Why no Tai Chi Fight Videos/Clips

HA!HA!HA!HA!...No! Stop! It hurts!...HA!HA!HA!....*drifts off into insane peals of laughter*

That is the BEST SITE EVER!! I am still cracking up!

 

My work here is done.

 

Yep, the tai chi forms is simply an encyclopedia of body mechanics. The principle is if you can comfortably handle all the movements and transitions, you'll be better equipped to move efficiently under duress.

A tai chi fighter probably won't look like a muay thai boxer, but he definitely won't be grasping any swallows tails in the middle of a pub brawl.

 

Well said.

 

Hi Bainbrd,
Firstly you are probably asking for a video of a Tai Chi Chuan practitioner in a fight.
I don't see many martial art videos of actual fights-I see many of people in competitions and the UFC etc.
There are probably not many on the internet although if you find any 'san shou' fights then these practitioners may well train in Tai Chi.
A week or so ago on Cage Rage 9 on Sky Sports there was a Guy from the style that i practise called Sami Berik.He was drafted in to fight an Olympic champion wrestler in the cage.Sami was subjected to a few vicious take downs but eventually got the better of his opponent by use of the elbow which opened up the guys eye brow.
You can see Sami fighting in a few clips of previous matches on www.fightingtaichi.com
and also look at www.shadowhand.co.uk for other training clips of Tai Chi from a fighting prospective.
Yes, Tai Chi Chuan can be used for fighting as it is a Chinese Martial Art.
I disagree with Mad Frank about it not being applicable in the street although I would agree that most schools do not teach it as a martial art and therefore it would be foolish to assume that one could use it in the street if one only practised the forms with some pushing hands thrown in.
Let me know waht you think of the sites that i have suggested.

Regards,

Wutan.

 

I practice martial Tai-chi. We don't spar in the usual sense, though we do practice attacking attacks - i.e. entering and disrupting an attacker, and we train this as seriously as we can - i.e. pad up, have the attacker actually try to take your block off, with gloves on in case they connect, that sort of thing. I know there are a lot of Tai-chi schools around who think that doing slow form will give them the ability to fight, which is of course silly. We also do heaps of mitt work, like any martial artist would. All Tai-chi attacks against attacks are aimed at very vulnerable parts of the body - the temple, the throat, the brain stem - so they are all very dangerous. The basic idea of Tai-chi fighting is not to box or to spar but to kill your opponent as quickly as possible. To some people this may sound wanky ... yeh, kill people .... but in all the "no-rules" competitions I have seen I have never seen anyone strike the temple, attack the eyes, punch to the throat, elbow the brain stem ... no one ever goes into those competitions with the intention of killing the other person. So, I can't imagine any serious Tai-chi practitioner going in such a competition.

 

I haven't tried any of these games myself but if you're wondering, this could be a good way of getting in intro about what "combat" IMA actually looks like....(within reason)???

http://www.martialartsplanet.com/forums/showthread.php?t=24100

 

Actually, if you see the 4th level application with the hidden Dim Mak strikes for Grasping Swallow, a Taiji fighter would definately use Grasping Swallow in a bar brawl ... it's actually one of the most dangerous transitions in Taiji fighting. It's got two or three different versions of the application and all are game over.

 

good point, but it was more of a metaphor. I just meant that what you'd see in a bar brawl would look very different from the kind of silk pyjama park tai chi a lot of people associate with the art.

 

Oh, for sure ... thats the issue I guess. It's very strange because the forms don't really reveal the correct applications, they are very difficult to spot. There are forms where many people think they have the correct application worked out and then I see Erle showing a 4th level high end application of that move and it blows my mind! It's exactly the same thing your doing in the form but you'd never figure it out.

Allot of Yang stylers are never taught the opening movement of raise hands because it was considered obsolete by teachers who couldn't figure out the applications, but in bar brawl for instance everything is sped up as you suggest and so nothing looks like the slow moving form.

Opening is for a person coming at you with both hands in the old Mummy strangling the Archaeologist pattern, you raise hands striking up to their PC3 points ( Neigwan ) in a pulling in toward you fashion - dragging the qi in the opposite direction - then simultaneously bringing your hands down on top of the attackers wrists and grasping them along with a bunch of Heart points. This is the section in opening when the hands are lowered again before transition to the next move. You then violently jerk down whilst sinking your qi and body which pulls their upper body down and forward towards you ( compressing the ribs ) at which point you bring your right knee up to strike into the chest, Liver 14 just under the pectoral.

All that just from the opening posture...

 

Yeah, we used to do a variation of that in the wudang hand weapon forms with Keith Brown.

I need to practice more!

 

Thats the Plough from the Wudang forms your talking about but instead of striking with the knee you go to the body with a double palm strike, great move; I like the hammer also. It's easy to see why Erle believes that the original Wudang forms are where much of Taiji developed from. There is an obvious correlation between these skill sets.

It makes more sense when you take into account the suggestion that the modern long forms we perform today were not performed in this fashion by the old Taiji masters like Yang Lu Chan; apparently what we have today is a stringing together of a group of short sets that were performed as seperate entities. Kind of like Small San Sau compared to Large San Sau.

 

Also consider the fact that the forms were born out of the applications and not the other way around.
I'm sure that someone (to avoid more debate) practising the forms did not suddenly think that the moves could be used as applications?

