the rum soaked fist: internal martial arts forum

middleway wrote:Windwalker,

Forget the mans name. His history. Forget even that he is showing tai chi for a moment.

Do you think it's good to teach people who work in an office, probably at desks, to produce this posture?

I don't care who this man is, where he came from or how famous he is, that method looks terrible for those people.

chris

My first reaction to looking at his form was in wondering why he played like that...this is what lead me to want to know why. As to the office workers,,,it's one clip in time showing them trying to follow what he does...It doesn't show the corrections that I would assume follow.

As to the students at some point they have to question and wonder about their own training...It's their training....


What about his other students that went on to master his teachings, why no comments about them?
or the ones who competed and won?

His form play seems to have a combination of wu and dong/tung style synthesis along with his understanding of physics and personal experience reflected in his usage and teachings.

I commented on this thread because often I've seen on this site people like to talk about others with out trying to understand what and why something is so, or how it came to be.....

Often as in this case the people turn out to be quite skilled.

his posture is very round and expanded stretching his back, some of the people shown dont get it they'er just starting. He is correcting them although the clip is very short.

Some of the comments here seem very superficial to me.

Deadmonki wrote:

GrahamB wrote:This is Chu King Hung???

You mean this guy:
http://www.taichichuan.co.uk/informatio ... calls.html
?

No, Graham, C.K. Chu is not Chu King Hung.

Not to speak of his posture, but seems to be him, in his earlier days.

Uploaded on Feb 17, 2008
Master CK Chu playing a portion of the short form. Sifu Chu teaches form, applications, weapons, nei kung, meditation, and other internal arts in the heart of New York City:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXjfq4otSPg

Uploaded on Sep 12, 2009
Master CK Chu has been training full contact fighters since 1973. This is a montage of tournament fighting, martial application, and form demonstration from the past four decades.

Sifu Chu teaches form, applications, weapons, Nei Kung, meditation, and has authored the books 'Tai Chi Chuan : Principles and Practice,' ' The Book of Nei Kung,' and 'Chu Meditation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2b8PGMvSVQ

ploaded on Sep 12, 2009:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLrpY1F4TUg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8ydIbWD_sQ

seems to have the same flavor


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bze07WyY0C0

Yang, Sau Chung (1910-1985), was the eldest son of Grandmaster Yang Cheng Fu. He started learning his family style when he was 8 years old under the strict supervision of his father. At 14, he started to assist his father in teaching Tai chi chuan. By the age of 19, he was travelling throughout China with his father to assist in teaching Tai chi.

In truth, many people who have claimed to learned from Yang, Cheng Fu actually learned from Yang, Sau Chung. In 1949, he moved to Hong Kong, and he taught privately at his home until his death in 1985.
His dedication to Yang Family Tai Chi Chuan was as equally committed as his father, grandfather Yang Chien Hou, and his great grandfather Yang Lu Chan; and, as a result, he achieved one of the highest levels.

Yang Sau Chung passed on the family transmission to his First Disciple, Ip Tai Tak, (1958) and his three daughters, Amy - Tai Yee, Mary - Ma Lee and Agnes -- Yee-Li. He also accepted two other Disciples - Chu Gin Soon (1977) and Chu King Hung (1983).

Master Ip Tai Tak was taught the Yang Family's System (now it's called Snake System) and became Master Yang's practice partner for the next 28 years. Ip Tai Tak has two Disciples, John Ding and Bao Tak Fai (Robert Boyd)

seems to have the same flavor

Sorry WW, can't agree that what the man in the OP does is similar to Yang Sau Chungs form. Yang leans forward, but does not hunch in the same manner.

CK Chu was the first tcc teacher that I met (in the early 70s). He's dead, and it makes no sense for me to criticize or justify him. I probably wouldn't be doing tcc if it weren't for him. When I learned from him, the C-back was not so pronounced. But, let's backtrack.

Chu's tcc (which is what he would call it) derives from CMC style, no matter the other influences. His students would learn the CMC 37 form first, and eventually YCF's long form. When people compare CMC to YCF, they often note CMC's lack of "lean." One would expect that a CMC proponent would not "lean," but we did the form more like YCF than CMC.

So, what about the C-back? Well, in the 70s, Chu's students fought in lots of tournaments. Nobody told us tcc (even CMC style) wasn't a martial art. In the tournaments, we got gloves, mouthpieces, cups and shin guards. I had boxed some long before; I did not want to get clocked, lose teeth or get knocked out. So, because of the context, I was more crouched than if I were doing the form. The C-back was quite natural.

For me, that was a rational reason to argue for a "rounded" back as opposed to a straight back. But, I think the criticism here is of the degree to which the back is rounded. Any of Chu's later students will agree that "more round" was one of his favorite phrases. That roundness, ime, would have applied to shoulders, kwa, legs, arms and everything. I might agree with the interpretation, but not necessarily with the execution. I tend to think that when Chu demonstrated, he was over-exaggerating for emphasis.

Btw, here's a picture of WCC Chen with his interpretation of the round back.


