 10 years from now! This is nothing more than my respectful opinion and I don't want to offend anyone. Oh, Tai Chi is good for your health though. JKD instructor Richard Bustillo has cross trained in it.
Hope this helps.

[swan104]

I've had a few Tai Chi lessons myself just to see what it was like, and the instructor said that he liked to "test" his martial abilities against other martial artists eg. other kung fu stylists, boxers etc. He seemed like a good man, and wouldn't say anything bad against anyone else, or system.

What is interesting is that he said that boxers were the most difficult people to spar with. Also, he said that weight training is beneficial for Tai Chi and he wouldn't enter anyone into any competitions if they could not lift their own body (demonstrable by doing a hand-stand against a wall and doing push ups).

I've never seen a Tai Chi practitioner spar or fight with another martial artist, so I can't really comment on it's effectiveness in combat. What is Tai Chi sparring like?

The pushing hands exercises/games that I experimented with seemed to be useful and could compliment your current martial skills.

Steven

[Sean J]

The sparring they do in Tai Chi is normally the Tui Shou: You start with the arms touching each other. And you try to get the other guy off balance. It is a lot about feeling and not breaking contact. Once one gets better punching and kicking can be incorporated. Since you start at an arm's reach it would be easy to punch the other guy if he let you arm go. On the other hand, if you want to punch you'd normally have to let his arm go and he would hit you first. I have done this a lot and also done normal sparring starting at kicking range with the same people.

Conclusion: They were damned good, once arm contact had occurred, but when launching fast attacs from the distance I usually could hit them. But that is more a matter of routine in different kinds of sparring than something that is founded in the system. How do I know? One of the Tai Chi people I have done Tui Shou with is my wife - In the meantime it is a lot more difficult to close in on her when we spar.

[dragonboy]

Well, Bruce is stated as saying there are two arts he admired, or thought were very good....tai chi, and praying mantis. Bruce also studied yang style, it has 109 movememnts. it takes time to master. but you can also learn from tai chi,....when you perform a movememnt slowly/perfectly you reiforce your nervous system so you will perform it that way everytime. remember bruce saying "feel the movement"...? try different movememnts using that concept, it helps alot. as for combat, its a close in fighting art. it is well worth the investigation, you wont regret it.