Techniques training in taijiquan

[Frank Bellemare]

Hello guys,

The recent threads about the application of the taiji form have left me wondering how techniques should be trained in taijiquan. It seems that most people take the "principles over techniques" approach when talking about taiji, but doesn't it make more sense to learn at least a few techniques first, in order to illustrate the principle? How many of you actually drill punches, kicks, and throws in your taiji classes? I know I don't.

Where I train we practice different techniques with partners, but the techniques are mostly variants used to illustrate a principle. Sure that's nice, and in the end understanding principles makes a big difference, but what about learning a certain repertoire of techniques and drilling them? You use what you train, right? I've tried judo for a few months, and the approach seemed to make more sense to me in that they do have principles of movement, of relaxation, of body coordination, etc., but they also drill the hell out of specific throwing techniques. Even with an hypothetical perfect body coordination acquired through years of taiji, I don't think I would have been able to pull off some of those judo throws. Some I would simply never have thought about. You just have to learn them and drill them, there's no way around it.

Lastly, most clips of taiji teachers I've seen seem to be of the "push-pull-lock-push away" variety, which, while certainly very effective and reflective of a very good understanding of principles, doesn't necessarily show a lot of technical range.

So, am I looking for a type of training that doesn't exist in taijiquan, or does it exist and I haven't seen it yet? And if it doesn't exist, then why does it still work?

[SPJ]

in general neutralization or hua jin is most important in Tai Ji.

1. Hua Fa (neutralization the opponent's power and release your own power/energy)

2. Hua Da (neutralization and strike)

3. Hua Na (neutralization and qin na)

4. Hua Shuai (neutralization and throw)

so you do have the full spectrum of fighting techniques in Tai Ji just as in any other CMA styles.

however, neutralization is very difficult to practice and understand, so most of the time, a Tai Ji player will work on this aspect. not saying the other aspects are not important

so depending on your teacher and school.

some would practice Chan Si most of the time, some would practice Peng Lu Ji An most of the time.

yes, there are bag works for punching, kicking and kao etc

yes, there are throwing practice, too.

Peng Lu Ji An Cai Lie Zhou Kao are 8 methods. There are many techniques in each category. And a technique may have several methods at play, too.

so techniques/moves, principles are all there.

again depending on your teacher, what will be practiced more solo first, with equipments and partners etc.

[cerebus]

Principles can't be expressed without a physical vehicle (technique). The first level of training is to develop proper technique, then learn to express the principles through the technique until one no longer thinks of either technique or principle...

[everything]

Here is an excerpt from a thread on "competition" push hands on the shenwu forum that I think answers your main questions:

By Tim on Monday, November 19, 2007 - 07:37 pm: Edit Post
Most Taijiquan practitioners learn very few fighting techniques and do little or no realistic contact sparring. They do however spend a great amount of time doing various types of push hands drills.

[snip]

By Troy on Tuesday, November 20, 2007 - 02:59 pm: Edit Post
Tim,

You learned "Taiji fighting" by going from push hands to slowly adding striking, grappling, and throwing techniques until it's full-blown sparring? Or am I just oversimplifying it?

By Tim on Tuesday, November 20, 2007 - 07:39 pm: Edit Post
We practiced push hands and related sensitivity drills and separately practiced techniques. After a sufficient time, the body method and strategy of the push hands and the technical applications combined in free sparring.

It exists but it sure seems rare.

[Chris McKinley]

Frank,

Good question and good point. While principle should never be hidden from a student as something to figure out for himself, too often in modern Taijiquan training, the student learns a mere outer choreography in increasing detail over the years as he/she moves directly to focusing on principle. I say choreography because the student usually doesn't learn application to any depth, or what you were referencing as technique. Outer choreography is taught with reference to principle, but usually not with reference to actual application.

My Taijiquan teacher Li Xian taught us form with frustratingly precise attention to detail right from day one. There weren't beginners or advanced people, there was only the form and you were either closer or farther away from getting it. Where on that scale you fell was up to you and how much practice you put in over time.

However, and also from day one, he taught individual energies and sometimes individual postures for study as martial art, i.e., being able to fight with it. Something like peng, for instance, was introduced and then first demonstrated from its place in the form, not only so we'd recognize the term, but so that later we'd appreciate that the movement was a lot more than just a portion of the form's choreography. Then he'd show the movement in isolation as solo form so we could focus on more particular details of its execution. Next, he'd show a variety of applications of it with the student attacking at full speed. This took some getting used to because most of us weren't used to the idea of attacking the teacher at full speed, plus we had to learn to trust that his full speed response wasn't going to hurt us. Both took some getting used to.

We students would then spend the rest of the class working the hell out of just peng. We began by performing it as solo form, then paired up and tried it as application against a variety of attacks. Usually, Li would call out the kinds of attacks and we would have to work out the applications starting at slow-to-medium speed. IOW, part of applying it was left for us to develop through experimentation and insight against slower attacks. However, we weren't entirely left on our own to reinvent the wheel, as it were. We had already seen the teacher's applications earlier and used them as inspiration and as a starting nudge in the right direction. We'd work it for a while then Li would eventually come around and evaluate what we were doing, correcting movement and offering insight, then leaving us to work it out again.

This approach could get frustrating, especially for the newer students, but eventually proved to be a great way to both learn the precision of the form and take ownership of the art by working out its use personally. When it came to learning to apply the art, we were neither stumbling blindly, left to our own devices and our own incompetence at evaluating whether what we were doing was of value, nor were we spoon-fed everything to where we would learn not to think for ourselves and only ever be able to conceive of applications we were directly shown.