Regarding tai chi used as a fighting art-Also realise that the art does not fight but the person does.
Tai Chi along with other arts will train your body to move in certain ways whether through forms and application practise,nei gung etc.
This is why that the practises other than the forms such as nei gung and application practise are so important as the form would have to be done many many times in order to gain the repitition of a move where as the nei gung and other repetitive practises help to hard wire the moves into our nervous systems-This coupled with form practise will give one a more rounded system.

Mark.

 

Thanks wutan, and to all others who replied, sorry i forgot about this thread and just assumed it had died, im looking at those websites you advised at the minute, and yeh they look good, althrough i think i realise now that im never going to see a video of some grandmaster blasting people across the room (well at least not for real or while in an actual fight situation). But thanks for those sites, ill keep looking over them, and there seems to be some interesting artices on the Shadowhand site too, thanks.

A response i have generally been seeing to my question for clips of internal martial artists, or other queries from others about high level skills etc seems to bring about the argument that yes these skills are real (although some disagree) but these masters have achieved some kind of spiritual enlightenment and would laugh at the request to film these powers for the internet, or go to some paranormal investigation clinic, or perhaps most common would not feel the need to prove themselves in competitive fights.

I cant believe this line of thinking, i believe this is people making up an excuse for the lack of informaiton / evidence out therewho still love and want to hang on to tai chi. i would perhaps count myself in this category, because i really do love tai chi, and my only goal is to be able to use it to fight... oneday..anyway... im rambling a bit now so back to the point; even if these masters have developed some kind of spiritual enlightenment and feel no need to fight, then if they love their art so much why would they not want to show the world what is truely capable with the power of tai chi (or whatever internal art);they would rather let this air of mystery continue within tai chi circles, and let the rest of the population dismiss tai chi as a health dance! This is one point which i really cant get my head round. if i had these skills, even if i had also achieved some kind of 'enlightenment' :Angel: and did not feel i had anythign to prove i would still openly demonstrate them purely to bring more people into tai chi, weather their goal be martial, or health or whatever. the more people who practice tai chi the better the standrad will become.

Am i alone in this line of thinking?

Dan

 

If you train the fighting forms, learn the applications and do the drills as well as everything else that the Taiji fighting system covers, there is no reason why you should not be able to apply Taiji in a real fighting situation whether it be for self defence or the defence of another. I don't need to see clips of an old master taking people out to prove this stuff works, I know it from studying the forms and applications.

You need to work hard and train with partners who aren't afraid to bleed and sweat a bit, afterall, thats how the old boys did it. Trouble today is that most Tai Chi people shudder at the idea of getting physical. The problem with allot of Taiji is that the applications are pretty lethal and require a fair bit of restraint which makes going full contact difficult. You can get very close though but you need to trust a partner to go that distance.

Have faith in your art.

 

Syd is correct when he says to get Tai Chi students to train and fight can be hard work. Most people do not even realise its a martial art. I have two classes one for the form and the other to work on matrial applications. The martial classes tend to very quiet or just have the few anoraks of Tai Chi that will train hard 7 days a week no matter where or when. Too many people have diluted Tai Chi into a health only system and i suspect a good majority of them know little of TCM. I have lost count of students of Tai Chi who have trained along time in Tai Chi and have never had the martial applications shown to them or even tried to practise them.

 

So tai chi can be used to fight the undead too?

China is a land of smoke and mirrors, and often they dont like to show the masses how a trick is done. A lot of masters dont want people to see their art cause they dont believe that many are worth/ready to see it. Only those who will truley practise will be shown the true power. As a result some arts die out cause the masters believe theres no one suitable to pass it onto.

 

Hi Bainbrd,
To expand on my previous post with reference to Tai Chi on film-I recently purchased a copy of 'The Shadow Boxer' from Hong Kong.
This is a fictional film by the Shaw Brothers and as always the Shaw films have a short demonstration of the actual art used in their films.
In the Shadow Boxer the art used is Tai Chi Chuan and has a demonstration of Chen Tin Hung fighting a few of his students at the beginning of the film.
The fight is choreographed although CTH is not holding back and gives his student's a fair battering.
It looks like they have been told to attack him and see what happens.
The actual film stars an actual practitioner of the Wudang style (the style i practise) and although the film is the standard Chinese affair it is good to see the art being depicted in a martial arts film.
The star of the film died pretty young in an accident but was a very good practitioner of Tai Chi Chuan
The film is only available in region 3 which is Asia etc so you must have a multi region DVD player to view the movie.
There is also a DVD of Chen Tin Hung practising with his students in 1963 in Hong Kong-This shows sparring and applications etc.
It is a very rare film.

Regards,

Mark.

 

You say that you practice wudang style, is this actual a wudang style ti chi, as alledgely developed on wudang mountain, or the wudang style otherwise named Practical Tai Chi Chuan?

 

There goes that thing with names again!

I practise the Wu style as taught by Cheng Tin Hung in Hong Kong.CTH adapted the style and it is taught by the likes of Dan Docherty,Ian Cameron,Neil Rosiak and Carl Burgess in the UK.
So yes, Dan calls it Practical Tai Chi Chuan-Mainly becuase it is practical!
Cheers,

Mark.