the rum soaked fist: internal martial arts forum

There is a person I know who is teaching Chen Taijiquan in the area who advertises that his art is the original art and that his is the 'fighting art' of taijiquan.

Doing chen style does not guarantee you can fight with your style that you teach, especially Having absolutely no fighting experience or fight record at all. Alot of chen people say they are the fighting style of taijiquan. Nor have i seen any chen people in any Lei Tai or San shou event ever! Some Yang stylist perhaps but no chen stylists. The Chen grandmasters that come and tour and do seminars have not taught one san shou or sanda seminar at all. Chen grandmasters have done maybe some push hands with qin-na, but not taught any real fighting as of yet in USA.

what makes your art the real fighting art?

what are they doing in chen village that they are not doing in American Chen schools? i have heard they do have sanda in Chen village now.

Teacher makes the difference. That and your training goals and regimen. If you train for Qi, that is all you will get in return. If you train (and are trainED) for combat, then you will be a much better fighter than the former.
If your teacher does not know something, then you will not know it. Teachers make all the difference, not styles or arts. All the styles and arts are applicable to some level, otherwise they would have died out eons ago.
Cheers
Jake

Jake has lazily tied the coat of the correct.

I don't mean to over simplify, but really that is what my 17 years + experience has taught me. Without an excellent teacher you are lost in the woods, you will never see the forest for the trees, or through the trees!!
Lazily cracks open beer is more appropriate for me bro!
Cheers
Jake

neijia_boxer wrote:There is a person I know who is teaching Chen Taijiquan in the area who advertises that his art is the original art and that his is the 'fighting art' of taijiquan.

Doing chen style does not guarantee you can fight with your style that you teach, especially Having absolutely no fighting experience or fight record at all. Alot of chen people say they are the fighting style of taijiquan. Nor have i seen any chen people in any Lei Tai or San shou event ever! Some Yang stylist perhaps but no chen stylists. The Chen grandmasters that come and tour and do seminars have not taught one san shou or sanda seminar at all. Chen grandmasters have done maybe some push hands with qin-na, but not taught any real fighting as of yet in USA.

what makes your art the real fighting art?

what are they doing in chen village that they are not doing in American Chen schools? i have heard they do have sanda in Chen village now.

What makes Chen style better for fighting than Yang, Chang, Hao, Wu, or Sun style?

DeusTrismegistus wrote:
What makes Chen style better for fighting than Yang, Chang, Hao, Wu, or Sun style?

Nothing, It just has a rep with some people.

Before we evaluate any martial art we have to figure out what aspect we are interested in sport or martial? The sport aspect implies rules, protective gears, score system and other things which most traditional martial arts get assimilated by today. In contrast, martial aspect implies killing your opponent or disable him by severely injuring him.

Chen Taijiquan as martial art primely was focused on weapon training such as guan dao, dao and etc. Thus, it's actually was born as the battlefield practice with some bare hand elements as supplemental skill and foundation for weapon training. Chen Wangting (the founder if Chen taijiquan) designed tui shou as a training method in order to learn important skill without injuring your opponent. So so called push hands as come from actual fighting experience not imaginary world

Now, as a Chen practitioner I have a hard to seeing myself in any MAA fight with my 12.5 lbs combat steel guan dao . Also most of the sport rules I'm familiar with prohibit me to take full advantage of my art, so why do I need go and compete if I'm interested in martial art not sport? I believe I'm not the only person with such philosophy. A lot of people tend to improve their art employing methods which allowing them to prevent severe injuries during the training process; however, as I mentioned above the ultimate goal of martial art is to kill not to get score. I don't think I really need go and kill someone to prove that my art is deadly or real fighting art. After all if it wasn't "the real fighting art" how could be around few hundredth years and have good martial reputation since ?:)

I think it would explain why a lot of masters carry on tradition without any desire to be involve competitive sports. However, some of them actually do some kind of competitions paying a tribute to modern society. For example, in China government most likely would not support or promote your art unless your participate in some kind of competition and get some kind of status...People need to make leaving you can blame them for that even if they are masters. ..

sdf wrote:Before we evaluate any martial art we have to figure out what aspect we are interested in sport or martial? The sport aspect implies rules, protective gears, score system and other things which most traditional martial arts get assimilated by today. In contrast, martial aspect implies killing your opponent or disable him by severely injuring him.

