by Brinkman on Wed Jul 12, 2017 10:40 pm
Fubo,
I would agree that as a standard, for beginners, the knee should not go beyond the front perimeter of the foot. However, I would say, that is only a standard postural adjustment imparted for teaching a standardized version of any Taiji form. Admonishments such as, not too high, not too low, not too open, not too closed, long, short, etc.. are all adjustments meant to help the novice locate the taiji center, its a standard admonishment to address the postural integration process inherent within all of the internal martial art variants. On the other hand, while the knees of the average non Asian are often plagued with structural disadvantages, it is probably a wise rule to keep in mind for liability purposes. Also, if one is not comfortable with the mobility of a moving step and half step body method there may be no perception of what martial benefits lie in exceeding the boundary of the front foot, nor would one bother cultivating it for health reasons. Like Bagua’s “mud field step” for instance, or Xingyi’s “half step” which often trains a scissoring attack to the opponent’s front leg, which requires one’s knee to actually touch the ground, in a deep kneeling fashion, as you are probably familiar with.
The guy (Ah han) demonstrating the form is at least 65 years old, going on 70.. Breaking the rules in such an explicit way at that age is also a way of demonstrating your cultivation prowess. The joints in question that might be damaged by breaking the rules are still working fine, in his case. Nonetheless, if one doesn’t first cultivate a standard frame, then breaking the rules for longer a range of movement is probably just “bad posture”.