Doc Stier wrote: Yang Cheng-Fu was so successful in popularizing his style in this way that second and third generation members of other Tai-Chi Chuan families followed his example in similarly editing and modifying the original form sets of their family styles also, thus sacrificing most of the martial elements received from their family predecessors as well.
daniel pfister wrote:Doc Stier wrote: Yang Cheng-Fu was so successful in popularizing his style in this way that second and third generation members of other Tai-Chi Chuan families followed his example in similarly editing and modifying the original form sets of their family styles also, thus sacrificing most of the martial elements received from their family predecessors as well.
Are you saying here that Wu Style and Sun Style were modified to look more like YCF's style after he popularized his form?
Doc Stier wrote:In recent years, there have been many naysayers who insist that the Yang Style Tai-Chi Chuan taught and practiced by family members prior to the version developed by Yang Cheng-Fu is the same art. They usually offer this opinion apparently even without having ever seen the older form sets for comparison. If they haven't personally seen or learned these older form sets, they argue that such forms can't possibly exist and never did. Wow! That's some totally brilliant deductive reasoning there! Really? Seriously?
Yang Cheng Fu left behind only one solo form with several variations, which his book calls the Modified Large Frame 85 Forms Solo Set. His solo form set was not one of the original Yang Family form sets. It is an abbreviated solo form set with a simplified performance style which he developed for public teaching by editing and modifying an earlier 'family hands' form set (jia-shou-xing). This simplified solo form was designed to make it easier for students to learn Tai-Chi Chuan, and introduced a shift in training priorities from a personal fighting art for individual use to a health exercise and self-cultivation art for the masses.
He succeeded marvelously, but at the cost of sacrificing most of the martial training methods practiced by the previous generations of his family. Yang Cheng-Fu was so successful in popularizing his style in this way that second and third generation members of other Tai-Chi Chuan families followed his example in similarly editing and modifying the original form sets of their family styles also, thus sacrificing most of the martial elements received from their family predecessors as well.
wayne hansen wrote:scmt are u refering to the dong /tung style
Andy_S wrote:This is the odd thing about the Yang style: There seems to be massive stylistic variation - rather than simple modification - within just three generations.
OTOH, if you look at the other styles - Chen, Wu, Hao, Zhaobao, etc - they are all much more similar across these generations (or, in the Chen style, probably longer).
But it is interesting to debate what the original curricula were, and why these curricula managed to produce two (arguably, three) generations of super-fighters. Then - suddenly! - it is an exercise for old ladies just one generations subsequent.
I can't think of another example in history of a form of combative technology transitioning so very radically.
wayne hansen wrote:grahame u seem to give a linage then leave out your teachers nane and his teachers name is there any reason for that.
scmt are u refering to the dong /tung style
Doc Stier wrote:
If current family leaders of the Yang style and other major tai-chi chuan styles are practicing the same methods used by their predecessors, why aren't they demonstrating the same skill levels as previous generations did? The same training methods should produce the same results in serious practitioners of any style across the board. Instead, it is known that the earlier masters of every major tai-chi chuan style, and their best students, typically demonstrated tremendous internal energy development and combat application skills which have been only rarely seen in the past 75-100 years time, especially in the post-1940 era to date.
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