I have been told that if you wanna learn how to fight with Tai Chi that you should go to Chen style TCC. I was wondering why that is. I have been doing Yang Style for 4 years now and pretty familiar with how it is used martially. BUt what make Chen style better. I know very little about other styles. Is Chen style better then Yang or is it all a matter of preference in the end? the reason i ask this is because i found a place here to do Chen Style. thanks in advance
It's less about the style of TaiJiQuan than the teacher, ime. Most Yang style schools/teachers do not tend to explore the martial side, whereas a lot more Chen schools/teachers do. TaiJiQUan is TaiJiQuan. There are brilliant and rubbish teachers in all styles. The best thing for you to do would be to try a taster class at the Chen school, as any school of repute will always offer a free trial lesson. There are differences in the styles as you know, so only by trying different ones will you know which is right for you. Good luck, I hope you find your path.
thanks Red I was looking at some Chen styles on you tube and noticed they seem to be rather abstract movements. Like i can't tell if what they are doing in an arm bar or push. The Yang style i do you can see the application with in the form, punch here, push here, throw here. Now I am not saying my Yang is better then their Chen. Right now I am just not feeling the school i currently go to now. We don't push hands there and that is something i really want to do. I think we don't do push hands cause we have an 88 two person form. But that's just a guess, i have not asked why we don't do push hands.
Push hands and partnerwork in general is pivotal to advancement in TaiJi (I believe). Certainly for me, doing several years of intensive partnerwork fed back both into my form and the fighting aspect. How approachable is your teacher? It may be worth asking about push hands. I certainly would not recommend a school that only taught empty form.
he's pretty approachable, i just lack the courage to ask, not sure why. I guess i feel like that i am questioning his teaching style.
Well, you will be, lol, if you phrase it wrong, like 'hey why don't we ever do push hands??' But if you just ask if you can learn push hands, that's a bit different - you're still accepting that he's the teacher, and he can say yes or no and give reasons. Is there no one in the class you can team up with to do push hands outside of the class?
In the meantime, you could try some supplimentary training - something like this: [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFEuZWO4dso"]YouTube - Using a ball for tui shou / push hands training[/ame]
Investigate your motivation. Examine your emotions in view of how you use language. Explore the way you move and your body-mind relationships. You're not alone, everyone has to re-wire at certain points along the way. All formalised/systematised silat is just code to document a set of coherent (and sometimes not so coherent) ideas about the psycho-physical response to a perceived existing environmental condition (e.g aggression, health concerns). Consider that a lot of 'styles' past and present are written in spaghetti code. If you can't read and dissect the code, to then re-compile your own kernel then 'fighting' is just an ill defined idea for you. Simple code will probably be more directly and immediately useful to you. Finally, some people get caught up in how the code looks for its own sake creating meaningless associations and definitions ... As in the face of any advice, treat this advice with caution ... in the end you can only trust your own instincts and intuition ... and realise they too can change with time and experience. Rahayu, The Edit : P.S. FQ is on the right track, good advice.
it's because chen taiji still contains aspects which are directly recognizable as martial, such as fa jing, and numerous fast and energetic punches and kicks, directly in the forms (hell, one of the forms is called cannon fist), and people thus think fast punch=martial, slow movement=health and dismiss yang & co. as hippie tai chi
Well anyone who takes Tai Chi knows that it's slow for a reason. Not saying you do Fish, i am just agreeing with you. I am going to do some calling around on monday and see how this payment plan works, the one who teaches tai chi practices in several different rec. centers.
Fa Jing is synonomous to all styles of TaiJiQuan. It's simply that most teachers of Yang style do not teach it. These are also contained in some varients of Yang style...again it is a question of seeking them out. Understandably, unfortunately. If one understands TaiJiQuan principles (which I make no claim to do!) then it is the principle of moving very slowly which facilitates very rapid movement. Yin and Yang.
that was actually a single sentence . i was talking about the thee aspects being widely present in the chen forms, as opposed to the predominantly slow forms with sporadic energetic movements present in yang forms (i've been doing yang myself since early june; chan kowk wai lineage under sifu horacio di renzo) indeed. having seen my sifu move and apply, i can totally agree with that
In my opinion, people consider Chen to be more martial in large part because very few hippies and tai-chi-for-health people teach Chen style. Thus, on average, Chen style as a whole is more martial than Yang style as a whole. But take a Chen instructor who teaches Chen style as a martial art, and a Yang instructor who teaches Yang style as a martial art, and I don't think you're going to get consistently better fighters from either. By the way, if you want to learn to fight through taiji training, you HAVE to be doing push-hands (or some sort of non-compliant partner work) on a regular basis. As Fire-Quan said, politely and conversationally ask the instructor if you could learn push-hands. Don't say "you need to be doing this differently" (even though that may be how you feel).
The standard form taught doesn't represent the whole system or in most cases necessarily the final evolution of itself.. That's the first misconception that should be done away with. Secondly that Yang & co doesn't have fa jing training either in or out of the form. Yang style I believe really is a special case amongst Chinese martial arts in the misconceptions that have built up around it. A slow form was taught publically and in effect was standardised to a large degree by Yang Cheng Fu (third generation Yang style) and his students, I think this may have set a trend amongst other branches such as Wu style or was done purposefully in tandem with them to present a united front. YCF and WJQ were both enlisted to teach publically at around the same time at the same school, they were part of ushering a new era in the teaching of these arts - they had never been taught publically before. The Shanghai Wu school headed by Ma Yueh Liang claims that Wu Jian Chuan standardized a slow form representing Wu style for the first time. They claim that before that the Wu style form was what is currently still practiced as this branches fast form. This version of events is contested by other branches of Wu style - whilst Wu Jian Chuan may have standardized a slow form, they also practice slow forms they claim are from Wu Quan You (his father and Yang Lu Chans student) Tai chi chuan I believe was always meant to be practiced in various distinct methods and as well combined methods (and was). To illustrate this you only need to look at this Yang Banhou (second generation Yang style) fast form for instance. It also happens to be pretty awesome! [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgAmyzoRt5Y"]YouTube - Banhou kuaiquan[/ame]
'Tai Chi' + 'Chuan' translates more or less to something akin to 'Polar Opposite' (or 'Supreme Ultimate') + 'Boxing'. Yes I can see how TaiChi can exist in a hippie form (pun) only manifestation, but TaiChiChuan without boxing?
The Yang style I have been doing has been involving more fast movements (cannon fist), stick, fajing, and push hands as I progress through... there are definitely some Yang teachers out there who do martial aspect of Taijiquan. In fact the people I train with talk more about martial applications than health or chi. So I think it is not about the style being Yang or Chen, the style tells you how the form looks like externally but the concepts are almost the same... it is about how it is taught and how it is practised. I'd get over the "label" of the style and just try both out, ask them questions about their training, to get to know how these particular people actually trains.
Wu [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKzUO1XWwGM&feature=player_embedded#"]YouTube[/ame] Chen [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Y_GULVhJmM&feature=player_embedded"]YouTube- Chen Taiji Master Ren Guang Yi - Compact Cannon Fist ll[/ame]
