the rum soaked fist: internal martial arts forum

or have someone study these, esp from a young age...

would you most likely start with xingyiquan (seemingly the most "simple")?

then would you continue with taijiquan or baguazhang?

why?

I'd get started with taijiquan sooner

taijiquan strikes me as the most difficult.

if we oversimplify:
- pick up any long stick, and "5 elements" xingyiquan almost seems self-explaining.
- baguazhang ... add more circularity from there.
- taijiquan ... confusing as all hell. nobody on an enthusiast forum can even explain it in a way that anyone else will agree.

If I had to start from scratch and, assuming that quality instruction was available in each, I would try and pick the teacher I liked the most and stick with that teacher for the whole time.

I believe that you choose a teacher, and not a style.

everything wrote:from a young age...

When you were young, your body need to go through maximum body stretching training. I don't believe big 3 can offer you enough.

Right now I do have a particular interest in Baguazhang, so maybe that, followed closely by Xingyi. But mostly because I'm hearing about how the training, as with Xingyi, is pretty deep, and I would have loved to start earlier with that deep kind of training . That kind of training seems more accessible than what I think is the equivalent in Chen Taiji. Plus those arts have a bit more movement I think.

Appledog wrote:I believe that you choose a teacher, and not a style.

Agreeable, but surely this kind of understanding comes from a considerable period of practice? Of course everyone is different but the beginning stages are so fraught with misunderstanding... we're bound to choose something out of some kind of uninformed perspective.

So how much "from scratch" are we getting here?

everything wrote:taijiquan strikes me as the most difficult.

if we oversimplify:
- pick up any long stick, and "5 elements" xingyiquan almost seems self-explaining.
- baguazhang ... add more circularity from there.
- taijiquan ... confusing as all hell. nobody on an enthusiast forum can even explain it in a way that anyone else will agree.

I dunno, why waste time with anything but the best?

How long is a piece of string
It’s not the art it’s the teacher

KongFuGongFu wrote:
So how much "from scratch" are we getting here?

lol, I don't know. it's hypothetical so up to the answerer I suppose.

origami_itto wrote:
I dunno, why waste time with anything but the best?

haha yeah

Seeing as some young ones literally tried to run away or even kill themselves bc the training was too harsh... None at all lol.

Kids should be allowed to kids. But times were different back then and are different now. Child labor sucks.

Some practices were only possible starting from a very young age though, and if those arts literally were your career, retirement, health and life insurance in a war torn country, things change a bit...

I'd probably take Bagua then transition to Tai Chi.

no xingyi?

Ooops. Too much whisky

what is the Question?

No idea