the rum soaked fist: internal martial arts forum

Hi, I need some advice. Since there are no Chen style teachers out by me I went looking up all TJQ schools in my area. Outside of the Cheng Man Ching style (of which I have no interest in learning) I found a Sun stylist. I have no experiance with Sun style but read the Sun Lu Tang TJQ book he wrote and that's the extent of my knowledge of it. Anyway this teacher claims to teach the whole system of forms and weapons. He says that the style is quite easy to learn and pickup compared to other styles of TJQ. He even claims that the sword form is easy to pickup. He starts off by teaching the competition form and said that I should be able to learn the complete form in a month or two even though the classes are only once a week. So he is claiming to be able to teach the competition form to me in a total of 6-8 hours divided over 2 months. My question is this should I be concerned about his statement claiming that Sun style is an easy style to learn and is not as complex as the other styles of TJQ. I thought all styles of TJQ are complex and need constant corrections. If Sun style is so much easier to learn and use then wouldn't everybody switch over to Sun style and save time and energy? Please let me know your thoughts and if what this teacher said has any truth to it or not. I already signed up for the first class which he is charging me for.

Sun TJQ is of comparable complexity to any of the other TJQ styles... all TJQ styles train difficult internal concepts and a manner of fighting that is not easily acquired. That said, many people feel the primary form looks simpler than others and consider its practice requires less athleticism than most. IMO this is a superficial evaluation, if not illusionary. I do feel that, unfortunately, this quality makes it easy for a "dabbler" in the style to convince himself and maybe others that he knows much more than is really the case.

I think the form is an excellent platform to practice the TJQ basics, and it is applied in much the same way as it is practiced in the form. A lot is made of the xingyi and bagua content in the style... and I wouldn't worry about any of that until much further down the line. I do worry about learning sun TJQ from a teacher who thinks it's easy...

SNIP
I do worry about learning sun TJQ from a teacher who thinks it's easy...
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Seconded.

Scores of millions of people practice Taiji across the world; but only (maybe) several thousands can fight with it. So most people do not learn it as a martial art, they - they especially being old ladies and hippies - learn it as a kind of healthy, slightly mystical choreography. This kind of Taiji might be considered easy - or might not; my first teachers were pretty old,and had no interest in rucking, but still taught the body mechanics as, IMO, they should be taught.

There again, if you sign up and find that Sun really IS that easy to learn, do and apply, then please report back - and I will ditch 13 years of Chen and find myself a teacher of this...

Thank you both for your replies. Your views are what I was afraid of, but what I was expecting. This Tuesday night will be my first class. I don't know if I can get much of an idea of his skill and knowledge from 1 class but I will try to evaluate his ability as best I can and report back.

To truly learn Taiji it will take a lifetime..I would worry about the instructor you speak of. One may be able to learn the form quickly but will they be able to do it correctly. Taiji is much more than just the movements. I wish you luck in your journey.

he may simply be talking about the choreography of it and that is easy, i wouldn't assume he is talking about developoing skill, but just getting a common map of the form as a starting off point, obviously gung fu takes time

You guys are certainly making a lot of assumptions.

From what I understand about sun style arts...the taiji and the bagua is that they are not easier but designed to be "simplified" which in some instances is means that it is harder because the movements are simpler and more modular meaning that the onus of responsibility is on the practitioner to intuit a lot of technique out of some core movement rather than having a lot of remedial stuff that is designed to show the practitioner how to break that core movement into usable technique.

Also Sun style taiji has a much higher frame which means you can practice it more or less correctly without have a huge degree of strength an flexibility although to practice it well you will need to work hard to get that kind of gongfu.

I'm assuming this is because Sun developed his bagua and taiji later in his life when he had already been developing his shenfa since his youth.

Anyhoo...the best idea is to always go into something expecting the best but using a critical mind. But if being suspicious and negative is your cup of tea then by all means give it go.

Best,

S

I would give the teacher a chance. See if you enjoy training with him. It might be a rewarding experience. If not, live and learn.

Sun-style taiji is often sold as being "easy" and good for arthritis and for the elderly and perhaps the shorter/modified and competition versions of the traditional solo form are that way. However, in my experience, I find that the traditional set is extremely challenging on many levels, whether you have IMA experience or not.

From what I have seen of modern teachers in real life and on Youtube, the solo form versions are often taught as if they were qigong or slightly-speeded up versions of Yang-style. Good traditional Sun-style isn't particularly "smooth" or "rounded" or "relaxed but then again finding a teacher who understands the pre-requisite body mechanics of any style is never easy -- in China or in North America.

I have it from good authority (Tim Cartmell) that, despite the claims of many teachers, the only known forms in the traditional style are the solo 97 posture and the sword set that can be practised as a long solo effort or broken into two parts that fit together to make a two-person application set.

Having seen San Cai Jian performed by several different practitioners, I have always wondered, since learning the Sun-style version, if Master Sun hadn't used that very common [in the old days] training set as the foundation of his Sun-style sword set?

Andy_S, I want to hire you to do PR for my qigong cult. I want to teach "mystical choreography".

Thanks again everybody for your words. Shawn and Chud I get what your saying and of course I will give it a chance and see where it goes before I make a final decision. I guess I got a bit suspicious when the word easy came up. I know he was primarily talking about the moves themselves vs the system as a whole, but I still think that even when he first starts me out with the competition form before the tradidional form that it would still be difficult to learn to do. I know Yang and Chen are not easy to learn. Michael thank you for your post it was informative and cleared some things up for me.

Let us know how it goes.

Chenwannabe wrote:Thanks again everybody for your words. Shawn and Chud I get what your saying and of course I will give it a chance and see where it goes before I make a final decision. I guess I got a bit suspicious when the word easy came up. I know he was primarily talking about the moves themselves vs the system as a whole, but I still think that even when he first starts me out with the competition form before the tradidional form that it would still be difficult to learn to do. I know Yang and Chen are not easy to learn. Michael thank you for your post it was informative and cleared some things up for me.

Yeah, it's funny about EF. Sometimes I think that we are not actually a site ICMA, but a discussion group on educational theory.

Martial arts in general are better experienced and talked about where things can be shown and experimented with in real time, and so break down to discussions on how our system of teaching works...ostensibly. I would be really pleased if more people would open up and remember to contribute to the community by explaining WHY things work the way they do in their system.

I bet most of the older members here, even with no experience in it, could set up a pretty good schoolroom in any discipline based on their experience with how martial systems are taught and trained from this board.

S- jest ruminatin'

I think that what the teacher is saying is that the form (shell) itself is easy to learn. And it is compared to other taiji styles. But to truly grasp the essence of it requires a lot more time than that (understatement here). To put all the energy of the three arts together in a tiny space requires a lot of work, and time. Sun taiji is very simple in execution but very complex in its depth. Give it a shot.

Jou Tsung Hwa practiced Chen, Yang and Hao taiji and always said that practicing Chen was like putting cash in the bank; practicing Yang was like writing a check; and practicing Hao was like using a credit card. His reference was to the development of gongfu, and that only Chen provided enough gongfu to actually use taiji to fight with. He thought that as you get older you could learn Yang, and that as you get even older you could learn Hao, but that learning either Yang, and especially Hao without first learning a MA that gave you gongfu, that it would be essentially worthless for self-defense - like drawing on a bank account, or credit card without sufficient funds to back up the withdrawal. He told me this story every time I saw him over several decades.