I meant to comment on all of these in fairly quick succession.
charles wrote:As a general strategy, Taijiquan isn't, traditionally, about whacking a stable opponent with so much force that the opponent is incapacitated. Instead, it is about first unbalancing the opponent, preventing him from attacking you further, and then using as much or as little force as one wishes to deal with the off-balance opponent. For example, using little force allows the off-balanced opponent to fall to the ground: using a lot of force throws the off-balanced opponent to the ground, potentially inflicting greater harm to the opponent.
A maxim we use commonly is, “You are never more vulnerable than when you attack.” The purpose of push hands training is not necessarily to throw the opponent to the ground, but to unbalance him so he can’t launch viable counter-attack when you attack him. You can do this by either disrupting his attack, or mounting a faux attack and disrupting his defenses. Both of which, done correctly, will give you control, whether your opponent knows it or not.
Charles wrote: I've met quite a few Taijiquan practitioners over the last three decades of practice. Of those, in my opinion, the most skilled was a yang stylist who was a disciple of Dong (Tung) Yingjie. His skills were such that as soon as one made contact with him, one had no control over one's own body or balance. One could not hit him, kick him, pull him or push him: the best one could do was try to remain standing. If one tried to push or pull him, one felt the contact of one's skin on his, but nothing more. It was like pushing or pulling air: he simply wasn't there. I saw him repeatedly do the same thing to all-challengers from a variety of styles of martial art. He argued that if one could completely control an opponent, why would one bother hitting the opponent. He could completely control an opponent. He regarded fa jin/fa li as low-level brute-force skill. He was very clear that subsequent generations of Dong practitioners did not have the skills of Dong senior - that is, simply studying with a Dong family member isn't going to get one to the skills of Dong senior.
Yes, this is the idea of taijiquan. You use control. You only need to resort to violence when you run into the rare killer. In that case, having controlled him, you injure and incapacitate him, so he is no longer a threat.
charles wrote:The closest I have found to those skills is within the Hong branch of Chen Taijiquan. My experience with Hong's Practical Method is that it tends to be more a combination of both sets of skills, hard and soft.
I agree with others in this discussion that chasing styles - Yang or Chen or others - is irrelevant. My focus has been to chase skills: finding people who exhibit skills I want to develop and studying with them. I'm not particularly concerned with their style or lineage, per se. Studying with a lineage holder is, in my experience, necessary but not sufficient. It depends on the skills/abilities of the individual teacher more than who he studied with.
I did the same, chased skills, until I met someone whose entire skill set I wanted. I still haven’t mastered them all. It would not have mattered what style or no style Chen Zhonghua was doing. I wanted to learn it. It just happened to be Chen Taijiquan. The same is true for Chen Zhonghua. He was just looking for a martial art instructor, and went to check out “the old man in the park that no one can beat.” It just happened to be Chen Taijiquan.
charles wrote:Hong, for example, did not practice weapons, spear or long pole. As I understand it, those practices weren't related to, or required for the skills he developed. For other practitioners some of those things are important training methods. Depends, in part, on what kinds of skills and abilities you want to develop. If the use of "power" is important to your method/strategy, then "power"/"strength" training is important - long pole shaking, for example. If it isn't, they aren't.
There were a couple of things going on here. My understanding is that Hong had learned them, but he didn’t focus on them. In the 1930s, these were obsolete weapons. One didn’t carry a sword or a spear in polite society or anywhere for that matter. It wasn’t until he started teaching and wanting to preserve as much of Chen Fake’s art as he could, and he had young, strong students that could benefit from the using weapons. He had left them somewhat by the wayside and felt inadequate to teach them in an ideal manner. So, he brought in or sent students to the best of Chen Fake's students to learn the basic Chen weapons to teach them to his students.
charles wrote:johnwang wrote:charles wrote:As a general strategy, Taijiquan isn't, traditionally, about whacking a stable opponent with so much force ...
Are you saying that Yang Taiji guys don't use punch to hit on their opponent's body?
No, I'm not saying that.
What I AM saying is that the primary strategy is not to have an opponent stand in a strong, stable stance with his hands on his hips and then have you try to incapacitate him by punching or kicking him in, say, the abdomen, as hard as you can. I suggest that the use of brute force is not the primary strategy of Taijiquan. Whacking a stable opponent with as much force as you can create is application of brute force - regardless of whether the force is created by "internal" means or "external" means. Are there applications in Taiji forms that apply brute force? Sure, depending upon the style and teacher.