I'm not trying to advocate for a C-back or an I-back or a /-back, etc. That's as old as the Peng Wars. I don't speak for anyone except myself.

I simply don't understand the discussions here anymore ... A video shows someone teaching office workers to hunch their back up in a C.

When this is called into question the response is to talk about fighting, the teachers fighting pedigree and lineage.

I have absolutely no idea how those things are relevant to the tuition demonstrated in the clip at all. The tuition showed in the opening clip is flawed and simply not a good idea for someone who is an office worker, I don't care how the teacher fights, what his lineage is, how long he has trained, what his rep is ... I cannot even comprehend why that information is important.

I guess i am missing something ....

Thanks.

I really think that many people hate their own chests and are willing to damage themselves just because someguy did it before.

middleway wrote:I simply don't understand the discussions here anymore ...

Me neither.

Everyone understands that the office worker / smartphone user posture represents a misaligned head-spine-pelvis relationship.





What they absolutely do not need... is more of the same

Btw, William CC Chen when he's not doing taiji:

middleway wrote:I simply don't understand the discussions here anymore ... A video shows someone teaching office workers to hunch their back up in a C.

When this is called into question the response is to talk about fighting, the teachers fighting pedigree and lineage.

I have absolutely no idea how those things are relevant to the tuition demonstrated in the clip at all. The tuition showed in the opening clip is flawed and simply not a good idea for someone who is an office worker, I don't care how the teacher fights, what his lineage is, how long he has trained, what his rep is ... I cannot even comprehend why that information is important.

I guess i am missing something ....

Thanks.

you mean like its part of a small clip showing some people just starting to learn taiji from a teacher that was noted for producing students who could use the art and did?

I think its important to understand the teachers back ground when assessing something.
In this case he shows influences of other taiji styles and his own "style"

The fact that the students are not doing what the teacher is doing at this point in time only means that they are very new....Whether its a good practice for them depends on "them" apparently it was a good practice for those who used it in the past...

True the teacher may have changed his focus with time, in looking at his early clips it doesn't seem so to me. Others who were his students may feel different I would defer to their comments on this.

I tend to think that when Chu demonstrated, he was over-exaggerating for emphasis.

yep

as most teachers do with new people...

'Lao Ren Shi' (Old Man Style)!

When Ck Shu wasn't an old man he taught people normal young person Taijiquan. When he got older he still wants to teach normal young person Taiji but he's trapped in the body of an old person.

There's thousands upon thousands of people doing Lao Ren Shi in China because they only want to learn from the oldest person they can find, thinking that it's better.

.

you mean like its part of a small clip showing some people just starting to learn taiji from a teacher that was noted for producing students who could use the art and did?

'Could use the art?' Do you think these office workers hired a tai chi teacher to get a full transmission? To me it looks like would have hired him to alleviate the problems of office work.

I could of course be very wrong on this, and i am speculating here, but it brings up a valuable discussion regardless.

Forget the Art, forget its tai chi, forget the man teaching even. Look past all that, take a higher path, look at the method in front of your eyes.

I think its important to understand the teachers back ground when assessing something.
In this case he shows influences of other taiji styles and his own "style"

Why is this important? What if this teacher had absolutely no background and the clip was identical, would that influence your opinion of what you are looking at? I suspect if this man had no history in tai chi you would view this clip very differently and there in lies the problem with trying to have a meaningful discussion about the techniques.

The fact that the students are not doing what the teacher is doing at this point in time only means that they are very new....Whether its a good practice for them depends on "them" apparently it was a good practice for those who used it in the past...

We are not in the past though, we are here now. Where the 'modern disease' of texting neck and an upper spine curvature s is the plague of office blocks around the western world. The Old Ideas no matter what you believe them to be MUST fit the modern problems of the world when we are assessing their viability as health methods ... and not the other way around. The idea that these are 'new student problems' when the teacher himself is showing a deep C spine curvature seems to be a bit dishonest of you, They are emulating his posture and his posture cannot be objectively justified in this context.

True the teacher may have changed his focus with time, in looking at his early clips it doesn't seem so to me. Others who were his students may feel different I would defer to their comments on this.

Again, are you able to ignore the man, and look at the method. As soon as we can take our review away from people, no matter what their background, and assess the ideas presented on face value the sooner we can have a free and honest discourse.

they only want to learn from the oldest person they can find, thinking that it's better.

Beautiful summation of the issue!

thanks
Chris.

Btw, William CC Chen when he's not doing taiji:

Exactly. It's called "age". If you look at him as young, he had a very straight posture.

Now, if you look at Shu in the OP, when he does not show his form, his back is actually very straight.

Our genes and what age might do with our bodies is something that not even Tai Chi can fully control.

after many years of internal ma
and still have to judge ppl based on outward appearance
tsk tsk

Bao wrote:

Btw, William CC Chen when he's not doing taiji:

Exactly. It's called "age". If you look at him as young, he had a very straight posture.

Now, if you look at Shu in the OP, when he does not show his form, his back is actually very straight.

Our genes and what age might do with our bodies is something that not even Tai Chi can fully control.

Old yoga guys stand ramrod straight.