Chen Taijiquan as martial art primely was focused on weapon training such as guan dao, dao and etc. Thus, it's actually was born as the battlefield practice with some bare hand elements as supplemental skill and foundation for weapon training. Chen Wangting (the founder if Chen taijiquan) designed tui shou as a training method in order to learn important skill without injuring your opponent. So so called push hands as come from actual fighting experience not imaginary world

Now, as a Chen practitioner I have a hard to seeing myself in any MAA fight with my 12.5 lbs combat steel guan dao . Also most of the sport rules I'm familiar with prohibit me to take full advantage of my art, so why do I need go and compete if I'm interested in martial art not sport? I believe I'm not the only person with such philosophy. A lot of people tend to improve their art employing methods which allowing them to prevent severe injuries during the training process; however, as I mentioned above the ultimate goal of martial art is to kill not to get score. I don't think I really need go and kill someone to prove that my art is deadly or real fighting art. After all if it wasn't "the real fighting art" how could be around few hundredth years and have good martial reputation since ?:)

I think it would explain why a lot of masters carry on tradition without any desire to be involve competitive sports. However, some of them actually do some kind of competitions paying a tribute to modern society. For example, in China government most likely would not support or promote your art unless your participate in some kind of competition and get some kind of status...People need to make leaving you can blame them for that even if they are masters. ..

Yes that is a good reason to consider Chen martial. But what makes it better than the other styles like this advertiser was implying? All other taiji styles I know of also have weapons work and focus on finishing a fight (except for the health oriented people that never got any martial practice).

like jake said: it ain't the art. it's the artist.

qiphlow wrote:like jake said: it ain't the art. it's the artist.

I ain't tensed. I am just curious as to why people would believe this. I have heard similar comments from some other people before. I guess I hope that people use some kind of logic when making such claims.

DeusTrismegistus wrote:Yes that is a good reason to consider Chen martial. But what makes it better than the other styles like this advertiser was implying?

What makes it better? The same thing that makes Yang-style the better (more pure) Taiji, or Bagua the superior martial art, or Xingyi the deadliest: imagination, fantasy, ego!

It may be true that the founder of Chen system as we know it today invented PH as a way to practice application without harming your partner, but the problem is that PH seems to be the only kind of paired drill that the majority of Chen Taiji stylists do these days besides solo forms.

IME, those who can fight with Chen style are those who do well at PH contests, so are essentially good at standing grappling. There are sanda coaches at both Wang Xian and Chen Xiaoxing's schools in the village, but they teach modern/sport sanda, not "Taiji sanda" (whatever that may be).

IMO, standing grappling is maybe 60 percent of the skill. If you can add short, sharp shocky strikes (the various punches to groin and elbow shots that pepper the forms, for eg) to your grappling, and add the illegal in competition shearing moves (lazily trying coast, single whip, high pat on horse, etc) which are head.spine controls, you will have a pretty nasty art. Problem is, it is very difficult if not impossible to train this stuff without injury - I have never seen a format for sparring like this - hence, perhaps, Chen Wanting's creation of PH.

I certainly don't believe Chen people are any more martial than other(serious/martially focussed) Taiji practitioners, but the art LOOKS more martial due to the stamps, jumps, fajing, etc.

Beyond David Chin's and Dan Docherty's groups, I have not heard of any Taiji people doing sanda or MMA, but would be interested to hear of any who are out there....?

William CC Chen / Tim Cartmell come to mind.

Yes, William C.C. Chen comes to mind as well as C.K. Chu, whose Tai Chi people have competed and done well in full-contact competitions since the 1970s. But yes, the number of Tai Chi schools known for producing fighters is rather small...