What I AM saying is that there is huge variation in what is included under the umbrella term "Taijiquan". Some practitioners focus on developing "power", as much as they can muster, and others don't: others use different primary strategies. Suggesting that all styles and all practitioners of Taijiquan practice the same things for the same purposes to attain the same skills/abilities is, in my experience, incorrect. Creating some uniform straw man practice and calling it Taijiquan is to miss the differences in training and skills from one practitioner to another. It is to insist that the entire elephant looks, feels and behaves the same way as the small piece of the elephant that you've experienced.
Yes. Here’s and example from Chen Fake’s students.
fā 发 (發) - Hong Junsheng’s speciality
huà 化 - Tian Xiuchen’s speciality
ná 拿 - Chen Zhaokui’s speciality
dǎ 打 - Feng Zhiqiang’s speciality
That is not to say that they couldn’t or didn’t do all of them. It’s just that personalty, interest or some factor cause them to put more emphasis on these skills.
charles wrote:johnwang wrote:charles wrote:I suggest that the use of brute force is not the primary strategy of Taijiquan.
But you have to learn how to walk before you can learn how to run.
That is true, but learning to walk won't help you learn how to ski. That is, walking isn't necessarily a stepping-stone skill in learning to ski.
Beginners should not practice long pole shaking exercises because they haven't learned how to "power" the pole. Too often beginners will try to emulate what they see a more advanced practitioner do - making the pole shake. Absent of the skills, they will use primary arms and shoulders to make the pole shake. It outwardly looks similar - the pole shakes - but it teaches them/reinforces exactly what they are trying to un-learn - making the primary power generation the arms and shoulders. Until a student learns NOT to use their arms and shoulders to power the motion, the student will not progress in what the training is about. It becomes an arm/shoulder strengthening exercise - localized muscle usage.
You have to learn how to land your fist on your opponent's head before you try to learn how to make your opponent to fly in the air.
Maybe. It depends upon what skills you are trying to develop and what training progression you are using.
General wisdom suggests that there are two starting points to "internal". One can start off with "hard" style training and, eventually, gradually, become "softer" and more "internal". The opposite approach is to start off "soft" and "empty" and eventually, gradually, become "harder". Different starting points with different training paths. Which to use depends upon the style and teacher.
Taijiquan training,
usually starts by trying to teach students to "let loose" (fang song). Most people have considerable experience using brute force in daily life to accomplish daily tasks. Most people have little experience in NOT using brute force to accomplish tasks. What a lot of Taiji training - depending on style and teacher - focuses on is attempting to teach people how to accomplish things by methods that don't rely brute force.
Starting one's training by hitting heavy bags often reinforces what students already know and do and can impede their progress in Taiji. In my experience, THE most difficult skill is to learn to really let loose (fang song). Relatively few that I've met achieve it, though most insist they have. Without that prerequisite, most don't progress very far and do some variation of the the brute force that they already now.
A large part of push hands training, and the accompanying "invest in loss", is to learn how to not use brute force to compromise an opponent/partner. Sure using brute force to hit an opponent in the head can be pretty effective at compromising an opponent. However, it isn't the only method and Taijiquan focuses on trying to use alternative methods that don't primarily rely on brute force, speed and athleticism. For most people, it takes a fair bit of "losing" - being easily pushed around, thrown and unbalanced - before one begins to figure out how to prevent that without using brute force, and, later, learn how to use that to manipulate an opponent.
Far too many misunderstand the admonishment not to use brute force and end up simply limp. Limp is not the same thing as "letting loose" (fang song) and will prevent progress. When the body is sufficiently "loose", it will "naturally" thread its parts together into a coordinated whole. (A coordinated whole does not mean that everything moves together in the same direction and at the same time.) The spine bows and un-bows, the chest opens and closes (folds/unfolds), the pelvis tilts and un-tilts. In Taiji, "power" is developed from those coordinated actions: "soft" produces "hard". Looseness allows the body to coordinate, storing (qi/jin/energy/pick-your-favourite-word) then releasing. You can store while opening or closing and then release by doing the opposite. Just hitting a heavy bag with what you already know and have been doing for your entire life won't further you along that training path.
There is nothing wrong with using brute force - it has been shown to be very effective - but it isn't the only approach. Taijiquan is largely about a different approach. Towards that end, it (usually) uses a different training progression.
I’ve said this before. If you want to learn the skill set within taijiquan, you have to do taijiquan. Other northern Chinese martial arts may be related, and they may have all had similar skillsets at some time, but today, if you want the skill set of taijiquan, you have to learn taijiquan.
