the rum soaked fist: internal martial arts forum

This is an interesting CCTV video on taiji, it's pretty long, but I think taiji people will find it worth watching.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnE9Y-VsFgA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9RLO3QpDNM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AmjoJ2yyLs

One of the things I find interesting is that groups of muscles fired simultaneously on the taiji master which would tend to support the idea of "one part of the body moves, the whole body moves". It would be interesting to see more studies along these lines to see if the groups of muscles match up with the muscle tendon meridians (jing jin).

My teacher trained extensively with Zhang Zhijun (the focus of the video). His extremely detailed perspective on spiraling serves to both weave the body together (how many people are going to post "d'uh") and provide a method to work around "bracing" -- as a result, large groups of muscles fire together. Sort of a consequence of his "fingers move first" methodology.

I'm certain other people accomplish the same thing in other ways but interesting to note Zhang Zhijun's Chen taiji is not the same as Chen Xiao Wang's, Chen Zhenglei's, etc. Also interesting is that he had more hands on time with Chen Zhao Kui than anyone else.