Sometimes at the end of class, and more frequently as we progressed in skill, Li would end class by having us form a circle and call out two of us randomly. One would be the attacker and one would be the defender. The attacker was told to use one of the attacks that we had covered in class, and he was to come in full speed. The defender had to use the concept we had worked on in class against that attack. If he didn't, he got clobbered, or at least smacked a bit. There were a couple of bloody noses and bruises here and there, but nobody ever got hurt seriously. Knowing that this was coming at the end of class and that we could be chosen for demonstration kept us very focused during class. We knew that we had to pay attention to getting it right or we might get hit if we were called out for demonstration. This taught us not only that this stuff wasn't for play or for hippie bullshit, but it also taught us to attack and defend with intent.

[Walk the Torque]

For me, Tai Ji was taught pretty much like any other martial art, in that we were shown form and application; and I'm not talking about some approximation of the form movement, but a precise blow by blow account of why movements were performed in such and such a manner. As a precursor to the actual application, we "tested" absolutely every motion by having a partner push against our postures in the direction that we wished to practice force towards. By this I mean that if we were practicing say elbow strikes, we had our partner provide a double handed push against our elbows in order for us to organize our posture to bring the best withstanding/projecting force back towards our partners. As a step by step method of building body skill and coordination, I know of no better method.

The applications were classical Chinese Striking,throwing and Chi na. Each and every movement demonstrated and explained in terms of timing, distance, intent and power generation. Sticking and transitioning from one technique to another was taught through Pushing hands, Ta Lu, and free hand.

I might add that every movement was done "as one would use it", and there was a solid and verifiable reason why millimeter perfect movement was required to learn the actions.

All this talk about principles being the meat of the art is a big ask for students new to the game to grasp. IMO

[Frank Bellemare]

Thanks a lot for the generous replies guys, I find it very interesting to compare training methodologies, especially with people of Chris', Walk the Torque's and Tim Cartmell's caliber, because then I know for sure that those methods work.

I admit I don't learn things the way you guys did, and I'm a little worried about it. My teacher's excellent, so is his teacher, and there's one or two senior students which are very impressive, but we don't share the same mindset about things. They seem to be fine with doing forms and then doing a few applications from push hands according to principle XYZ, and it does yield some results, but it doesn't lead to "free hand" or "free sparring". And since we don't drill any specific technique/application -- and by that I mean that every class we do different applications to illustrate a principle such as "cut to the center", just never the same ones -- it's like I don't have anything to fall back on when shit hits the fan. Especially when I happen to spar against people that don't do taiji, often I just get mowed down and I have no technique to fall back on, because I don't drill any, you know what I mean?

With all honesty, what it comes down to is this: I find the way I'm learning tai chi as a martial art to be irrational and frustrating, and although one or two people in class can make it work, I'm afraid I'm wasting my time. It just feels like this stuff would make more sense after having thoroughly learned to punch, kick and throw, which I'm not learning right now. I guess this opens a new can of worms: knowing when to call it quits and knowing when to hang on.

[Andy_S]

Frank:

You bring up a very good point, and I understand your frustration.

I have practiced Chen Taiji under three different teachers (all one step removed from the village where it originated) since 1995, and on a number of occassions, also trained with the top living masters of this system.

Quite frankly, if I had not come to Taiji with 10 years prior experience (KMA, MT, some BJJ, Arnis, etc) I would have virtually no clue how to fight.

I was very fortunate, after my first decade of MA training, to meet and practice with a very high quality student of Dan Inosanto, who was very, very good at drilling: From him, I learned a variety of ways to take techniques and principles, and to drill them combatively, either with partners or equipment.

The way most Chen Taiji is taught by the current generation of masters is not martial, and if you want something martial, you'll need to look elsewhere. (I suspect it is the same with most Tajii teachers, even those who think they can fight) I am not sure if it is their conservatism, or their lack of personal experience in the combative side of the art that is the reason for this, but the current generation (notably the sons of the big name masters) have a rather more open approach,and having come up through the combative PH ranks, are quite handy. But even then, I don't believe they are all-round fighters: combative PH is a roughhouse, but not as rough as it would be if punching, kicking and kneeing, a la sanda, were also included.

Regretfully, the approaches taken by Chris' and Tim's teachers, and by men like Dan Docherty, are very, very rare in Taiji. You say your teacher is "excellent" - but at what? Not fighting, I assume?

If combat is your main interest (it used to be mine - no longer) I would suggest you leave either your present teacher or Taiji itself. But I suspect you have reached this conclusion by now...

[johnwang]

I've tried judo for a few months, ...

If you have trained the throwing art, you will realize that it may take you a long time to develop just a single dependable move. If you apply the same understanding to the striking art, you will look at the striking art from a different angle. It's not important how much you know but how much you can do.

[Frank Bellemare]

If you have trained the throwing art, you will realize that it may take you a long time to develop just a single dependable move. If you apply the same understanding to the striking art, you will look at the striking art from a different angle. It's not important how much you know but how much you can do.

That's true John, and I'm finding that after a few years of training , I have maybe one dependable move and a few principles that I can somtimes make work. I need to move on or radically change the way I do things.

If combat is your main interest (it used to be mine - no longer) I would suggest you leave either your present teacher or Taiji itself. But I suspect you have reached this conclusion by now...

You're right Andy, and I've been juggling with the idea for a while now, but for some reason I hadn't brought myself to do it yet, because combat is not my "main interest" per se. I like all the different sides of taiji, but since I consider it to be a martial art, if the training method doesn't lead to results in the fighting efficiency department, in the end I'm bound to be disappointed. And so I am. Even though I still love taiji and the people I train with, there will always be time to come back to it when I'm 40, and I won't have to regret never having learned to fight through those physically demanding fighting sports while I was still in my 20s. I had the data, but you helped me get to the conclusion, thanks.